Arts major to become CEO

A reader writes: My brother, who has a Management degree, was supposed to take over our family retail business in the Visayas, but when he migrated, my parents [chose me to become] CEO. I worked in marketing for our business for 10 years.  But I don’t know much about finance because I majored in Fine Arts. [Citing your previous article], my father said non-business majors could take over the family business as long as they also knew basic accounting, finance, etc.  My father told me to take an MBA.  Is this enough?  Have nonbusiness majors successfully taken over a family business?

My reply:

It is refreshing to hear from someone who is humble enough to admit that she may not yet be ready to head a family business.  Usually, I hear from heirs who want to instantly become top dog.

Several nonbusiness majors are leading family businesses—most are science, engineering or math graduates.

Can an arts major succeed?  Yes, with enough training and preparation.

Adriana Cisneros is third-generation CEO of global media and real estate conglomerate Grupo Cisneros, which started in Caracas, Venezuela, and is now based in Florida.

In 1929, brothers Diego and Antonio Cisneros started a material transport firm in Caracas.  After sampling Pepsi in the 1939 New York World’s Fair, Diego acquired the exclusive rights to sell it in Venezuela, which jump-started their fortune.

The family branched out to several fields, including Venevision, the largest TV network in the country.

In 1970, when Diego suffered from a stroke, his sons Ricardo and Gustavo continued innovating.  A highlight was 1995’s DirecTV.

Gustavo’s daughter Adriana, the youngest of three children, was still in her teens when Cisneros launched their own satellite into space to serve the Spanish-speaking areas in the Americas.  She never forgot the thrilling sight of the launch.

In the 1990s, Steven Blandel, a professional (not a family member), became CEO.

In the 2000s, Adriana, who was already deeply involved in the company at that time, proposed digital and restructuring changes. She was taken seriously, and Blandel and her father created a special role to prepare her to take over:  head of strategy.

“No one knew what ‘director of strategy’ really meant,” Adriana tells Citi Private Bank’s “Beyond Borders” magazine.  “That was wonderful because it gave me full access. I was able to go into any meeting and ask any question.”

Like you, Adriana majored in the Humanities:  Arts History and Journalism.

“My parents encouraged me to join them in meetings and business trips … [so] it [was] very easy … to be involved … from an early age.  However, there was never a master plan [for succession].

“We realized that there needed to be a path to prepare me, not only the new things I had to learn, but also how to get the company and the rest of the family to accept me as the new leader.”

With the help of a family business adviser, “I basically went back to school.”

Adriana took business classes at Harvard and Columbia.  She got a finance tutor.

“My father could have stayed on … for the next 30 years, but instead he decided to … figure out the transition early,” Adriana tells Yale School of Management. “It was a project that we worked on secretly for five years … At the end of the five years, all the right ingredients were there for me to be able to become successful.”

In 2013, she took the helm.  Aside from heading the company restructuring, she was able to secure an excellent deal with Facebook. Cisneros Interactive became the social media giant’s sole reseller in nine countries in the Americas, where Facebook does not control its own sales.

Like father, like daughter

“[When I came up with] launching what’s now become the largest digital ad network in the world … I knew that I could land in every country in Latin America. I understood that every country and city was completely different from each other in [legal, banking entities]—and I felt comfortable doing that. The architecture that I did for my deal with Facebook, I didn’t invent—it’s the architecture that my father used for the DirecTV deal.”