Executive VP & CFO, Target Corporation
BT Seminar Series | Jim Lee, Executive VP & CFO of Target
Check us out at https://www.businesstoday.org/
About James Lee
Jim Lee, executive vice president and CFO of Target, participated in a seminar at Princeton University in June 2026, where he discussed his career path and offered advice to students. Lee said he spent 25 years at PepsiCo and held roles in Hong Kong, Australia, Turkey, and Russia. He told students that he regretted not fully leveraging university resources while at Princeton and advised them not to plan their careers in long-term chunks, to remain flexible, and to consider paths other than consulting or banking. Lee also stated that companies are investing heavily in AI but that its full integration will take time. On Target’s Q1 2026 earnings call in May 2026, Lee reported net sales growth of 6.7% and raised the full-year sales guidance to a range centered around 4%, up from a prior range. He said the company planned to request a small increase in its quarterly dividend and noted that Target had not repurchased shares in Q1 but expected to have capacity to do so later in the year if performance continued. On the Q2 2025 earnings call in August 2025, Lee reported net sales down 0.9% year-over-year and maintained full-year guidance for a low single-digit decline in comparable sales. He attributed a decline in gross margin to inventory adjustment costs and tariff-related pressures, including purchase order cancellation costs, and said those headwinds had been resolved by the second half of the year.
Transcript (32 segments)
✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution
I
Interviewer0:05
So would you like to start by kind of introducing yourself and what brings you to campus today?
J
James Lee0:08
Sure. My name is Jim Lee. I'm the executive vice president and CFO for Target Corporation and I'm also an alum. So I graduated in 1996.
I
Interviewer0:17
Amazing. So kind of going back through your career, you've worked in finance across Hong Kong, Australia, Moscow before turning to North America. What was it like building a career that took you around the world and what did those international experiences teach you that you kind of use today?
J
James Lee0:30
I started international probably 10 years into my career. It just provides such a different perspective when you're in a different country outside of the US and you're immersed with different cultures and different experiences. It just brings more versatility to how you develop your own career. Each culture, for instance, Hong Kong, I was in Australia, as you said, in Turkey and Russia, all four unique cultures. And I was part of PepsiCo the whole time. But the really great thing about being part of a global company is you actually get to see the same type of ethics and code of conduct across the different countries. So that's a balancing stabilization point, but the experience is amazing.
I
Interviewer1:13
Got it. And then kind of talking more about your role in PepsiCo for 25 years, how have you like what were some of your biggest takeaways from that role and how has that carried you into your current role with Target?
J
James Lee1:23
I never thought I was going to be at one company for 25 years. Let's start it that way. But throughout my career at PepsiCo, the first thing was just being really curious or intellectually curious about what you're actually looking at and the jobs you're going to take. The second point is that I really learned is you just have to take chances. You can't play your career too safe. You have to try to explore different opportunities, try new experiences like international, try different types of jobs. And thirdly, you want to work with people you enjoy working with. Being in a company for 25 years, you don't stay there just because of the company, you stay there because of the people you surround yourself with.
I
Interviewer2:04
100%. That makes a lot of sense. So, you're kind of talking about the people aspect of your role, and I think a lot of people might think that CFO kind of just means spreadsheets and numbers and calculations and balancing the books. Is that really true? And how would you describe your job from a day-to-day basis that someone might not necessarily presume or know?
J
James Lee2:23
In my current job and even when I was at PepsiCo, of course you have to have some basics of learning basic accounting and working with math and spreadsheets and so forth. But most of the job is actually leading. You're leading groups of people. Currently my team is well over a thousand people. So I have to manage through my teams and make sure they're focused in the right areas, provide feedback where I can, but you learn the more senior you get, you can't really get into the details of everything. So you have to learn to delegate and trust your people. I've been so fortunate in my career of having leaders who have been on my team who I can have 100% trust in doing the work and doing a great job. And so that makes my life a lot easier.
I
Interviewer3:03
Wow. That's actually a really good way of looking at it. And as a leader of so many different people, how do you kind of balance understanding what everyone's doing but not also being too involved? What's the kind of balance you find there?
J
James Lee3:16
That's a great question. Currently in my job I have about 10 direct reports, 10 different areas of finance and strategy and sustainability right now. You just have to balance where you think for me my time where I can spend the most time and it can have the biggest impact is in the areas where it has probably the most material impact on my company. So I do have to try to balance where I spend my time and sometimes some areas because of certain situations require a lot more attention and sometimes there are certain areas that can just run on autopilot for a little bit.
