Crayola is one of the best-known creative companies worldwide, but its head didn’t have a creative background: CEO Pete Ruggiero is a numbers guy. The CEO spoke to Fortune recently about his recipe for success, which includes leaning into the unknown and asking lots of questions.
Crayola CEO Pete Ruggiero stepped into the top job over a year ago, after spending 27 years at the art-supply company best known for its iconic 64-crayon box.
But he didn’t start out creative—Ruggiero is a numbers guy through and through. After graduating with an accounting degree from Villanova University (where he also played football), Ruggiero spent six years at Deloitte and a year and a half at Union Pacific Railroad.
He joined Crayola, headquartered in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, almost by accident, according to an account in the Morning Call. Union Pacific was moving out of the area, but Ruggiero wanted to stay to avoid relocating his young daughter and wife, who had a high-profile role at the local hospital.
He started at Crayola—then named Binney & Smith—in 1997, as a staff accountant.
“I’m an SEC accountant doing external reporting, and I’m coming in to be a cost accounting manager,” he told Fortune. “I knew nothing. The extent of my cost accounting operations knowledge was a three-credit course at Villanova University.”
But Ruggiero got great advice from a mentor, as he described on a recent podcast.
“Lose the tie, go to the plant floor, and learn the employees’ names,” the mentor said.
During his first year at Crayola, Ruggiero spent four hours every day on the production floor, talking to the workers, learning their pain points, and studying ways to improve efficiency, he said.
“I learned how the machine runs. What are their problems? And what can I do to help?” he said on the JFlinch Learning Lab podcast.
“That year was a mind-blowing experience of learning,” he added. Some of what he learned he used to improve parts of Crayola’s manufacturing process, speeding up production and creating a better label that wouldn’t peel off the crayon.
In fact, Ruggiero had such success at the company that, when the opportunity came up years later to run Binney & Smith’s Europe operations, Ruggiero took the job—moving his family to Bedford, England, for three years, before returning stateside for operations and finance roles. The array of different jobs set him up perfectly to step into the CEO role when he was tapped in 2024.
“I’ve had so many jobs at the company and I’ve experienced the people in a very authentic and intimate way,” Ruggiero told Fortune recently.
He attributes his success to that sponge-like quality of being willing to throw himself fully into a new role—even one he didn’t feel confident about.
“For me, [the key to success] was being a sponge, saying yes to every opportunity that came my way, even if it was illogical,” he told Fortune. He advises young professionals like his 20-something self to do the same—take uncomfortable opportunities, and learn as much as possible in the process.
“Moving to the U.K. and running Europe when I had a supply chain and finance job wasn’t logical; coming back into a finance job after those experiences wasn’t logical,” he told Fortune. “But each of those moves shaped me into the leader I am today, and the fact that I was willing to do them has helped me.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
