Be willing to listen, learn and be honest. It will serve you well
When I became CEO of Curriculum Associates on January 1, 2025, I was only the third person to hold that role in the company’s 55-year history. I had spent the previous five years at the company as CFO, then COO, then President. What I learned in each of those roles made me better at the next one. That progression wasn’t accidental.
I’ve always believed that the most important thing a leader can do is listen before acting. Not as a formality, but as a genuine practice. When I joined Curriculum Associates in 2020, I didn’t walk in assuming I understood what a 50-year-old education company needed from its finance function. I asked questions. I spent time with the people doing the work. That habit followed me into every new role I took on. When I became CEO, my first priority wasn’t strategy; it was listening. I launched a company-wide listening tour, holding focus groups and one-on-one conversations across our teams. Some of what I heard confirmed what I thought I knew. A lot of it didn’t. That’s the point.
The best career advice I ever received came from Laura Becker, then one of the most senior female leaders at Procter & Gamble, where I spent the first 18 years of my career. She consistently pushed me to raise my hand for the difficult projects and stretch assignments—the ones that felt uncertain, the ones where I couldn’t already picture the outcome. She always encouraged me to think about how a new role or opportunity could build new skills, and she challenged me to go beyond my comfort zone with the right balance of independence and support. I always knew she had my back in tough situations, and that trust allowed me to take more risks.
That permission to take risks, grounded in real support, shaped how I think about my own role as a leader today. Leadership is about setting a strategy and driving results, but it’s also about working to make your team members be their best, especially when they’re pushing boundaries.
I’ve also learned to be honest about what I don’t know. Early in my career, I thought admitting uncertainty made you look weak. It doesn’t. It builds trust. My teams have told me more, solved more, and moved faster when they knew I wasn’t going to pretend to have all the answers.
That honesty about what’s at stake is part of what drives every decision I make in this role. A third grader who is struggling to read today will become a fourth grader who is still behind. That’s not an abstraction. It’s the reason this work matters, and it’s the standard I hold us to. When you lead a company serving more than 17 million students, getting that right is the job.
