Embrace a Growth Mindset To Achieve Leadership

Cynthia Chu (BBA ’99) is always learning and growing as a professional, constantly adding to her skill set. 

In fact, Chu, chief financial and growth officer of Audible, makes a point of telling young professionals to never stop learning.

In 2015, she became chief financial officer of Audible, the market leader of audio storytelling, including audiobooks, podcasts, and Audible Originals. Adding oversight of marketing in 2021, her role has expanded to CFO and growth officer. Before Audible, she was CFO for the USA Network division of Comcast Universal and worked at GE, where she earned a Six Sigma Black Belt qualification. 

How did Chu—who is revolutionizing digital media—get to where she is today? By continuously learning.

Chu, who double majored in finance and marketing, recently visited the Wisconsin School of Business at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She answered questions from Wisconsin MBA students, faculty, staff, and alumni as part of the M. Keith Weikel MBA Leadership Speaker Series held at the school.

What helped you go from emerging leader to senior leader?

One thing is continual learning with a growth mindset. I’ve learned over the years to ask, “What is going to build my toolkit and allow me to do the next thing?” And I think the continual learning framework really helped me in school and in my career. Asking “What am I going to learn next?” is what really propelled me. I highly encourage you to try different things in those early days. It’s OK to have a squiggly career path. Nowadays, I don’t think there’s a set path.

If you could mentor our graduate business students, what words of wisdom would you share? 

A few things come to mind. 

• I say this to my employees: “Don’t ever let the job description define what you would actually be doing.” If I let that happen, I wouldn’t be sitting where I am doing what I’m doing. 
• Another piece of advice is nobody is as invested in your career as yourself. You have to be your own advocate. That’s why you don’t let the job description describe what you do. Raise your hand.
• I encourage anybody in a new job, a new company, or on a new assignment to do a lot of listening and learning. Really study, listen, and think about where you can add value.
• Advice that I got early on is to come to your managers with solutions. Don’t go to them with problems. I practice that even now.
• People often ask me, “How do you get a seat at the table? What’s the process?” This is the most fantastic, awesome quote that I’ve heard: “If there’s no seat at the table, go and bring your own folding chair.” It doesn’t have to be fancy. It can be a folding chair, and you wedge your way in.

Can you talk about your experience of being a woman in the financial, marketing, and tech spaces?

I came from NBC Universal, where I was fortunate that there were many women managers. When I came to Audible almost 10 years ago, I was the only Asian female on the management team. Six months later, the head of HR, who’s also a woman, joined. At Audible we really, truly value diversity. Right now, on our management team, five out of nine are female.

I had a manager who encouraged me to apply for a job I didn’t think I was qualified for. But I don’t think you’ll ever be qualified for a job if you haven’t done it before. What I’ve learned is not to be so hard on yourself, and sometimes fake it until you make it. You don’t have to know everything. 

How do you manage conflict and differences overseeing finance and marketing departments?

I start by asking, “What are the common objectives we’re trying to achieve?” At the end of the day, we all work for Audible. We don’t work for the marketing department or the finance department or the content department or the tech department or the product department. It’s really laying out those key objectives that are common, and then the key results underneath it might be different for different departments. But at the end of the day, it needs to ladder up into the same goal, because otherwise one department is swimming this way, the other department is swimming that way—and that is not going to be good for the customer and the business.

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