Stacey Tank's Path From CCO to CEO

In this episode, we’re joined by Stacey Tank, former CCO, Page member and the founder of this podcast, about her new role as CEO of a rising beauty brand. She recounts the path she took to become a CEO, and what skills were essential as she moved from CCO to Chief Transformation Officer, among other roles. We hope you enjoy this conversation as much as we enjoyed recording it!

Creators & Guests

Host

Eliot Mizrachi

The New CCO host

JH

Producer

Jerrick Haddad

What is The New CCO?

The New CCO podcast from Page tells stories that explore the evolution of the CCO. From culture change to digital transformation to corporate purpose, we focus on the issues that matter to today's communications leaders.

Page is the world’s premier membership organization for chief communications officers, PR agency CEOs and educators who seek to enrich the profession and improve corporate reputation management.

[00:00:00] Eliot Mizrachi: An old friend, a new role. Today, we're speaking with Stacey Tank, former CCO, page member, and actually the founder of this podcast, about her new role as CEO of a rising beauty brand. She's held CCO roles at companies like Home Depot and Heineken. And today she's sharing actionable advice for professionals looking to build skills suited for top leadership.

[00:00:26] Eliot VO: She also offers her perspective on what she wishes she knew when she was a CCO, now that she can see that role through her CEO lens. I'm Elliot Mizrahi, and this is The New CCO.

[00:00:46] Eliot Mizrachi: I want to start out with a recognition of the significance of this moment. We're here to talk to Stacy about her leadership while we're sitting inside of an example of her leadership.

[00:00:56] Stacey Tank: Oh, Elliot, it's so fun to be back with you. And we had a lot of fun coming up with this whole idea, didn't we? And experimenting with it in the beginning. So, thanks for having me back.

[00:01:07] Eliot Mizrachi: Yeah. And it has really been the, the gift that keeps on giving for page. We enjoy doing it. We always hear people enjoy listening to it. And so it's been a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to a great conversation today Stacy, let's kind of start with a little bit about you. Where does your story begin professionally and what's the journey you took to where you are today?

[00:01:30] Stacey Tank: You know I've always been a person who doesn't know what,

to Be when I grow up. I really had interests across the spectrum. Even trying to figure out what to study in in my undergrad was hard for me. And I just picked and choose. I got a business degree, but I also got a degree from the Newhouse School at Syracuse University in television, radio, film. I took a lot of math classes because my grandfather was a mathematician and I always liked math. So, you know, sort of dabbling here and there. I have an arts background, so I did a lot of theater and loved to play the guitar and all these different things. The reality is, I started in marketing and marketing communications in a leadership program at

GE.

I went into the corporate audit staff because no one had ever been allowed to do it before, and I'm terribly stubborn. Then I was a finance leader in their industrial water business. And then I was Chief Corporate Affairs

Officer at Heineken, but then went to Home Depot, was most recently running their multi billion dollar services businesses there, and so on and so forth.

The Leading the Growth Strategy and Transformation Heineken was undertaken globally starting in 2020. Now running an early stage high growth company in the beauty industry from beer to beauty, home improvement gas turbines, holding enriched uranium in my hand at GE's nuclear business to doing acquisitions in London for NBC universal. I love a challenge. I love to learn something new, lead with curiosity, and I sort of resist the idea that you ever have to really declare a major.

[00:02:58] Eliot Mizrachi: So when you did declare a major back in college when you were at Newhouse what did you think you were going to be when you grew up?

[00:03:04] Stacey Tank: I started as a broadcast journalism major actually, and then I started doing that. I was working at the local ABC affiliate. I was working on the campus TV station, and I'm a huge believer in trying things and having the lived experience to kind of inform whether the hypothesis is true or not. And as I was doing that, I thought, I don't know.

I don't know if this is for me. I like journalism, but I didn't like the more superficial aspects of just being Maybe judge more on your appearance and reading off a prompter versus really getting your hands dirty and And some journalists are very much still able to do that, but my experiences were not so much that way And so I thought well television and film maybe I'll be an agent or maybe I'll go into the business side I just kept exploring and I think the the dirty little secret is it doesn't so much matter what you study If you're able to connect with people and show interest and show the ability to learn and contribute, folks will give you a lot of opportunities.

