Delphine Francois Chiavarini
The roadmap of an aligned leader

When you think of living the American dream, Cleveland doesn’t automatically spring to mind. So, what led you to Ohio?

I chose neither Cleveland nor America and, besides, when I enrolled at Audencia, an international career wasn’t even on my radar. However, I had always wanted to go to a business school, pursuing studies which go somewhat against the grain of my own family history. My parents, both ‘self-made’, didn’t foresee my studies going in this direction, even though I was a gifted learner at school.

At the age of thirteen, during a trip to the United States, I met a lad who was studying at HEC Business School: what he said appealed to me right away. I liked the idea of a generalist study path opening up a variety of opportunities. Indeed, with no specific profession in mind, I liked the idea of having options.

You never changed your mind?

No. I enrolled on a preparatory course to train for entry to the Grandes Ecoles and, at the end of my first year of studies, I decided to take the competitive entry exam to join Audencia. This was much to the dismay of my prep teachers who had instead envisaged me going on to my second year and enrolling at HEC or another one of the schools in Paris.

I didn’t want to waste any time but rather focus directly on concrete subjects and business. What appealed to me most was the world of luxury goods and cosmetics, so off I went for my first internship at L’Oréal, which opened a lot of doors for me. Namely Cartier, where I carried out my end-of-studies internship, as well as the LVMH Group, where I learned the ropes after graduation. I got to grips with the fundamentals of branding strategy at Bon Marché, where I oversaw the cosmetics department, then by working as part of Givenchy’s Perfume Division.

This is rather a far cry from your current position, wouldn’t you say?

Yes and no. Branding strategy forms the common link. Yet, it’s true to say it didn’t take me long to realise I wasn’t interested enough in the world of luxury goods to make a career of it: it remains a highly structured and repetitive business. In my eyes, it could do with an injection of new life and vitality, since the brands are already well known and established, with their own set codes, which leaves little room for innovation and creativity.

What I like is solving a brand issue and applying strategic repositioning. Therefore, I turned to other fields of activity but, in the luxury goods sector, I learned a great deal and laid the groundwork for my professional profile, which helped pave the way for many subsequent opportunities.

This was also when your international career took off. Was this a choice on your part?

More of an opportunity. After my time at LVMH, I joined the team at Newell Rubbermaid, an American group specialised in the acquisition and restructuring of consumer goods brands, Graco or Reynolds being the best known. They were seeking someone with a solid background in luxury branding to accompany Parker and Waterman on their branding transformation in Europe. Two brands recently acquired from the Gillette Group and whose brand capital had become rather compromised.

The fact that this huge American group was operating in Europe in startup mode was also a pull, with pretty much an infinite range of possibilities in terms of brand building. It’s here that I honed my modus operandi on each professional mission: solving strategic issues in service both to the business and the results.

I remained at Newell Rubbermaid for twelve years and this was indeed the time when I started to travel, initially to Atlanta, where the group’s head office was located and so my bosses, and then to Belgium, Switzerland, and China. At one time, I was working one week in the USA, one week in Europe, one week in China, and repeat.

Once you reach that level of responsibility, how do you balance this lifestyle with a personal life and a family?

All thanks to forward planning: for me this has turned into a near obsession, both in terms of my work and my daily life. However, this is essential when you have a lifestyle like mine. When my daughters were born, their father worked freelance and held the fort when I was away from home. But I remained very present in their lives. What’s more, I have some wonderful anecdotes on being a nursing mum during my travels: I built up quite a reputation with the flight attendants whom I would ask to store my milk in the aircraft refrigerators.

As is the case for us all, there were challenges but this was also a good training ground for my daughters, who always saw me at the helm of my life, without sacrificing motherhood or my career. And daring!

This journey has enabled them to build resilience. Today, they are well-adjusted, autonomous, and confident individuals. One is currently at ESCP and capable of standing on her own two feet: after living in Paris, she has just moved out to Madrid and took care of everything herself from A to Z. She is always on the go. The other is fifteen now and needs more of a firm base but she loves the idea of exploring the world, just so long as she can come back to base camp afterwards. In any case, however this is reflected in their current lives, they have developed an openness to the world and an awareness that you need to be bold in life, make your own luck, and create your own destiny.

Daring seems to be a determining factor throughout your career path.

Absolutely! However, daring comprises the luck you make happen as well as the happy chance meetings, that come about at the right time because you’re ready to embrace them.

