Lunch with a Leader
Students need to practice being uncomfortable and take risks
Jacqui Canney, a 1989 Boston College graduate who majored in accounting and spent 25 years at Arthur Andersen (now Accenture) before transitioning to her current position as vice president of the Global People Division for Walmart, kicked off the semester’s Lunch with a Leader Series. Canney praised Boston College for offering her a liberal arts education along with access to a diverse wealth of course options. Born in New Jersey, she was the first one in her family to graduate college and had to take out loans to afford school. She credited this with motivating her to do well and the sense of responsibility to her family. Canney held several roles in accounting and finance at Andersen, and eventually discovered her passion for human resources through years of relationship building with her many clients. On recommendation from a client, she accepted a role at Walmart, an offer she had been initially skeptical about until she saw the company’s forward-thinking plan to move into the digital marketplace. She took the job and relocated her family to Arkansas from New Jersey, a move that Canney said was a strategic risk based on the principle of curiosity imbedded from her years at Boston College. Making a point to practice being uncomfortable and take risks is a quality that she stressed as important to students looking to join the workforce. Canney went on to explain that human resources is especially important to the Walmart brand because it is deeply intertwined with their objective as a business—to make life easier for busy families. Walmart employees go through virtual reality training on how to deal with crying babies and stressed out families as a way to meet this lofty goal. She also discussed Walmart’s commitment to diversity and explained that it is very important to be a diverse company so they can best serve their similarly diverse customer base all around the United States and the world. Instead of buying smaller companies and replacing them with the Walmart brand, they retain the company name so customers feel a more local and personal atmosphere. Finally, Canney concluded with a suggestion that students should relax more and be open to the job search instead of seeing it as a source of anxiety.
Christopher Murphy ’20, Winston Ambassador