[00:04:04] Eliot Mizrachi: And you've had plenty. You know, we I've known you for, I guess, about 10 years now many years at Home Depot, two stints at Heineken. tell me about how you became a CCO first, what that transition was like and how that role evolved for you in your time between Home Depot and Heineken.

[00:04:21] Stacey Tank: Sure. I think that the GE experience got me comfortable being really uncomfortable. In the beginning of my career when the Jack Welch, Jeff Immelt transition was going on and Beth Comstock was the chief communications officer at GE at that time, and then became the chief marketing officer and many other things.

The first female vice chair at GE, et cetera. I remember that book, Who Moved My Cheese, that came out, and I remember reading it and thinking, yeah, I was still trying to hold on to certainty, and there would be a restructure, or a new project, or something would shift, and I would feel my whole world was turning upside down. And that book, I think it must have been in the early 2000s, and combined with the GE experience, actually flipped that whole paradigm for me, and I became very keen. on being out of my comfort zone and almost in a way addicted to the new and to the dynamic, which also is a watch out because you don't want to just drive change for change sake.

And that just got me comfortable embracing different kinds of experiences. And that helped when I took my first chief communications officer role at my first job. Chief Corporate Affairs Officer role because after 10 years at GE, through complete serendipity, the CEO for Heineken in the U. S. was having dinner with a woman that I was on a board with, Marion Salzman. And Marion was talking to Dolph and he said, Hey, I've got this role on my management team. I'm looking for this, this, and this. Do you know anyone? And she said, do you know Stacey Tank? And he Googled me, no recruiter, nothing. And in a couple of weeks,

Despite all odds, I ended up stepping into that chief corporate affairs role, which included sustainability, government affairs, public affairs, marketing communications, kind of core corporate communications, executive comms, all of that. and because I had been so out of my element so many times at GE, stepping into a new company, European based, family controlled, publicly traded, family controlled, 300 brands, completely consumer, a lot of things were different, And at the same time, GE had trained me to embrace the new and the different and to come up to speed quickly. And I loved sitting on that

management team, that was the first time. And I was 30 years old, so I was a young pup. Luckily, Dolph was also pretty young, I think he's 8 years older than me. But we were the two youngest on the management team. He was the CEO and I was a little corporate affairs person and getting to contribute to the business, getting invited to have an opinion about the business first and my function second. That was the first experience for me at that table. And. I was like a newborn deer being born, all kinds of elbows and knees and awkwardness. But I learned an awful lot in those three plus years. And that has very much informed how I've tried to contribute to management teams and now in a CEO capacity.

[00:07:13] Eliot Mizrachi: And your return to Heineken was not as a CCO specifically. In many ways, it's kind of what you were just describing. Business leader first, functional leader second how did your second stint at Heineken differ from the first?

[00:07:29] Stacey Tank: Sure. I love Home Depot. I want to just start by saying that I thought I would spend a long time at Home Depot. It is an amazing company with fantastic leaders. It is very well run. They play to win and they're all about people. So I had a fantastic experience there. When I was running the services businesses for Home Depot, Dolph Vandenbrink was announced, I think it was February 2020, when we were hearing about this thing that was happening in Asia called the novel coronavirus. But before it had become worldwide phenomenon, it was announced that Dolph was appointed into the global CEO role. We were on a board together and we had always stayed connected. Very much like sister, older brother kind of relationship for me because I don't have an older brother. So

he, it was great to have him kind of fill that role and be a great mentor and sponsor for me also.

And I texted him, this is amazing. Congratulations, Lucky Heineken. And he wrote back right away. Thanks dot dot dot. Can you talk? And I was like, oh no, what is gonna happen here? I have this thing. The universe was already giving me the spidey sense that this was more than a like, Hey, how's the family?

What's going on? You know, this might have to with moving to Europe. And he said, look, what got us here won't get us there. We need a new growth strategy. The category is changing. Category lines are blurring. Our route to market is digitizing. Consumer preferences are changing. Let's architect a new growth strategy, and then let's operationalize that growth strategy.