I
Interviewer3:47
That makes sense. And what's the most unexpected thing you have found from being CFO of such a large corporation like Target?
J
James Lee3:55
Interesting. Probably one of the biggest surprises that I found at least working at Target has been just the enormity of the job, the enormity of the company and the impact you have on people's lives. It was like that at PepsiCo but at Target because everyone shops at Target. So everyone has an opinion about their experience at Target, their views about our merchandise, what it feels like in store or frustrations along the lines. What you find is that a lot of people have an opinion about the job you do and that can be pretty fun when you hear people talking about the company but you see the widespread presence and impact you have on the American community. So small things or big things that we do have a pretty big ripple effect on the rest of the American consumer and that's kind of fun but it also has a lot of responsibility to it.
I
Interviewer4:42
Yeah. And how do you kind of pay attention to those smaller more minuscule day-by-day aspects when you're looking at the big picture?
J
James Lee4:48
Well, that's why we have great teams. I pick and choose where I focus on. As a company, we have great people all the way from insights and merchants to marketers to finance leaders to tech leaders who are always looking across the industry and looking at different ideas. So we're always positioning ourselves for growth.
I
Interviewer5:07
Yeah. Great. And you're a Princeton alum. You're now a CFO of a billion dollar company, right? When you were a college student, did you picture a career like this?
J
James Lee5:16
No, I didn't. I graduated with a degree that the name changed is now ORFE. It's ORFE now. I actually had no idea what I was going to do in my career. The thing I stumbled upon junior and then senior year was just I'll just try to be a consultant because I didn't actually know what I wanted to do. So I went to strategy consulting first. And then two years later I just got recruited into PepsiCo. And I made up my mind that I was going to only be there for a couple years and then go to business school. You know, life changes and I love the work. I just stayed there for 26 years. So I never expected or didn't have the aspirations to be where I am right now. I just wanted to do good work and make a living, I guess, when I got out of college.
I
Interviewer5:58
That's a good way of thinking about it. And then, how did you kind of keep an open mind? I know you talked about wanting to go into consulting because that kind of kept your options open, but would you give any advice to students that are trying to figure this out on how to stay open to new opportunities and sort of see where they fall?
J
James Lee6:11
One is always explore different opportunities and also the opportunities that are not so obvious because there's a lot of focus I think especially undergrads now and even back then when I was there is everyone's trying to focus on getting the best consulting job or banking job and so forth. And sometimes the best path to success is actually the path least walked, like trying different things out. It doesn't really matter where you go after college, it's actually the work you do when you get into the workforce, how well you work with people, how collaborative you are. I think those are the there's so many other skill sets beyond just what your first job out of college is going to be. So there's a lot of different pathways, but it doesn't always have to be the pathway that everyone tells you you should be doing.
I
Interviewer6:55
You talked about your experience with the operations research and financial engineering program and other academic pursuits. How did they prepare you for a career and how did they not and what do you kind of wish you had learned?
J
James Lee7:07
I'll be honest, I think the ORFE program inadvertently ended up being the most really relevant coursework I could have taken because it taught me everything about applied math but statistics, probability, minoring in economics. There are a lot of things to the business world and so even today in my work I always try to explain to my colleagues like I don't think about when we make business decisions I don't think about one scenario, I think multiple scenarios. I will always think about how to optimize results and I'm very comfortable in uncertainty. And ORFE sort of teaches you to be comfortable with uncertainty.
I
Interviewer7:45
That's a good way of looking at it. And finance and strategy careers can feel intimidating to break into. It kind of feels like the only options are again investment banking, consulting, whatever it is. What advice would you give students to try and get into that field and what actually sets someone apart when you're looking at someone for that field?
J
James Lee8:05
The best advice I can give now is find analysts or associates or others who are in the industry right now to really get a sense of what they do and their passion for it because you want to go into a field where you're actually going to enjoy it. I recognize the first couple years out of undergraduate can be a grind, but you want to enjoy the field and you want to enjoy the people that you work with. So getting a good sense for what others are doing that just entered the workforce is a really good idea. It gets you more grounded. And then as you look at whatever you're going to end up doing, avoid the trap of it's sometimes hard. If you get stuck into a particular area, you almost determine your career is going to be that way. And if you're stuck in a certain industry or in a certain type of business, you want to make sure you have flexibility. So that's why I like consulting because you can sort of go anywhere after that, versus being too much of a specialist in one area.
