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48 n e w h a v e n B I Z | J a n u a r y 2 0 2 0 | n e w h a v e n b i z . c o m Cindi Bigelow's moral authority Continued from Page 7 O N T H E R E C O R D | Q & A no idea about any of that. I just followed in my parents' footprints. Many people who attain positions of power and influence start to 'act' a certain way — to play the role of the person that others now seem to want them to be. You seem to have zero of that. I work to act in a way that [employees] see that I bring 100 percent of myself into the business, and I want them to be 100 percent of themselves as well. I want [employees] to understand: I want all of you. Describe your skill set as an executive. It's an interesting combination, almost a dichotomy, because I try to run the organization with compassion and drive. And those two things can be conflicting. I am always driving this business, I am never compromising, I am always going forward. We are doing our best, and [my message to employees] is, I want all of you every moment. But I want to be thoughtful about who you are, what you need and what's important. So I am constantly balancing that compassion and drive. You also are ruthless about not wasting time. I probably have five balls up in the air at any one time — every word counts, every second counts. In this position you deal with a lot of incoming — from any division or any person. You have to be able to pivot and deal with it — while you still have five or six other balls up in the air. I would say that every second counts. Yes. What are some personal qualities as an executive that you'd like to improve on? I'm very feisty. I have no tol- erance for B.S. I don't like smoke being blown; I don't like inaccu- racies; I don't like people taking advantage of people who shouldn't be taken advantage of. If I sense any of those things, I can get a little too feisty. You just received an award from Character.org. How would people who know you describe your character? Honest [laughs]. Always thinks of what is best for whatever's in front of me — not myself. Not focusing on what is good for me is what I learned from my parents. If you asked me why I deserve the Character.org [honor] — if I do deserve it — it's because I think of other people first. Always. What do you understand today better at age 59 than you did when you came into the business at age 26, or when you became CEO at 42? So many things. When you're younger you can just be running as fast as you can to do the best job you can — just running with everything you have. And I still run as fast as I can. But you have a broader view of the forest as you get older. And as I've always told my kids, you don't know the im- pact of your actions — you might never know, or might know in 10 years, or 20 years, or 30 years. As I've gotten older I've really learned that, boy — your actions matter. Your words matter. You need to understand your role in creating a positive environment — in the community, or inside the company. Or inside your family. n for me, I saw it instantaneously. You have a phenomenal healthy product, you have a wonderful thing for the family, you have a wonderful thing for the employees, you have a wonderful thing for the community. You have the oppor- tunity to run an organization in an ethical, clean, kind, hard-driving way — why would I want to do anything else? Why? Notwithstanding the opportunity to move the family business forward, you must have felt tremendous pressure when you took the reins. Yeah. Even though I had groomed myself, and thought I had been groomed well [with an MBA from Northwestern's Kellogg School and four years in sales for consumer brand Seagram's], and had run lots of different divi- sions [at Bigelow], it's 100-per- cent different when you become CEO. ere's no safety net. It is 100-percent your responsibility. It will be successful — or it will not — based on you. What would you be doing for a living if the family business never existed? I would have a different job. I know that I would give it ev- erything I have, and I would try to make a difference no matter what I did. I mean, I love coming to work every single day. I can't imagine having anything that I would feel better about than what I do here. My parents raised me to be extremely naive — which was a good thing. I didn't understand about greed. My father made a sal- ary, but there were no houses all over or boats or cars. Everything he made went into the business, and I didn't know any better. I would hear about other family businesses — how they used their money, what they were spending it on, how family wealth was the critical thing. Power and money can do things to people. But I had Bigelow: 'I can't imagine having anything that I would feel better about than what I do here.'

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