Across the world, 90, 000 people from Cambodia and Myanmar to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Nigeria to, You know, France and the UK and Italy to Brazil and Mexico and everything in between. And I thought, You know, what an unbelievable opportunity to be there from the moment this starts this new administration, new management team coming together and what I really appreciate about Dolph, he knows that I'm not always so good in a box, you know, he, he would allow me to contribute in whatever way would serve the company and labels on me

per se, which is great, was perfect.

So I stepped into the role, we talked about it. from a content perspective. And then at one point he said, well, what, you know, what do you think this is? Or what should we call this? And I didn't know what to call it either. We landed on transformation which is, you know, perfectly imperfect, but it was all about helping that company go to its next phase of balanced growth.

I got to, Think about growth. Think

about also doing it more profitably. So we announced a 2 billion euro cost at initiative. We were very much digitizing our whole route to market. And Ronald Denelson continues to lead that. What a fabulous leader.

And then also doing that sustainably and responsibly. So I got to lead the net zero carbon work and declaring as the first

brewer to have a net zero carbon ambition in production by 2030 and in the full value chain by 2040, which was just what an education, what a privilege to get to work on that as well.

[00:10:31] Eliot Mizrachi: know, Stacey it's, it strikes me first that we've We're not talking about your career as a communicator, we're talking very little about communications. We'll come back to that. The other thing, Page, we just released our latest report, Beyond Communication, and for it, we fielded this survey of CCOs asking how your role, your remit, your responsibilities have changed between 2020 and today, and the title is the remit that had the most growth between those three years is transformation.

And one reaction is every organization is undertaking some form of transformation in response to disruption. But another is kind of what you suggested that transformation is a bucket that's broad enough to encompass all of the kind of holistic changes that an organization needs to go through. Why do you think that somebody with a comms background is an ideal fit for a transformation leadership role?

[00:11:23] Stacey Tank: Businesses are just people, and in order to catalyze movement in a company and to bring people along the change curve, And we all go along that change curve at different speeds and different ways. But you have to touch people's hearts. You have to connect in a human way. You have to lead with your humanity. And these are absolutely essential, essential capabilities, leadership capabilities, that just were not As meaningful of a sort of you think about the pie chart of skills that boards formerly looked for in the C suite or in CEOs, you would see things like strategic thinking and execution and, you know, all of these capabilities.

But the ability to mobilize people, catalyze people to create followership,

but from the heart.

to help people realize that you're trying to do

something much bigger than paying a quarterly dividend or whatever it is. That is that's everything. That's what business is all about.

And if your workforce is not energized and not with you, with all the goes ups and the goes downs and the flexibility that's needed today to be able to win with consumers I just don't think you can create a thriving organization. And communicators do that really well. And a lot of classically trained

business leaders are newer to the space.

They did not come up through that kind of school of business that was not taught to them in their MBA school or whatever it is. And it wasn't valued, frankly, and wasn't as necessary, I think, in the past. So, to me, if communicators can lean into that superpower that they have innately,

But also to let go of the fear of some of the more quantitative technical aspects of being a business leader, being fluent in the language of

business, the P And L, the balance sheet, the cash flow statement getting out onto the operations floor.

You just cannot be an effective business leader while you're holding onto that fear. And there's really nothing to be

afraid of. You are smart enough. You are good enough. You ask the stupid question find someone a relatively benevolent financer accounting person or whatever Take you under their arm, you know put on your steel toes get into your manufacturing facility Roll up your sleeves work for a week side by side with your colleague.

Just do it. Let go of that fear because that fear is holding people back and we need more people from these functions that are the chief communications, chief corporate affairs, going into business leader roles to serve their organizations. And I think the number one thing holding them back is that kind of technical fear and that technical gap.

[00:14:21] Eliot Mizrachi: So it's, it, it seems so apparent that, that these, this mindset that you have has served you really well in your life. Your career journey today. You're the CEO at Bespoke Beauty Brands. Tell us about that. What, what is it?

