1st Tuesday - nVent Chair & CEO, Beth Wozniak

Welcome everyone to First Tuesday. I'm Jamie Prankert. I'm the dean of the Carlson School of Management. And I'm so excited to gather here with you today for what is sure to be an informative, educational, and inspiring hour to close our 2025-2026 season of First Tuesday. Before I take a moment to tell you more about Beth Wozniak, on behalf of Minnesota Carlson, I want to thank our First Tuesday partners, our premier sponsor, Tenant Company, and our media sponsor, Minnesota Public Radio. And of course, I want to offer a very special thank you to the many Carlson School of Management and University of Minnesota alumni and supporters who are in our audience today joining us. In particular, I want to welcome Mike Zechmeister, who serves as the chair of Carlson's board of advisers, as well as University Alumni Association board of directors chair Betsy Vox. Thank you both for being here. I also want to thank our benefactors who are here today, including the Carlson School Investors Circle members. The investor circle is the school's annual giving society recognizing the school's most ardent and committed individual supporters. Welcome to you all as well. Okay, I want to give you a bit more information about Beth, who is today's featured speaker. Beth Wozniak is the chair and chief executive officer of nVent, a $3.9 billion global electrical manufacturing company that connects and protects mission-critical infrastructure. With more than 12,000 employees worldwide, nVent is focused on building a more sustainable and electrified world. In 2023, Wozniak was honored by Twin Cities Business as its person of the year. In 2024, Wozniak was named a regional entrepreneur of the year, 2024 Heartland Award winner by Ernst and Young LLP, EYUS. And in 2026, Twin Cities Business inducted Wozniak into the Minnesota Business Hall of Fame. Prior to leading nVent in its spin from Pentair PLC in 2018, Wozniak was the president of Pentair PLC's electrical business unit. And before that, she served as president of Pentair's flow and filtration solutions business unit. Prior to joining Pentair in 2015, Wozniak had a 25-year career at Honeywell, including holding several executive leadership positions, including president of the environmental and combustion controls business and president of the sensing and control business. Through her career at Honeywell, she held various executive positions in both the automation and control and aerospace business units. Wozniak has served as chair of the board of governors of the National Electrical Manufacturers Association since 2024. She held the office of vice chair from 2022 to 2024. She has served as a director of Parker Hannifin Corporation, a global leader in motion and control technologies since 2025 and she previously served as director of Carrier Global Corporation from 2021 to 2024. Wozniak holds a bachelor of engineering degree from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, and an MBA from York University in Toronto.

At nVent, we are inventing the electrified future. We are a global electrical manufacturing company that connects and protects mission-critical infrastructure from data centers to power utilities. From industrial applications to commercial buildings, whether it's electrification or digitalization, we offer a broad portfolio of electrical solutions spanning liquid cooling for data centers, equipment protection, power connections, and power and cable management, as well as engineered building solutions, our newest platform. We've transformed our portfolio to align with the macro trends driving our industry. Our revenue from the infrastructure vertical has grown from a little over 10% at spin to nearly 50% today. And with global electricity demand expected to grow by 50% in the next 25 years and AI data centers continuing to expand, we're prepared to meet those challenges with our portfolio of solutions. The world's leading companies bring their most complex challenges to us because of our customer-first approach to innovation that doesn't just advance the industry. It fundamentally shapes it. Our solutions dramatically enhance our customers' efficiency, resiliency, productivity, reliability, safety, and sustainability goals. nVent is more than our name. It's what we do. We launch highly differentiated and innovative new products every year to address our customers' evolving needs. We scale fast and reach far through our network of global manufacturing, service and distribution centers around the world. We have a unique combination of industry application expertise, commitment to innovation, customer focus, and the ability to scale solutions globally. That's the nVent difference. We take pride in our differentiated culture which is founded on our WinRight values. Our 12,000 plus employees across 35 countries foster this culture daily and drive our continued success. That's why we say at nVent, we are inventing the electrified future.

Well, this is really cool. So, nVent is really part of this electrification and everything. It is going on. Yes. You're talking about 25 years, 50% growth. So, and there was one person described nVent as the pick and shovel of the electrification. So, elaborate a little bit on that because the video gave us a nice little overview of electrification.

So when did AI really enter into the picture? When you're making these investments and when did it become really apparent that this was going to take off?

So how has this affected the way you think about the investments that you're making as a company? I mean, there's all this investment money flowing into AI. How does it affect the way you invest as a company looking ahead?

So how nervous are you about this investment wave? I mean, there's a lot of discussion. You're going to know a lot more than I do about it. Yes, this is a historic technology, but it's also a bubble or it could be both. And so, as you're more dependent on this AI, how are you looking at the risks?

And so this is where you're expanding your capacity here in Minnesota.

Tell us a little bit about that.

And how many employees? How much is all this translating into employee growth?

So, I'm curious. I mean, you're a member of the Nvidia partner network.

So, what's it like being a partner with Nvidia? I mean, because they're also this multi-trillion dollar elephant in the room.

And then now shifting, how about AI within your company? How are you using it? How is it affecting your operations, how you do your business?

But can you give us some examples of how AI is entering into your operations where you're getting some benefit from because I think it's one of the big questions out there. How much does this really? Yes, there's all this money, there's all this promise, but in the nitty-gritty of a business, how is it showing up?

So, one of the things that I found interesting is this new product vitality measure metric and it's revenue from products that were launched in the last five years.

So, how did you make the journey from the low teens to 27%?

So one of the things obviously culture is very important to the company and innovation obviously feeds into that creating a culture of innovation. So how do you nurture innovation? How do you get more and more people involved in that?

