If you spend enough time around high-performing CIOs, a pattern emerges. Their careers are shaped by intention, courage, and a little luck along the way. That’s certainly true for Danyel Bischof-Forsyth, chief technology and information officer at 7 Brew, a rapidly expanding drive-through brand with a devoted customer base of coffee enthusiasts.
Bischof-Forsyth’s career spans more than three decades, from her early days in tech to rising through the ranks at Hallmark, where she became CIO of the iconic Greetings division, to later leading enterprise transformation at Tyson Foods.
On a recent episode of the Tech Whisperers podcast, Bischof-Forsyth opened up her leadership playbook and discussed how she spearheads digital innovation at one of the fastest-growing coffee chains in the country. Afterwards, we unpacked the lessons, leaps of faith, and leadership wisdom that have made her journey so extraordinary. Here’s that exchange, in her words and edited for clarity.
Dan Roberts: Looking back over your 35-year career, what’s the big headline of that journey, and what are the takeaways today’s up-and-coming technology leaders can learn from it?
Danyel Bischof-Forsyth: The headline is: ‘Hard work, some luck, and the best support system I could ask for.’ Drilling down into it, the first takeaway is to own your career. I developed a career navigation program with my HR partner at Hallmark early on. The idea that you are in charge navigating your career, that was key for me. Nobody is going to do it for me. It is up to me to craft and manage this.
Another part of owning your career is recognizing it’s a lattice, not a ladder. You need a career map to identify the experiences, skills, subject areas, and roles you want to develop and navigate. Having that career map and getting support to pursue those items is important. There’s no way I would be here if it wasn’t for a strong support system. That starts at home with a supportive partner. I interviewed Fortune 200 CIOs and CTOs who are women for my dissertation, and they all emphasized that a supportive partner is critical to success and navigating to leadership positions. I don’t think I can do it all because I can’t. I lean in very heavily with family and friends. I ask for help and let them help me.
At work, I seek out mentors. I look for peer mentors, and mentors in a business. I’ve even had reverse mentors. I leverage my network, people who are experts in the space. I reach out to them all the time, and I try to give back as well.
Lastly, it’s about having courage and taking initiative. Be willing to just go for it, make the leap. Whether it’s a job, a different company, a role outside of an organization like with a nonprofit or on a board, answer the call. At least have the conversation about it, because you never know where that might lead. If you cut off the possibility at the beginning, you’ll never know where it could have taken you.
How do you prepare yourself for those answer-the-call moments?
Before you get the call, you need to know what you bring to the table, what you’re good at, and, using your career map, the types of things you want to go after in the future. Then it’s about finding a way to say yes, especially if it’s coming from somebody you trust. I had [former Hallmark CIO] Mike Goodwin coming to me with opportunities. I trusted him, and I would find a way to say yes. I also have a personal board. That’s an important group of people because they care about your happiness and success. If they believe it’s a great opportunity, find a way to say yes. Or if, deep down, you know you could be great at it, find a way to say yes.
Any examples you can share from your own journey?
My biggest answer-the call-moment was going from Hallmark to Tyson. I’d been at Hallmark for 28 years, was very comfortable, loved the people, knew everyone. But my longtime mentor and sponsor had left for another opportunity, and I started to reflect on my career. At that point I had led every functional area in IT, and I had supported technically every business at Hallmark, so I found myself open to outside opportunities.
I also wondered if I was successful there because of those 28-year relationships. I had to ask myself, could I go someplace and start over? Could I develop new relationships, learn a whole new space, even a whole new industry? I connected with the CTO at Tyson, who had a reputation for being transformational and doing great things. I wanted to be part of that. And it was a Fortune 80 company, which was also exciting. Could I operate at that scale?
Tyson is three-and-a-half hours away from where I lived, so taking a job there would mean a move. But when I met with the CTO and the business leaders I would be supporting, as well as the peer group, I knew immediately they were all incredible and I could learn so much — and I love to learn. They made me the offer that day. I was driving back home that night and called my husband. We talked for about five minutes. I said, ‘I’m going to do this. This is it.’ And I called back and said yes. It was just meant to be.
You’ve been nicknamed the ‘Queen of Laterals.’ Tell us how lateral movements have been key to your success.
This goes back to the middle part of my 28 years at Hallmark Cards, at the senior manager and director level. My mentor/leader was continually coming to me with potential opportunities to lead other organizations in IT, and I always found a way to say yes. As I did that, I started to move through the different areas in IT, from supporting a business to the PMO to the data management group. One day Mike [Goodwin] came to me with another lateral move, asking if I wanted to take on the infrastructure and cyberspace. I thought, I don’t have a big interest in infrastructure. I love delivering for the business. I love managing projects. I can’t imagine taking on this role.
I was very close with my HR support, Michael Gonzalez, so I talked to him about what he thought, and that’s when he nicknamed me the Queen of Laterals. He said, ‘Look, Queen of Laterals, you’ve taken all these opportunities where you’ve made lateral moves. You need to continue to round out your experience and skills, and this is a great space for you. It might not be one that you would go after yourself. It might not be one you would get incredibly excited about, but it is part of your journey to get this experience so you keep adding tools to your tool belt, tools you can take to the next opportunity.’