[00:14:35] Stacey Tank: So beauty, first of all, Elliot, is so fun. It's so fun. It's a category where you bring the smile to people's faces, you help them express what's on the inside on the outside, to give themselves a moment of self care, We have two brands. One is Kimchi Chic. Kimchi is a makeup artist and a drag queen. Kimchi Chic is irreverent, joyful tongue in cheek. We have really hilarious names for some

of the products, like our under eye concealer is called Undercover and our pressed compact is called Undercover. almost catfished. You're going to look so good that you're catfishing someone. You know, it's just, it's so joyful and hilarious and, and wonderful. That

brand grew 170 percent last year. It's only three plus years old, but it's thriving and a lot of fun and very colorful. Our other brand is Jason Wu Beauty that we just launched with Target. And Jason is a couture fashion designer. So the idea was you have a Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent, Tom Ford that are fashion designers with really beautiful cosmetics lines and it's luxury. And it's, you know, beautiful product and quality and design, but it's not attainable for everyone.

Jason Wu Beauty It's just very pretty, very clean, very easy luxury. but make it affordable luxury.

So that's the Jason Wu concept, and that has been So fun as someone who has watched things like Fashion Week from afar, getting to sit front row at a fashion show in a beautiful, you know, Jason Wu dress has been like a princess experience for me. So those are the two brands we go to market through a multi channel.

So we're in traditional retail, think Target, CVS, et cetera, but we're also available of course on our own e com. On the TikTok shop, on Amazon, on the Flip app. We were the TikTok launch partner for TikTok live shopping last year with Kimchi for beauty. And that just blew up our, our brand with credit to the team for navigating triple digit growth.

And all in all, Elliott, it is, it's really a privilege and a joy to work in this industry.

[00:16:47] Eliot Mizrachi: I'm wearing a little bit of the undercover hoe. I feel beautiful today. So thank you.

[00:16:51] Stacey Tank: Excellent to hear that. Thank you very much.

[00:16:57] Eliot Mizrachi: so the, the transition from CCO to CEO at page, we talk a lot about CCO. SEOs, especially the most prolific of them being business leaders first and communicators second. And today in this multi stakeholder environment, I think that form of leadership and skillset is more valuable than it's ever been.

I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the transition you made to a CEO role, which is a new role for you. And in what ways you think your background in communications has helped you as a CEO and also maybe made you a little bit different from the typical CEO.

[00:17:38] Stacey Tank: When when I shifted from the chief communications officer role at Home Depot into running Home Depot and installation services and Home Depot measurement services, that was a really important shift for me because that was a kind of a divisional CEO, you know, a CEO of a multi billion dollar business within the larger Home Depot business. And when I joined Home Depot the first time, I had flirted multiple times, including at GE and then at Heineken the first time with stepping into a P& L role. And gratefully, I had leaders who came to me and said, you know, you actually seem pretty commercial. You also have this finance background. You should take a P& L role next. And I had wanted to do that, and for a variety of different reasons, these other opportunities kept coming up. It's really, really important if you want to be a CEO at some point or even have the optionality. You want to keep

the door open because you're just not sure in your thirties, in your twenties, in your thirties, you have to take P and L roles.

You just have to, or you will probably never be the odds are against you that you'll be able to become a CEO later. And so in my first year working for Craig Minear, I had set a quiet intention in my mind. to

show him that I was more than a chief communication officer or president of the foundation, but that I was very interested in the business commercial side of the business and that I could learn and that I was bringing a humility, kind of learning agility, humility and that I was still kind of moldable.

In my first performance review, with Craig, and I said to myself, I want to show him, not tell him. He, we went through, you know, your performance on your goals and all the things you do in performance reviews. And towards the end, he said, you know, I just wanted to kind of bounce something with you.

I noticed that you're very business oriented. You ask a lot of questions and show interest and take on projects that are really interesting. Pretty far outside of your functional responsibilities. Would you consider running a business for us here? And I literally was like, Oh my gosh, I can't believe that we're having this conversation. And so I remember trying to be cool and say, Oh wow, Craig, I mean that would just be an honor, truly an honor. And yes, I would love that. And I remember kind of skipping down the hallway afterwards, like, well,

I might get a chance to do that here. And and then a few years later that happened. So. Getting that experience was actually essential.