I
Interviewer8:58
And what do you look at when you're hiring someone or mentoring young talent? What sets someone apart? Especially I know you're not directly going to be working with them, but in a broader sense what would set someone apart?
J
James Lee9:11
Intellectual curiosity. That's the number one thing I look for. Nowadays it's so easy to just get up to speed on any topic. Whether it's ChatGPT or Gemini or Claude or whatever, you can pretty much learn anything yourself or find everything out yourself. So I do look for people that are already leveraging all the tools to get up to speed and then are just seeking to explore or challenge different things because any company, large or small, you have to constantly disrupt yourself to continue to thrive in the industry. So we want people who are always going to challenge and question things. That's what I look for. And then generally, honestly, you want people that are good people to work with. I have had my share of people that were just very difficult to work with. They either weren't good managers or they are very combative with everybody. There are a lot of people that sometimes try too hard and don't build good relationships and those are actually painful because you have to do a lot of work to manage that person or that relationship. So I look for people that are actually very collaborative and open and transparent.
I
Interviewer10:20
That's a good way of looking at it. And you kind of mentioned how you didn't know what you wanted to do upon graduation. And I feel like a lot of students today feel pressure to have that certainty to know what they want to do especially as recruiting timelines kind of move up. What would you say to someone who is uncertain about their direction after graduation and sort of dispelling those fears?
J
James Lee10:39
One thing is for all the bankers and consultants that are pushing up recruiting timelines, can you please push them back? It's sort of silly that it's pushed up so much forward. But if you're really passionate about that, then go for it. But if you're not sure, don't necessarily throw yourself into that. There are so many other different pathways for success. So many really senior leaders at PepsiCo and Target, a lot of my peers, there are a lot of folks who started their careers at PepsiCo driving a sales truck and then they just built their whole career. They worked hard and built management skills. At Target, we have a lot of senior leaders who are fantastic who started working in the stores and one of our most senior people was a cart attendant 35 years ago and he worked his way into becoming one of our senior leaders. So there are so many different pathways to success. One of the key things is just being a hard worker with good work ethic and someone that's easy to work with is usually probably a good formula for success.
I
Interviewer11:39
Wow. And kind of on a last note in terms of the changing environment with AI, with changing technology, stuff like that, how is Target going to position itself on the forefront of that? And is there any advice you'd give to positioning students and just the world on the forefront like staying ahead of that curve?
J
James Lee11:55
It's changing so fast. A company like Target or any major company is obviously investing heavily in technology and either partnering with the AI leaders trying to figure out how do we optimize our business performance and operations using AI. Clearly there's a huge use case for it. But it's going to take time. The evolution of how AI gets embedded into everything that we do. It will get embedded into basically most everything we do. And we're pretty well advanced on it. But it's going to evolve and change and adapt over time. So I think for everyone, just stay close to what's happening. But I also wouldn't overthink it right now because the changes will happen. Just like when I was here at Princeton, this is when the internet started and we didn't have access to internet and it all of a sudden exploded. It changed everything but it opened up a lot of new opportunities. So being flexible and agile and learning will be important.
I
Interviewer12:49
Great. And lastly, if you could talk to your college self, go back in time, what is one thing that you would emphasize or say?
J
James Lee12:57
One, I think I did a good job not actually worrying too much about what I was going to do after college when I was there. But the one regret I had coming to such an incredible institution like Princeton was actually I didn't leverage all the things and the resources that the university had to offer. I maybe I wasn't as aware, but I think I would have loved to gotten much more involved in some more activities and more research when I was here versus what I actually did when I was at Princeton.
I
Interviewer13:25
Got it. Is there anything else that you'd like to share with students with the world?
J
James Lee13:28
The only thing I would say is don't try to plan your career out in the next 20, 30 year chunks. Think about what you're going to do for the next couple years and just keep pivoting and be flexible because things will change. But don't worry so much about where you end up as your first job out of college or the stress of recruiting your sophomore year. There's a lot coming at you, but it's way better for you to spend the time in a university to learn, work with each other, get to know your peers and colleagues. That's probably more advantageous in the long run.