Michael Polk’s Career: From First Generation American to Multibillion-Dollar Corporate Leader

Apple pie and baseball might be part of the all-American narrative, but as first-generation American and prolific CEO Michael Polk knows, hard work is the backbone of the American dream.

Born to hardworking parents who were new to the United States, Polk quickly learned the value of independence and the need to do something meaningful with one’s life. 

Growing up in a family full of musical talent, Polk always had a soft spot for the arts, but his calling was different. “I was doing well in school. While I enjoyed the arts, my real competency was in math and science. I loved the outdoors and natural sciences and had built my own weather station at home to track the weather and the storms that often hit the southern Connecticut coast,” he reflected. While he considered pursuing meteorology, his passion for mathematics drove him into engineering.

The bright young student set his sights on an Ivy League future full of promise — and his educational background at Cornell University and Harvard Business school set him up for the successful career he ultimately pursued in the consumer packaged goods industry. 

Michael Polk’s Ivy League Foundation

Polk applied to Cornell University during his senior year in high school and was accepted early decision. “I applied as an engineer, following my Dad’s footsteps. I studied Operations Research and Industrial Engineering in the College of Engineering at Cornell,” Polk explained. 

This turned out to be a significant choice for his future, despite the fact Polk’s college friends weren’t so sure. “My peers in civil, chemical, and electrical engineering called this major ‘imaginary engineering,’ poking fun at the fact that this was a pretty narrow field focused on mathematical modeling of manufacturing systems,” Polk shared. “We were using early computer programming languages to figure out how to optimize material handling and usage in factories or how to optimize services industry flows using queuing theory.”

After graduating in 1982, Polk accepted a position as an engineer in Procter & Gamble’s paper products division. “I received an offer from Procter & Gamble to work in their paper mill in Northeast Pennsylvania swinging shift as a supervisor on one of the seven papermaking machines in this factory. I did not know anything about papermaking or what it meant to swing on a seven-day Southern swing shift, but I still took the job,” he said. 

It wasn’t an easy experience, but looking back, Polk realized this first job set the tone for the rest of his career. “The experience in the factory was one of the most formative in my career,” he reflected. “I learned a ton about myself, what I knew and what I did not know, how dependent I was going to be in my career on others’ support, and how necessary it was to respect all the different roles in a manufacturing or business system given the interdependencies.”

Young Michael Polk was hungry to grow and while he was having an incredible time at P&G, he felt the technical career path he was on might limit his longer term career options in a company like Procter & Gamble. “After three years at P&G (two in Pennsylvania in manufacturing and one in Cincinnati, Ohio in Research & Development), I went back to business school to get my MBA,” he said. “There is no doubt my degree from Harvard Business School opened up new doors and accelerated my career into marketing and general management.”

A Systemic Approach to Optimization and Change

That Harvard degree delivered a good return on investment. After P&G, Michael Polk next landed at one of the largest Food companies in the world, Kraft Foods, where he built his credentials as a commercial leader, first in brand management and sales. and then into general management where he led the Post Cereals Division in North America, the Asia Pacific Region for Kraft Foods International, and after the acquisition of Nabisco led and ran the integration of Nabisco into Kraft Foods. In 2003, Unilever another huge consumer goods company recruited Michael Polk away from Kraft to lead its USA Foods business.

After demonstrating significant leadership and strategic acumen, Michael Polk was promoted within Unilever to serve as president, Americas, from 2006 to 2010, where he was responsible for overseeing all of the company’s brands and operations across both North America and Latin America. His successful implementation of the “One Unilever” operating model markedly strengthened commercial execution, which helped accelerate growth while simultaneously increasing operating margins. Following this tenure, he took on the role of president, Global Food, Home & Personal Care at Unilever’s global headquarters in London from 2010 to 2011, overseeing all category strategies and innovations. 

His impactful leadership at Unilever enabled his appointment to the board of directors of Newell Rubbermaid in 2009. And in 2011, he was asked to become Newell Rubbermaid’s President & Chief Executive Officer.   

Over eight years as CEO, Polk became an agent of change for the company, transforming it into nearly a $10 billion consumer goods company serving 1 billion shoppers. When Polk started at Newell, the company had net sales of $5.4 billion and when he retired in 2019, they were $9.4 billion. That’s an eight-year compound annual growth rate of over 7%.  

He and his team completed 35 transactions during his tenure, split nearly equally between divestitures and acquisitions. The transformation of the portfolio not only scaled the company but the business more consumer focused, restructuring Newell from a USA holding company of diverse set of assets to a global consumer-goods operating company. He reduced overhead costs by de-layering the firm and removing unnecessary hierarchies. Newell also embraced digital commerce growth capabilities, increasing e-commerce from 9% of global business to over 20%. Polk credits much of this success to the leadership changes made at Newell, which supported the overall goals of transformation.

From 2011 to 2019, Polk had to prove the new business model to shareholders. Through Project Renewal, he unlocked over $500 million of savings, which quickly boosted margins and affordability for marketing investment and accelerated growth. “I feel quite fortunate to have earned the respect and support of my board through each phase of Newell’s transformation,” he said. “We met or exceeded our external guidance in 30 of the 32 quarters that I served as CEO, delivered significant value to shareholders through the nearly tripling of the enterprise value of the company, and the 253% increase in the dividend.”

Michael Polk retired from Newell Brands in the summer of 2019.  While he enjoyed the  time off that Summer and Fall, and the time out of the public company spotlight, in the early part of 2020 Polk returned to work as am Advisory Director of Berkshire Partners and the Chief Executive Officer of one of the Private Equity firms portfolio companies, Implus LLC. The company recruited Polk specifically for a turnaround and transformation initiative that Polk has since dubbed the “double down” strategy.

The multipronged strategy included portfolio changes, new ways of working, creating a set of core beliefs for the corporate culture, and recruiting a new leadership team. Despite having to overcome a series of obstacles related to the global pandemic, Implus is on its way to deliver significant value creation for Berkshire Partners and while the specific results are not public, given private ownership, the owners and management are exceedingly happy with the progress and value creation story that is unfoldingt.

Michael Polk’s Blueprint for Excellence

Heartened by a career full of wins, Polk feels like he’s just getting started. He’s hardly one to rest on his laurels. Today, the ambitious leader serves as an advisory director for Berkshire Partners and continues to work as the president and CEO of Implus. It’s been a long career forged in the fires of hard work and collaboration, but Michael Polk wouldn’t have it any other way. “Each of these chapters helped me grow as a leader and I am a stronger executive and person for having had the experience,” he said.

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