That was a turnaround. It was extremely stressful. The installation services business was shrinking double digits. There was a lot of turbulence. The last eight people in my role were all fired. I didn't know that when I took the role. So going through that kind of, your little nose is barely above the waterline. You're paddling and paddling and learning. That was a really shaping experience. And then going into Heineken. And I had the Heineken experience and some P& L things, but largely that was a strategy role. And then going back now into this early stage high growth role as a CEO now of a privately owned company, I am calling on all those different experiences.

I think the experiences from corporate affairs and communications that have been helpful I mean, it, it's literally woven into the fabric of everything that I do. Itook, use a very practical example. Yesterday I was on our normal commercial operating call in the morning where we have sales and operations.

We're talking about, okay, you know, JCPenney

just put in this order and we've got this new customer here and something stuck in customs and you know, So we're just going through the nitty gritty practical stuff of running a company. And we needed to change the way that we are reserving inventory for our customers.

I'll not bore you with the details of why we have the systems limitation, but now there are four extra steps that my team needs to go through anytime they need to reserve something before it's actually going to ship out. And you know, it's just a pain in the neck and I, I'm sorry that they have to do it cause it is going to take an extra probably five minutes every time they need to do this until we can implement a smarter system.

And we were going through, and our very bright and

wonderful commercial leaders were talking about, Okay.

here's the step. First you do this, and then you do that. And after we talked about some of the practical elements, I jumped in, because my spidey sense was going off, like, I can see this is not thrilling anyone, and I get why it's a pain.

And I said I just want to share a little more context about

why. Why do we have to do this? Can't we just skip this? We're becoming so bureaucratic. the reason has to do with revenue recognition and getting our revenue recognition correct. Because otherwise, our financials are saying that we have a lot more sales than we've actually earned.

And that is a problem for these reasons. And so, thank You

for your good humor. This is a pain in the neck. There's a good reason why, still frustrating, but there's a good reason why I want to share it with you. And by the way, we know we need to implement a new system. We're going to look at that in this time frame and make this investment.

But I think just following the gut that you develop doing communications for big and small organizations and making sure that you're bringing context in your, getting inside the mind of your employees and how they are going along the change curve. Whether it's just on this little thing or maybe it's on something huge like we're launching a new product or making a big investment or we're taking on a new investor or whatever it is, bringing people along in that journey.

That is business, you know, businesses are just people and people are what do they say? Emotional beings that are sometimes rational.

[00:23:08] Eliot Mizrachi: You know, Stacey, I, just on that point, I, I have always known you to be a really, a great listener, a very kind of a people person, right? And you've mentioned a couple of times, this Spidey sense, this detection of, I know how people, I think I know how people are feeling. I think I know what they need to hear or do, that feels like a skillset that's, that's, important.

Really powerful for any business leader. And it's probably served you well as CEO you're about six months into your tenure now. Is that right?

[00:23:37] Stacey Tank: Yes. Yeah

[00:23:39] Eliot Mizrachi: How have you found that experience? Is it just through your CCO eyes now, now being in the CEO chair, is it what you expected? Is it different?

And in what ways do you see that role differently now that you have it?

[00:23:52] Stacey Tank: sure. You know, maybe a reflection on my personal growth and development as a leader. And then into your question about this CEO role, what's it really like? I think, so I tend to go lean with my head first. Get the data, analytical, you know, dive in, action. And I, in my twenties, became acutely aware that I lead with this.

And I'm raised in a household. where it's this, at GE it's all about being the smartest, the quickest. So I over indexed on that in my 20s. And part of that in

your early careers, you need to show that you can make good decisions and bring good critical thinking.

So my 20s were a lot about showing this. In my 30s, thanks to my Heineken experience, I would say

and the Home Depot experience in a different way.

I started to think about this. How do you lead from the heart? How do you touch people's hearts? How do you catalyze movements that are a lot more about tapping into our humanity and the emotion of our humanity?

