International Business Webinar Series — Interview With Ravi Saligram, CEO of Newell Brands: Learning and Leading Through a Global Turnaround

When Ravi Saligram joined Newell Brands in 2019 as President & CEO, the company was experiencing poor performance, low employee engagement and excessive complexity. In 2020, Ravi and the world-class leadership team he’d built were also faced with leading through the unexpected and monumental issues presented by COVID.

Despite these challenges, employee engagement scores increased significantly, and the company’s turnaround efforts persisted.
While Ravi announced his May retirement earlier this year, there’s no doubt the company has strengthened during his tenure. Complexity and overhead costs have been reduced; Project Ovid, a multi-year initiative consolidating 23 unique supply chains into one, was successfully implemented; a new innovation operating model was introduced, and innovations were launched that leveraged COVID trends; automation has been scaled and the company has best-in-class productivity and safety records. Notably, Newell Brands was named one of Fortune’s Most Admired Companies in 2022 and 2023, a recognition it had not previously received.

Ravi is a three-time public CEO, also having led OfficeMax, Inc. and Ritchie Brothers. Despite arriving in the United States with less than $20 in his pocket, he earned an MBA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and has lived in six countries and worked in many more during his nearly 40-year career, which began at Leo Burnett in Chicago.

During this webinar, Ravi will speak with Global Atlanta Managing Editor Trevor Williams and share the following key takeaways:

• The importance of a people-first approach and how to drive a culture of engagement
• How companies can foster diversity, inclusion and belonging and be a force for good
• The necessity of cross-cultural competency and how international experience shapes perspective