Wetteny Joseph is executive vice president and chief financial officer of Zoetis, the world’s leading animal health company. He has come a long way from his childhood in Haiti, and it hasn’t been easy–he sometimes gave himself pep talks as the only Black person in a room–but he values the challenges as much as the successes. According to Wetteny, that’s how you “develop a new muscle and help develop an area that you need to grow in.” Recently, Wetteny and I talked about his road to leadership, why he cares more about experiences than titles, and his advice for the next generation of CFOs.
Zoetis is a fascinating and important company. Can you tell us about what you do?
If someone walked a dog or had some milk in their coffee, then they’ve already been impacted by Zoetis. Zoetis is the largest animal health company in the world. We are driven by innovation and are a purpose-driven company looking to nurture our world and humankind by advancing care for animals. We are innovating to solve our customers’ greatest needs on the pet care side to create a stronger human-animal bond, and we are also on the livestock side, which is the production of animals for producers and farmers.
I want to talk about your background because it’s unique – there probably aren’t a lot of CFOs of $80 billion companies who grew up in Haiti. What was that like?
First off, I have nine brothers and sisters; I’m number nine out of 10. I landed in the U.S. at the age of 12 not speaking any English. Thankfully, I was able to learn the language relatively quickly. By the time I entered high school, I had already gone into a finance program because I had such an interest in that area. Growing up in Haiti, particularly as a child, you don’t have the same level of responsibility. I feel for my parents for having to feed all of us. It’s one of the poorest places in the Western Hemisphere. We had our hardships, but we also had fun as kids playing and enjoying the tropical climate.
Let’s talk about your career. You started at PwC, had a terrific career at Home Depot in the home improvement sector, and then you moved over to life science. What was the journey like to experience a dramatic switch between industries?
When I joined PwC, my number one objective was to get as much experience as possible. I would be the one saying, “I’ll go anywhere as long as there’s a project or something that I can get experience from that I would otherwise have to wait a long time to experience locally.” For the first four or five years in the firm, I didn’t spend a summer in South Florida, which is where I was based.
I always had an interest in life sciences. The purpose and the mission of those companies, both on the human side and now on the animal health side, are things that I can attach and identify with. I moved to New Jersey in 2008 and joined a company that does pharma services doing manufacturing and drug development work for a wide variety of companies, both large and small biotechs across the industry and the globe. That gave me a lot of exposure to what’s in the drug development pipeline and how companies are going about those pursuits.
You mentioned this mentor who made a career-altering impact on you. Now that you are the CFO, have you taken on the role of mentoring some up-and-coming professionals?
I do take every opportunity to do that. We don’t get to pick our sponsors many times but we can create them in terms of how we go about expressing our intentions and aspirations. When you get an opportunity to execute something and give it all you’ve got, then you’re creating sponsors who have confidence in you and who give you opportunities and speak about you when you’re not in the room.
When I did the research for my book, Secrets of Rockstar CFOs, I interviewed approximately 40 CFOs, and every one of them mentioned the importance of having and being a mentor at some point in their career. You are proof of that as well.
I take a fairly broad definition of mentors. Your peers can be mentors to you, too. I’ve had a number of those over the years. That can come in a lot of different shapes and sizes up and down the stack in terms of looking at the organizational charts. I have a Gen Z mentor, too. We mentor each other, and she gives me perspective on the next generation. Those are the CFOs in 10 or 12 years. Hopefully, she gets some wisdom from my experiences. Anybody can be a mentor if they want to.
You are one of the few Black CFOs in the Fortune 500. What has that journey been like, and how can your experiences help others?
Growing up, I didn’t see people who looked like me in these positions. Now, there are only a couple of handfuls of Black CFOs across the Fortune 500. Coming up, I remember going into major clients, meeting with CFOs or senior members of the finance organizations, and wondering about what they were thinking when I walked into the room.
I remember almost giving myself a pep talk because these positions were not given out for free. It took quite a bit to get even to that point in my career. I had to step back, think about it, and say, “If someone is thinking, ‘Do you belong here or not?’, let that be their problem. It took a lot of hard work for you to get here. Focus on what you’re here to deliver.”