This is what enabled me to go from my profile as a branding expert to General Manager in the space of twelve years at Newell Rubbermaid. I seized the opportunities which then caught the attention of the board, as is the case with the incorporation of the Dymo brand, for instance. I had free rein, as my boss wasn’t that familiar with Europe and had implicit faith in my business and results-driven approach.

This is how I came to be the Global President of the Business Office Technology Unit with an annual turnover of 600 million dollars, half of which was in Europe, with the remainder in the USA, Latin America, and in China.

Seizing an opportunity as it arose therefore allowed me to generate new ones, and so on, right up to becoming the General Manager Europe at Newell Rubbermaid, overseeing the relocation of the French head office to Switzerland, and completely overhaul the region’s profitability, after seeing the comings and goings of three CEOs and various corporate shifts.

So, why decide to leave?

I began to feel I had achieved what I’d set out to do: the risk of this turning into a routine was getting more and more probable. I need a challenge. Moreover, the company was turning into an American-style corporation, with centralised corporate support systems, leaving less room for strategic manoeuvring by the General Manager.

Ecolab contacted me about a position as European General Manager, based in Switzerland, where I was living at the time. They lacked skilled experts with a background in strategy, as they had grown the company predominantly through in-house promotions, and were now seeking atypical profiles to challenge the very American-centric dominant thinking.

Yet the hiring process was to take a whole new twist when I met with the CEO in Minneapolis. He springboarded me into a post based in the US after a six-month period of strategic onboarding. This is how I came to find myself at the head of Ecolab’s largest American division, deploying food safety and hygiene solutions for the agribusiness, Coca-Cola, Heinz, Cargill, etc.

At a time when Big Food in the United States was losing market shares out to farmers markets, organic or locally-sourced food businesses, this was certainly no picnic. Our profitability was at a low and we had to identify new avenues for growth. This was a mammoth challenge which I wholeheartedly committed to. Yet, I realised quite early on that I had made a mistake.

What was that?

That I had succumbed to the allure of change, a great corporate package, and the American experience, whilst looking for a way to leave Newell Rubbermaid. I hadn’t done my due diligence, or my background research, on the company I was about to join. So, I found myself in a corporate culture that wasn’t a great fit for me and with an appetite for change that was too superficial. It wasn’t a great feeling but it was hard to admit to this, especially as I had only recently relocated me entire family to the US and my visa was job related.

This was stressful but I was 42 year of age and afraid of finding myself stuck in a career that no longer suited me. I was afraid of not being happy in my job anymore. Making the move was a very personal choice. I trusted in my lucky star and this was the right thing to do.

I was headhunted by a recruitment agency who put me in touch with Moen, and I really liked what I saw in terms of the company, their corporate culture, plans and the leadership team. I was face to face with sincere individuals who put the human aspect front and central, people who equally follow through on their words with concrete actions.

Fortune Brands Innovations, comprises a range of brands all operating in a fast-growing industry but which is also undergoing great changes: the company had a real need for actors skilled in business transformation and I have enjoyed true job satisfaction in all the various posts I’ve held for nigh on seven years now. I have the impression of finally becoming the leader I always wanted to be, in service both to the business itself, of course, but also by backing and developing the skills of my staff. When I first started out, people would say I was power-hungry. Today, I’m known for being a leader with a human touch, who sets people up for success. In my eyes, this represents a profound sea change: this human-centric leadership is the mark I’d like to leave on the world.

Your career appears to have experienced two major phases of ascent and fulfillment. 

Yes, when I look back, I tell myself that each step along my career path played an important role: learning the business basics by working for large companies prior to venturing out and taking risks, and moving forward. Today, I’m free to make my own choices and decide my own future, armed with the experience I’ve gained that I’d like to share with others.

I haven’t figured out how yet, or in what way, but I do know that I’d like to see a greater number of women treading a similar career path to mine: daring, putting themselves forward, even if they don’t quite tick all the boxes of a job opening. Transmission will undoubtedly be the key factor of this new part of my journey.

Also taking some time for myself. My girls are growing up and so don’t need me around as much. I also have less to prove to myself: maybe this is a chance for me to take time out to travel, read, make new encounters, and contribute to society in a different way. Perhaps my one regret is never going backpacking for three months to travel the world: when I left Audencia, I had a student loan to pay back, so no time for this. However, things are different now.