I think my 40s, even though I can't believe, you know, Elliot, I don't know how old you are, but, I mean, I don't know how I don't feel 40 at all. I feel like I'm still 18 years old, but I admit, yes, I'm in my 40s now. Instead of this and this, actually, it has now been a lot more about exploring my felt

intuition, my gut, and listening to that more deeply.

Because our bodies are these amazing kind of sensors, giving us so much. information. And my gut is actually the only reason I took this CEO role, because a lot of folks were in my personal board of directors were saying, yeah, but you're on track to run a 50 billion company.

What do you, you know, just keep running these big

companies. You have more systemic impact, you la la la. But something in my gut told me that I could help in this moment, could help this company thrive, that I was going to learn something I need to learn. about entrepreneurship, about high growth and about maybe how you can take all of these great things about being a high growth company and bring them maybe into a more complex context at some point down the road.

So it has been about following my, my intuition and now as a CEO, integrating those three things is also really interesting so that I can bring kind of a balance and also a question, a really question that I ask myself every day that I learned from Dolph at Heineken is, what is needed? Because as a CEO, you need to be where

you're needed and you need to stay out of it when your team is just thriving and let them, you know, rock and take obstacles out of their way, but let them run and be sense making all the time.

Where are the opportunities? What's the kind of three, five, ten year advantage we could start creating now by planting some seeds?

You are a Swiss Army knife, and you need to be doing the things that are needed and not the things that aren't. So I think that's been an evolution for me, and I also get energy

and enjoy the employee communication and the mobilization and investing in culture and getting the right people in the right seats on the bus and trying to create kind of bespoke development experiences for them so that they can thrive, both get into their strengths, but also round out their edges and working with them in a custom way.

You know, the biggest differences from my last role to this role, in my lived experience, do not have to do with the title. It has more to do with the organizational maturity. When you're going from a 150 year old company to a 3 year old company, the differences between those things are vast. Versus, okay, chief communications officer to CEO. Frankly that is less of a difference to me

than Then getting to ride a bucking Bronco of something growing triple digits.

[00:28:01] Eliot Mizrachi: interesting. Do you have a CCO there?

[00:28:04] Stacey Tank: We have a team that works on brand and building brands. So they would touch everything from PR, social, our affiliate and influencer programs, which are very much commercial revenue, generating millions of dollars. I mean, that is not. Top of funnel, that's converting function converting into sales

So yes. And I think is the answer. ,

[00:28:27] Eliot Mizrachi: on the one hand, I feel like because you come from that space, it's probably very tempting for you to want to, you know, get involved. But you sound like the kind of person that's going to let people explore their own ideas and find their own way. , I wonder, do you do you work with your brand team differently because that's your background than a typical CEO?

Or would you say there's, there's no difference other than maybe you've got a little bit more knowledge about what they do than the average CEO? I think I do work with them differently, if I'm being self-aware. .

[00:29:02] Stacey Tank: I know they're just going to burn a lot of calories. And, and worry about asking, , sometimes You

get nervous to ask for approval on something because it's a little expensive or a little bit of a risk or sometimes I'll just sense that and go, you, you all go, go, don't even, no more business case, go, it's fine, approve it, go. There are other times on things like customer issues and we had one last week that I just have been through so many customer things in the past. The team is so lean and scrappy and we have so much to do. Sometimes I'll just jump in and say, Let me take this off your back, I got this one. Run on that, I got this. Which I also enjoy doing because it gives you proximity. To the customer, and it tells you a lot about when you're about to break the way of working in your organization. Because as you scale, you outgrow ways that you were doing things before.

And then I can sense into, Okay. this Is the moment we have to professionalize this and take this to the next level.

[00:30:05] Eliot Mizrachi: Is there something looking back at your time in communications roles that you wish you knew better, understood better, or did differently now that you're a CEO and you can see through those eyes.

[00:30:21] Stacey Tank: Maybe there's one thing which is trying to more intentionally and frequently put myself in the CEO's shoes. From a, almost like a, a presencing, you know visualization perspective. Cause I can think of a number of times I was really bringing my functional lens too much and I was recommending something without appreciating all of the pressures and CEO's plate. Once something gets to a leader's plate, a C suite, you know, person's plate, or a CEO's plate. Sometimes, or often, there's actually no good choice.

