- The Mississippi native has risen through the ranks to lead the North American division of a global juggernaut.
Stacey Kennedy wants to “unsmoke the world.”
Kennedy, 51, CEO of Philip Morris International (PMI), North America, a Fortune 100 company, coined the phrase when she received a Woman of the Year award in 2020.
“It’s an honor to be recognized for the progress we’re making,” she said, “and for our drive to transform our company to unsmoke the world.”
Kennedy explained: “For the past 10 years, PMI has been on a mission-filled purpose for a smoke-free world and has publicly said we want to end cigarette smoking because it causes harm.”
Over the last decade, PMI moved from zero to 37 percent of global net revenue coming from smoke-free products (Zen and IQOS).
“We’ve never sold cigarettes in the U.S., and never will,” she said, emphatically.
Magnolia State roots
Kennedy’s storied career began on a small farm in rural Kossuth, a tiny town in Alcorn County located about nine miles east of Corinth. Her parents were schoolteachers who also worked on the farm producing soybeans and raising cattle and chickens.
At the age of seven, Kennedy sold watermelons “and learned virtually all the lessons I needed in business,” she said, with a laugh.
After graduating from Kossuth High School, Kennedy headed to Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Lynchburg, Virginia, for its robust international program. She spent three summers abroad, first in Indonesia and then England. She earned a degree in sociology and cultural anthropology, graduating magna cum laude in 1995.
Kennedy’s first post-college job was territory sales manager with Philip Morris USA.
Making the right moves
In 2002, she joined PMI from Altria as director of trade marketing in Lausanne, Switzerland.
In 2005, Kennedy was the youngest and the first female named vice president, when she returned to Altria as Southeast Region Sales manager in Atlanta.
In 2013, when her twins were four years old, Kennedy was named PMI’s Area VP of Global Sales Strategy for Southeast Europe, responsible for 10 markets from its operations center in Lausanne, Switzerland.
While there, she earned an executive MBA from IMD.
In 2015, Kennedy was named PMI’s managing director over four countries, including Germany, one of PMI’s top markets and home to her husband, Uli Ries. Based in Munich, she also oversaw Austria, Croatia, and Slovenia markets.
In 2018, she was appointed the first-ever female president of PMI’s Asia Pacific Operations over South and Southeast Asia, the corporation’s third largest region.
“It was a fascinating job, in a fascinating part of the world,” she said.
Kennedy was living in Hong Kong when COVID-19 restrictions resulted in several pauses.
“In Indonesia, we vaccinated 60,000 employees and third-party employees in six weeks,” she said. “And we had not one single employee death after that. It was life-changing for our employees.”
Two pivotal changes took place in 2022. During the summer, PMI moved its worldwide headquarters to Stamford, Connecticut, also establishing its U.S. base there. In November, PMI acquired Swedish Match, seller of tobacco-free Zyn pouches that deliver nicotine orally, in a $16 billion deal.
“It was one of the launching pads for us to operate in the U.S.,” she said.
PMI also focused on its flagship heated tobacco product, IQOS. First introduced in Japan in 2014, IQOS is a smoke-free product that resembles the experience of smoking a cigarette but is not combusted.
“It’s been successful in switching smokers away from combusted cigarettes to a far better, scientifically substantiated alternative,” Kennedy said.
In January 2023, Kennedy was named PMI’s CEO of North American operations.
Kennedy said she was proud to return to the U.S. with PMI’s powerful smoke-free mission for the more than 45 million people who routinely use nicotine, with more than 30 million who use the most harmful form of nicotine: smoking lit cigarettes.
In her first year, PMI sold 421.1 million nicotine pouches and 799.3 million oral products. The company reported $35.2 billion in net revenues and $11.6 billion in operating income.
On rising through the ranks of a global powerhouse, Kennedy said: “The first thing I made sure of was always working hard and doing the very best job assigned. Second, building a really strong team that’s passionate about their work, their mission and purpose, with a lot of focus on employees and the consumers we serve. Then you start thinking, what more can I do? How can I take this to the next level?”
Keeping an eye on her home state
Kennedy remembers when, 27 years ago, then Mississippi Attorney General Mike Moore won the landmark tobacco lawsuit against U.S. tobacco companies.
“That’s one of the reasons I want to make sure Mississippi becomes among the first to have access to smoke-free products,” said Kennedy. “I’m so grateful Mississippi state legislators and Governor Tate Reeves have really gotten behind harm reduction, especially with their support of Senate Bill 3105 that passed (earlier this year), which will incentivize adult smokers to make the transition from cigarettes to a better product. It’s very impactful that Mississippi stands out above the rest in this regard.”
Work and life
With so much international travel, how many languages does Kennedy speak?
“Embarrassingly, none well. I worked at our operations center in Lausanne, Switzerland, where French is spoken. I can order anything on a French menu like nobody’s business.”
Her twins, now 15, “are superstars,” she affectionately calls them.
“They’ve moved six times,” she said. “They thankfully speak more languages than I do, including Mandarin Chinese. They can talk to their dad in German, but my German is non-existent.”
Kennedy has balanced work and family “with grace and good fortune,” she said.
“It was tough, I’m not going to kid you, when they were babies, at ages two, three and four,” she said. “I’m very blessed to have a really close relationship with both of my kids.”
Almost every Sunday after church, she takes long walks with them individually.
“What we say in the family is that fair is not always equal,” she said, “but fair is everybody gets what they really need when they need it.”
Author’s Note: When meeting Stacey Kennedy, CEO of Philip Morris International, North America, I expected her to be whip smart and extremely professional. But it was remarkable to see how luminous she is. She glows beautifully from the inside out, and speaks from the heart warmly, thoughtfully, and candidly. No canned comments here!