And so how do you evaluate the risk that you're taking because innovation means some products become obsolete, some ways of doing business becomes obsolete, so it's like a risk management. So how do you approach risk?

So, one of the things you've said, three trends: electrification of everything, digitization, and sustainability. So, talk about sustainability because we also talk about data centers. There's a lot of controversy surrounding data centers, use of energy, use of water, drawing on a lot of resources and yet sustainability is a core value I guess.

And I'm curious what, as you know, AI has gotten controversial. A couple commencement speakers have been booed when they've said positive things about AI. It's one of these issues. Data centers cuts across the traditional political divide. And I think the core issue is a lot of younger people the concern that there aren't going to be the jobs there for them. So I'm curious what is your perspective on AI and jobs and really sort of a future that you can grasp.

And so now making a late shift but at the same time there's a you know in the competition for talent, and you know getting the engineering talent you need, the skill technicians that you need, how are you finding your talent?

So, you know, we're on a university campus and people are graduating right now from graduate school or from undergraduate years and they're getting a lot of negative feedback these days. What would you advise them? You're launching your career, you're starting your career. How would you go about it?

And you mentioned the word mistake, and one of the questions from the audience is what's the best leadership lesson you've learned from a mistake you've made?

And you also had a quite a career at Honeywell. And so what stuck with you from those years at Honeywell that you now tap into at Invent?

So now shift a little bit and then AI is obviously one current event that's going on but some others, has tariffs had an impact on your business? Because I'm guessing here but probably a lot of steel, aluminum goes into your products.

And the war with Iran with the closure of the Straits of Hormuz, has that had much of an impact on you?

So you know you think about the last couple years, you had COVID, you had the high inflation years, you had tariffs, Liberation Day, we have war with Iran. So I mean that's a lot of shocks to the supply chains. So how are your supply chains adjusted over the years? What is the difference between your supply chain now versus 2018?

So I'm curious with Europe, what is the state of data centers there? Is your business growing in Europe also?

So you're looking, speaking of growth initiatives, you're looking ahead the next five years or three years, planning ahead, where's the growth? I mean obviously AI, but how are you positioning yourself for the next three years?

So, speaking of your culture, looking at your board of directors. And I think it's unusual for a company your size. There are more women board directors than men. And so deliberate strategy.

And does it help you in recruitment for talent? Because you mentioned that's your big obstacle is getting the talent that you need with your growth ambitions.

Yeah. No. And this is back you probably many of you hadn't seen but back in 2019 when you did your previous First Tuesday, talked a lot about the importance of the layout, the way that you designed your headquarters and to make that inclusive and reflect the inclusivity. Did it work?

So, I have to ask you, I think this was an interview with your former CFO and she said, 'Do you intentionally listen?' Which is, you know, that's good. And she often says there are always three sides to every story. How are the three, what are the three sides?

So, speaking of leadership, I mean, it's a fast growing company in a fast growing sector of the economy. In fact, sector of the economy that's keeping this economy going forward. How has that affected your leadership style and decision-making?

And this is another question from the audience. If you were mentoring a mid-career engineer who wanted to become a senior executive, what would you tell them to focus on over the next couple of years?

So, what did you learn from Sally Ride?

Yeah. And one of the things that's striking, you know, looking at reports and various different things, don't shy away from diversity, don't shy away from inclusiveness. I mean, these are terms that you've sprinkled throughout and that's not always the case today.

And do you feel that one of the trends that's unfolding, and this is a suspicion of mine, is that with all the changes that are going on, companies actually training their employees becomes more important, that many companies sort of offloaded that either onto the individual or to other organizations. Do you see training becoming a bigger part of what you do with your existing employees like you'd mentioned with the expansions out in Blaine and in Anoka?

So you've done eight acquisitions but you also did a couple of divestures too. So how do you decide which side to take? We're going to make this acquisition and this has been a good business, but it has to go elsewhere.

Yeah. So, and what you know, one of the things off what you've been saying, if you go back a decade ago or 15 years ago, I mean, there are a lot of articles, a lot of commentary about America's aging electrical infrastructure. And coming out of this period of time, there's a lot of strain on our electrical infrastructure right now, but are we going to get a whole new grid?

And does it matter to your business, whether it's solar, whether it's wind, oil and gas?

And in terms of you said North America is where a lot of your growth is and has been. So do you think that and I know you're going to be expanding elsewhere but do you still see North America as your main market?

And you sort of said, you know, and why is Minnesota a good state for you to be doing business?

And how hard is it for you to attract people to come here because, you know, there's the cliche about, you like sayings, the cliche is, it's hard to get people to come here, but once they've been here for a while, they don't want to leave.

And so just as the sort of final note or last note again because we are on a university campus and we touched on this, but sort of what advice do you wish that you were given when you were younger that you would give to a younger person now?

One more question. So, what does this feel like to be the head of what may be the largest, most dynamic headquarters company that nobody actually really seems to know much about in the Twin Cities? I'm sorry to say that, but you know...

Well, thank you very much.

What a tremendous conversation today. We all learned so much and I want to thank you both for taking the time to share and Beth, thank you for revisiting us for your second round on First Tuesday. Before we wrap for today, I want to remind you of our next First Tuesday event. It's on October 6th. We'll welcome Terry Rasmuson, CEO of Thrivant and a Minnesota Business Hall of Fame inductee this year. And then on December 1st, we'll welcome University of Minnesota President Dr. Rebecca Cunningham. I hope to see you all here again and have a great rest of your summer and we'll see you in the fall. Thank you.