As a CFO, I take the mindset of replacing myself every two to three years. It doesn’t mean I’m changing positions, but I do think that I’m personally responsible to make sure that I engage.
Corporate America talks a lot about the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion. What do you think we can do as business leaders to ensure that the next generation of Black financial leaders achieves its potential?
As leaders, the fundamental requirement is making sure we’re developing the next generation of talent. It’s being intentional about making sure. If you truly believe that a more diverse leadership team is going to be more productive and drive better performance, then you have to be intentional about making sure that you have a broad slate of individuals if you see opportunities and open positions that you’re trying to fill or new opportunities in terms of tackling a challenge.
Let’s transition to discuss some professional challenges you’ve overcome. Can you walk us through a particularly trying moment in your career, how you tackled it, and some of the issues you faced?
I’ve had many. I happen to value the more challenging moments or the ones where I say, “If I could go back, I would probably do this differently.” I value those perhaps more than the ones that were knock-it-out-of-the-park successes because the latter tends to leverage the strength that we already have.
One of the immediate ones that came to mind was having an opportunity to run a very major project initiative that was on top of what I would call my normal day job. I’m always looking to stretch others as I’ve been stretched to help them develop. In this particular instance, I stretched someone into a position where it was pretty obvious that they were not climbing to it despite any help. I was providing guidance and support. It took too long to do something about it.
It doesn’t mean that you don’t give stretch assignments to individuals. You want to do that and make sure you have the capacity as well to help them develop and grow, not just, “Let’s see how you do,” but at the same time, you also want to make sure that you don’t hesitate on people’s moves when you see the need.
What is it that attracted you to the role at Zoetis?
The thing that I admired about Zoetis is how it got to be in its position, and it’s through innovation, number one. The other one is this: We are engaged in two broad areas. It’s on the pet care side and then on the livestock side. The human-animal bond is something that people around the world hold near and dear.
On the livestock side, this is where my background connects with our mission and our purpose as a company. I grew up in Haiti. Firsthand, I know what it’s like to go hungry and what it’s like to deal with malnourishment. The company’s purpose is to help feed the world and provide quality animal protein–to feed not only the 8 billion people walking the planet, but the 10 billion that are to come. That’s something that I can identify with given my background.
Customer appreciation is embedded in the culture that you’re trying to create at your firm. Tell us about that.
I’ve always had this curiosity about business in general. It starts with, “Why would a customer choose this company’s products or services versus someone else’s? What is it that the customer values? Who are the competitors? What are they doing? What suppliers does the company rely on?”
That curiosity is something that has served me well because it means that you are always looking across the spectrum, not just in finance or the specific department of function that you serve but you’re also looking from the outside in terms of the surroundings of the business and the company. I take every opportunity to go and meet with customers to try to understand their broader world so that I can better appreciate where our services and our products fit. I always bring those stories back to the teams internally. It’s bringing the customer to them.
CFOs are often in a prime position to make the introduction between strategy and execution. Finance is right at the center of that to be able to drive the execution to bring that strategy to reality. Would you say that’s what makes the CFO role critical?
Unless you’re the one in 100 companies where the CEO is a former CFO, you are the only one who’s both a financial expert and has strategic vision across the entire C-Suite. It makes the CFO role so critical. You wouldn’t want to invest in a company that didn’t have a world-class CFO running the financial operations and adding more than finance and accounting.
Do you have any advice for the next generation of CFOs regarding things that they should start to learn about? Specifically, what will help them get the role and then flourish once they have the opportunity?
There’s no exact path but there are a couple of things that I will share. Make sure you understand the business regardless of what role you play, what position you are in, and what department you are in. Try to understand the company as broadly as possible from the outside in and from the perspective of the customers, suppliers and competitors.
Set aggressive goals for yourself. Be aspirational but also be patient in terms of how you get there. There might be a lot of different pathways or opportunities that give you a chance to experience something. I didn’t necessarily set out to run a business, for example, but the opportunity came. Although initially, I said, “I don’t think I’m ready for that,” I did take on the opportunity, and it has made me a better CFO. The pathways can be very varied and not necessarily hard and fast.
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