It's all less bad choices. Because if there was a clear good choice, your team would have already made it. And CEOs are constantly weighing all of these complex stakeholders, and you know, I hate to be too negative about it, but like, who are you going to let down the least?

Or, if you make this decision, you're going to really upset this person, this board member, or this prime minister, or this community, or this team, or a million different things. And appreciating how difficult that is, is helpful. So that you can come with a little more empathy and probably better solutions and recommendations to your CEO or your C suite or your board.

[00:31:41] Eliot Mizrachi: You know, we page has been doing a lot of work around stakeholder capitalism and kind of you're describing this. How do you balance serve, you know, deal with all these competing. Seemingly competing interests Satya Nadella was quoted in the wall street journal a few years ago saying the biggest part of the job that he wasn't anticipating was navigating all these constituency issues and there's no preparation for it as a CEO.

It's not like he had any training but in many respects you have, right? Because the CCO role is about understanding that stakeholder universe. And so it sounds like that is a skillset that's serving you well in this role.

[00:32:18] Stacey Tank: It's a great point. Yeah, a hundred percent. And leading government affairs, leading public affairs multiple times. You do it. I almost take it for granted now because it's just gotten into my molecules that you're thinking about all these stakeholders all the time and it can also be a force for incredible good and systemic change So in the beginning when people are just using you as a punching bag, it feels like you're just on your heels But if you think about stakeholder engagement as a way to advance an agenda, that's good for You know, the community you live in, your employees, your your industry, it's very powerful.

The ability for us to work together to get big things done with all the giant challenges we have in the world is that's essential. That's how we're going to do things. So I think you're right that that is more helpful than I probably realize and appreciate.

[00:33:12] Eliot VO: Stacey ended our conversation with some actionable advice, sharing what she views as the essential skills for Comms professionals to enable them to move into leadership roles in any organization.

[00:33:24] Stacey Tank: You know, on the business side, I really hope 10 years from now we're going to see more people with CCO experience stepping into P& L roles. Just do it, right? If you want that optionality, if you want that door to be open to you, figure out a way to get into a P& L role within your existing organization.

That's the way to do it. It's going to be very hard to do that jumping from CCO into a P& L role in a new organization. And it's also worth noting some of the things that people don't want to talk about, but once you sit on a C suite. It can feel like I'm on my perch, I have my beautiful perks and my fabulous, you know, everything.

I, the perks that I had in prior roles compared to the very entrepreneurial way I work now, it is worthy of a comic book how different it

is and I am endlessly amused by that. Often, maybe always, it is going to feel like a step down when you take that first P& L role. You may not be reporting to the CEO anymore.

You're going to get tucked into the organization working under a leader or a leader's leader who maybe you think is not as great a leader as you or whatever it is. If you could quiet that narrative, none of that matters. What matters is that you get yourself into that P& L role and you learn. Leveling and titling and all of that will work its way out eventually. Take the P& L role. That should be the focus.

[00:34:55] Eliot Mizrachi: That's great advice.

Speaking to you today. It's been a joy knowing and working with you at page over the last several years, and I want you to know we're going to keep watching and cheering for you. And we hope you come back again in a few years and tell us what else you've learned with a few more years as CEO under your belt or whatever your next, never say no to anything opportunity is.

Stacy. Thanks

[00:35:21] Stacey Tank: Thanks so much, Elliot, and all my love to the page community who will always be in my heart. You might find me sneaking into one of your events at some point.

[00:35:30] Eliot Mizrachi: You're always welcome. Just pay the fee.

Thanks, Stacy.

[00:35:37] Speaker 3: If you enjoyed today's episode of the new CCO, be sure to check out our latest episodes and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. While you're there, leave us a rating and a review. We want to hear what you think so that we can keep making this podcast more interesting and valuable to you. To find out more about what's happening at PAGE, please visit us at page.

org. Thanks so much for listening. We'll see you next time on the new CCO.

[00:36:01] Stacey Tank: