Denise Morrison

Denise Morrison, COO of Campbell’s Soup and soon to be CEO, knew she wanted to be a CEO her whole life. As she described in her speech at Wharton Women‘s Annual Business Conference, she was raised in a family where dreams were pursued and business practices were instilled from an early age. As she mentioned, she was one of the ‘Sullivan Sisters’ featured in the WSJ for being a family of four top-notch women executives across the country. Inspiring, funny article, to say the least.

My favorite point of advice reiterates what Keith Ferrazzi, Cindy Ratzlaff, & Jason Alba have said before in featured posts of mine- you need to have a personal mission statement to understand where you want to belong, what you want, and how you can go after it.

Hers included a statement of purpose, roles, goals, priorities & gave mention to her life stage. She showed us her own personal example.

Although I had used personal mission statements before, the addition of the life stage was new to me. I understood that your goals would change over time, but I did not make the link that it had to do with the phase of life you were in. Many long term goals and personality traits would stay the same, but short term goals would change based on where you were in life. She gave the example of how she had different goals while raising her kids then once they were in college she felt like she could focus more on her career. Then again, once her children began to have families of their own, she had to refocus on helping her parents more.

She was a direct woman who certainly made a plan, and worked her plan. I valued the experience of hearing from two prominent CEOs who were personable, feminine, and transparent, pulling in the audience to be on board with them.