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.
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.”
“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.
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.
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.”
