What do you consider your greatest accomplishment?
My sons, Nicholas and Luke. I want my kids to be proud of me as well; that’s important. I take pride in the Focus launch and pulling off the extraordinary. Also, going from Ford to Chrysler was like being Benedict Arnold. Building an effective team meant supervising people who had 10 to 20 years more experience. I made it work by saying, “I’m in this position to provide leadership and cover; I’m not here to tell you how to do your job.”

What has been your most humbling experience?
The birth of my first son. At 30 weeks, I noticed he had not kicked in more than 24 hours. At the hospital, we found out the baby was anemic. They rushed me into the OR and performed a percutaneous umbilical blood sampling, a procedure that had been performed once at that hospital. They inserted a large needle where the placenta met the umbilical cord, drew blood from the baby, typed it, determined how low his red blood cells were, reversed the flow on the needle, and transfused blood to him. The moment blood started flowing to him, he kicked! Nick was born seven weeks early at 4 lbs., 14 oz.

What do you wish you had known at the start of your career?
That corporate politics were going to play a big role—that having the best intentions and doing really great work sometimes just isn’t enough.

What’s the hardest part of your job, maybe something people don’t know?
Trying to connect with each person on a human level every day. It’s important as you try to build a team, particularly as a newcomer. You want to be part of the overall culture of the company, but also have a culture within your own team, which requires people to know each other on a more personal level.

What’s the best part of your job?
Learning to use the store itself as a marketing device, and about the dynamics of the store environment. When you’re talking about the largest retailer in the world, the breadth and depth we have is overwhelming. It’s like being a kid in a candy store.

If you had to choose another line of work, what would it be?
Public relations. It’s using persuasion to get the notion across to really savvy journalists, and trying to create a new channel to connect with people in a way that you don’t have full control of. That’s a really powerful place. If it’s done well and objectively, it has far more impact than any ad we run.