For decades, the path to the CEO suite often ran through a foreign airport. A rotation in London, a turnaround in São Paulo, a regional post in Singapore. These were the proving grounds where future leaders built global fluency and earned credibility with the board. But in an age of regional supply chains, rising protectionism, and AI-powered everything, the question has resurfaced: Does international experience still matter?
Christine Greybe, president of leadership consulting at DHR Global, thinks it does, though with nuance.
“Not all companies are global,” she says. “We have clients who are purely national and others that operate around the world. If you want to be a global CEO, then it’s important to have had that global, culturally diverse experience.”
In other words, a stint overseas is still a marker of strategic reach, especially if it aligns with the company’s scale and ambition. Boards running global enterprises continue to prize leaders who can read the room in multiple languages, both literally and figuratively.
That intuition shows up in past data. A long-term study of Fortune 200 companies found that executives with international experience were significantly more likely to become CEOs, especially at firms with large shares of global revenue. A sample study of European CEOs shows a similar pattern: CEOs who have worked across multiple countries tend to earn more, and those experiences often begin early in their careers.
The benefit, researchers suggest, comes less from geography than from what it teaches: how to operate in ambiguity, manage risk, and balance corporate strategy with local nuance. One recent paper even linked global experience to a longer-term strategic mindset, finding that CEOs with advanced-market international backgrounds were more likely to invest steadily through volatility, rather than chase short-term returns.
Matt Guffey, UPS’s chief commercial and strategy officer, has seen those lessons firsthand. His time leading operations across the U.K., Ireland, and the Nordics reshaped his view of the company’s brand. In the U.S., the “brown package car” is a familiar symbol of reliability, but overseas, the brand resonates differently. Maintaining global trust, he says, required local adaptation. That, in turn, required listening to teams, tailoring the message to each market, and celebrating cultural differences while maintaining a consistent UPS identity worldwide. It was, he notes, an eye-opening and formative experience.
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Ruth Umoh
ruth.umoh@fortune.com
