An exclusive conversation with Toni Townes-Whitley, one of only two Black women running a Fortune 500 company

BY STEPHANIE MEHTA via https://www.fastcompany.com/

The new CEO of SAIC talks about her plans for the technology integrator and what Satya Nadella taught her about leadership.

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclSusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning.

Toni Townes-Whitley today officially becomes CEO of Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC), a technology integrator based in Reston, Virginia. Townes-Whitley’s appointment is notable for a number of reasons: She is one of two Black women currently running Fortune 500 companies (TIAA’s Thasunda Brown Duckett is the other; Rosalind Brewer left the top job at Walgreens Boots Alliance earlier this year). Townes-Whitley succeeds Nazzic S. Keene, a rare example of a woman CEO handing off to another woman at a large publicly-held company.

Townes-Whitley is well-positioned to lead SAIC, which provides tech and engineering services primarily to the U.S. government. Her father is a retired 3-star Army general, and for years, she served as president of U.S. regulated industries for Microsoft. She spoke with me exclusively ahead of officially taking the CEO reins about her historic ascent, lessons learned from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and her advice for corporate America on diversifying its CEO ranks. Edited excerpts follow:

Modern CEO: People have heard the name, but I think even someone who reads The Wall Street Journal every day would be hard pressed to describe SAIC. Give me your elevator-ride version of what SAIC does.

Toni Townes-Whitley: I would describe us in three ways. We provide mission support, mission IT, and mission engineering to the….

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