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In the corporate world, we are conditioned to look up. We obsess over the next rung, the bigger title, and the direct path to the corner office. But if you ask Seth Kaufman, chief commercial officer at Philip Morris International (PMI) U.S., the secret to reaching the C-suite is not a ladder at all. It is a lattice.
Kaufman’s career arc, spanning nearly two decades at PepsiCo, a high-stakes pivot into the luxury world of LVMH, and now a leadership role at a tobacco giant undergoing an ambitious transformation, is a case study in the power of the uncomfortable lateral move.
Kaufman started as a marketer. Early on, he says he realized that great leaders need both depth and range. He focused on developing what he calls a “hip pocket” skill, one core expertise you can always rely on as you take career risks. For him, that skill was brand building. It gave him credibility while he pushed himself into unfamiliar territory. That meant stepping away from PepsiCo headquarters and into Frito-Lay’s Midwest field operations, where feet-on-the-street grit and frontline decisions on pricing, sales, and logistics shaped real-time results.
That assignment became a turning point. Leading a business in the field forced him to confront the mechanics behind the P&L, from finance to operations, areas that many marketers avoid. The lesson was clear: If you want to run a company, you need to understand how it makes money.
Later at PepsiCo, he stepped into what he considers his first true general manager role, leading a fifty-fifty joint venture with Starbucks. The significance of the role went beyond the title. The culture belonged to neither company, forcing him to align teams with different priorities and ways of working while still delivering growth.
The biggest stretch came later when Kaufman moved from mass consumer goods to luxury at Moët Hennessy. Success was no longer about scale and volume but about scarcity and pricing power. His team pulled products from certain channels and raised prices, prioritizing long-term desirability over short-term growth. It was a mindset shift that challenged much of what he had learned in packaged goods.
For ambitious executives, Kaufman’s blueprint is straightforward but counterintuitive: Master one area deeply, then deliberately step outside it. “If I didn’t invest the time in accounting and finance, I wouldn’t have been able to pivot to general management,” he says.
From there, the goal is range, says Kaufman. Good leaders learn to operate in environments where they do not control every function or the culture. And they seek out roles that broaden their perspective across industries and operating models, even when it appears to be a lateral move rather than a promotion. Those experiences, in Kaufman’s view, build resilience and judgment in ways a straight climb up the org chart cannot.
By the time he arrived at PMI in 2025, Kaufman was more than a marketing executive, he says. He was a cross-functional operator with a broad view of how brands, economics, and organizational culture interact. In an era defined by disruption and reinvention, his career suggests that the leaders who stand out are often those willing to move sideways to move forward.
Ruth Umoh
ruth.umoh@fortune.com
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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https://fortune.com/article/brand-builder-business-operator-career-blueprint-behind-executives-c-suite-rise/
Ruth Umoh