It ended up being one of my favorite roles in my 35 years. The infrastructure space, especially with cyber, is incredible. It’s so deep and broad. There is so much to learn and so much change you can make in that space.
That’s how I got the nickname, and it’s one of the secrets to how I got to where I am. It’s also one of the secrets of those women I interviewed for the dissertation. They said their breadth of experience gave them not only the skills they needed to take on the top tech spot, but the confidence as well.
Something I tell my team is, if you continue to go up and take on more and more responsibility in a vertical, it makes it very difficult to go horizontally. If you don’t have any experience at all in those other spaces, it’s really hard to get those jobs, because there’s going to be people coming up those verticals that you’re competing with. So if you can get the experience and the lateral moves, it opens up more possibilities for you as you get higher.
Another secret to your success is that you are a constant learner. Where does that curiosity come from and what role has it played in your journey as a tech leader?
When I got my first job at Hallmark, I was responding to an ad in the paper for a COBOL programmer. I’d been a COBOL programmer at TWA. I got a phone call from HR to set up an interview for the retail technology specialist position. I said, ‘Oh there’s been some mistake. I applied for the mainframe COBOL programmer position.’ She apologized and hung up. I got a call back a few minutes later, and she said, ‘There’s no mistake. The hiring manager wants to speak to you, and if it doesn’t work out with this position, he’ll send you through the interview process for the COBOL position.’
The retail technology specialist position involved programming in C, which I didn’t really know, and it wasn’t working on a mainframe but on a PC environment developing point of sale systems. I was very transparent in the interview. I told the hiring manager, ‘I don’t know anything about the language. I don’t know anything about the environment. I don’t know anything about point of sale.’ He said, ‘Don’t worry about that. Let’s get to know each other. I’ve got several people I want you to interview with, and we’ll just see where this takes us.’
Lo and behold, he hired me. He said it was primarily because of my learning agility. Talk about a big ‘aha’ moment. From that point forward I knew learning agility not only was going to be key in how I hired people, but also a key tenant of how I managed my career. Especially in tech, there is so much to learn; it is forever evolving. I needed to make sure I kept my skills sharp by maintaining a network of peers, following lots of thought leaders, and belonging to multiple professional organizations. I also read a ton of books and articles, I take classes, I attend conferences. Continuous learning and learning agility are critical.
How did you make the decision to pursue a doctorate in organizational change and change leadership, and how did you juggle that with being a CTO?
This was when I was at Tyson. I had extensive formal education and experience in tech, but I realized the most difficult part of the job was change management, and I wanted to have that tool in my tool belt. At the time I felt like I was at a place where I could make the space for a doctoral program — and that’s what it took for me. It took making the space.
It’s about priorities and choices, and I made tough choices. I resigned from multiple nonprofit board seats, which was hard to do. I quit social organizations. I canceled all the extracurriculars. I knew I needed to do that for a few years while I pursued this.
Most importantly, I ensured I had the support of my family. I still had three of my six kids at home in middle and high school. They still needed a lot from me, and I knew that I was going to need to make sure they were all in on this and understood what it meant. It meant a lot of evenings, a lot of weekends, a lot of them making things happen and giving me the time and space I needed to go to classes, do the homework, and work on the dissertation. And they made it happen for me.
You often talk about building trust like a bank account — making emotional deposits and avoiding overdrafts. How has that philosophy helped you navigate a successful career journey?
Hallmark is in the business of relationships, so I grew up in a company where that was the main focus, and it taught me that relationships are everything. They’re how you get things done, how you make things happen together. And trust is the foundation of those relationships. It’s vital that you do what you say you’re going to do and invest in the relationships, because during those critical moments — when you need people to help you make it happen or solve a really hard problem or get things done — those relationships are what get you through.
Thinking about your leadership legacy, what would you say is the overarching theme?
It’s authentic leadership. As part of that, it’s having a positive attitude and the energy to go along with it. It’s about the people — taking care of those around me and amplifying the voices of others. And it’s also about having the courage to tackle the hard problems with my team, say want needs to be said, and do what needs to be done. The positivity, people, and courage are all part of that authentic leadership.
Danyel Bischof-Forsyth’s story is a master class in architecting your career narrative. Her commitment to stepping out of her comfort zone, embracing lateral moves, and staying curious is a playbook for anyone determined to grow on their own terms. Speaking of master class, I’m excited to collaborate with Bischof-Forsyth and other award-winning CIOs in the Leadership Masterclass I’m moderating at the CIO100 Awards event this August. Later that evening, Bischof-Forsyth will accept the prestigious CIO100 Award on behalf of her 7 Brew Technology Team.
For more leadership insights and wisdom from Bischof-Forsyth, tune in to the Tech Whisperers podcast.
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Read More from This Article: How Danyel Bischof-Forsyth mapped her award-winning CIO journey
Source: News