John Chidsey, CEO of Subway, served up an appetizing start to the fall semester as he kicked off the University of Miami Patti and Allan Herbert Business School's Future of Leadership CEO Speaker Series.
Chidsey, 62, took over privately held Subway in November 2019, after having previously run industry rival Burger King. Miami Herbert students quickly discovered that Chidsey, who has a JD and an MBA degree from Emory University and is a certified public accountant, has mindboggling levels of C-suite experience at his disposal.
From behind a small white roundtable, he shared valuable business insights, flanked by Andre Dua, senior partner and managing partner at McKinsey & Company (Miami Office)—co-hosts of the Future of Leadership CEO Speaker Series—and Paul A. Pavlou, the new dean of Miami Herbert.
Chidsey stressed that anyone aiming for the highest echelons of Corporate America should have oodles of intellectual curiosity. Equally important is an appreciation for how relationships, even casual ones established outside the workplace, can sometimes shift career progression into overdrive.
After earning a bachelor’s degree from Davidson College, in North Carolina, in 1983, “I got a law degree and an MBA and became a CPA, and I was thinking, `How could you use all these degrees?’’’ Chidsey recalled. “I was thinking I could go be an investment banker, which is something I was always intrigued by. I ultimately went into structured finance, where you actually need to understand lots of legal, arcane things. I did that in New York and London for, I don’t know, about five years.”
Chidsey learned that what appeared to be a glittery career track full of stimulating intellectual challenges was actually the vocational equivalent of fool’s gold.
“I didn’t want to do deals for the rest of my life—it’s not very fulfilling. You don’t ever find out how the deals work, and you’re not really building teams and beating your numbers,” Chidsey said.
“Luckily, when I was a kid in high school, I used to bag groceries for a man, and little did I know that 15 years later, he would help me,” Chidsey laughed. “He was one of the top five executives at PepsiCo, so I stayed in touch with him and called him one day, and asked, `Any chance you could get me an interview at Pepsi?’”
Chidsey became Pepsi’s CFO for Eastern Europe, which called for a move to Vienna. He performed well, but didn’t care for the corporate bureaucracy he encountered.
“This is for the birds— I gotta get outta here!’” Chidsey remembered saying, prompting laughter from the Miami Herbert audience.
A connection Chidsey made while working as a desk clerk at an Atlanta hotel after college helped him secure a position with Cendant Corporation, a small holding firm that owned hotel companies and generated roughly $300 million in revenues and $30 million in cash flow, Chidsey said. During his time at Cendant, it went on a blistering eight-year run in which it acquired 80 firms, including H&R Block, Avis, Century 21, and Coldwell Banker. At the relatively junior age of 35, Chidsey was entrusted with overall responsibility for Avis car rental, among other duties.
After helping Cendant rise to $26 billion in revenues and $4 billion in cash flow, Chidsey ran Burger King from 2006 to 2011, then for eight years did private equity deals where he bought and sold companies, before becoming Subway’s CEO in 2019.
“Just go along for the ride, it’s a big adventure,” Chidsey advised his Miami Herbert audience. “You’re going to get lots of opportunities in life.”
