MEAT+POULTRY - June 2015 - 20

COVER STORY

"As excited as
I am about our
new brands,
I'm equally
excited about
the combined
talent of
the two
companies."
- Donnie Smith, President
and CEO of Tyson Foods

of her family, all of who are foodies and enjoy
trying new cuisine in addition to traveling
the world. In fact, the Grimes clan has a
destination bucket list that includes visiting the
Seven Wonders of the World together, with just
one left: The Great Wall of China.
As a marketer, travel serves as a source
of inspiration for Grimes. After recently
visiting Machu Picchu in Peru with her
family and seeing the salt mines and the
region where the first known dehydrated
meat was made, the connection to her career
was serendipitously affirming.
"Food has always been pretty integral in
my life," says Grimes, a proud first-generation
Indian-American. With a mother who was a
dietitian, "Food was at the center of everything
in our Indian culture," she adds.

SHIFTING GEARS
In her third year with Hillshire Brands, and
after the well-publicized bidding war and
eventual acquisition of the company by Tyson
for $8.5 billion in 2014, Grimes made the
transition to Tyson.
Besides Grimes, several other executives
from the Hillshire Brands leadership team
were retained and became part of a blended
management reorganization with the company
Smith coined "Tyson 2.0." Bringing together the
two companies' executives and managers was
made easier, according to Grimes, by Smith's
"amazingly approachable style."
There was quickly a sense among the
merging Hillshire Brands team members that
they were embraced by the much larger parent
company. Andy Callahan, former president of

Hillshire Brands' retail business, was tapped
to manage Tyson's retail consumer brands;
Tom Hayes, former chief supply chain officer
for Hillshire Brands, was appointed leader
of the combined Tyson and Hillshire Brands
foodservice businesses; and Mary Oleksiuk,
former HR officer for Hillshire Brands, took
over Tyson Foods' HR responsibilities.
The marriage of the complementary
companies meant combining Tyson's
extensive operational expertise with the
brand-building and innovation expertise of
Hillshire Brands. Grimes recalls her first visit
to Springdale to tour the Discovery Center
at the Tyson Headquarters: "I was like a kid
in a candy store," she says, because of the
Tyson capabilities and the enterprise-wide
commitment to innovation.
"The word "innovation" isn't just part of
a title or department at Tyson, it's part of the
vision statement," she says, and not just the
responsibility of Grimes and her team but the
entire company.
The two companies also shared core
values that made the merger more seamless.
An emphasis on integrity, putting people first
and work ethic were among the important
attributes of both companies that were made
stronger when Tyson made the deal. "It's been
a really, really nice marriage," Grimes says.

LOOKING BACK AND AHEAD
Some of the lessons Grimes learned from
the early days at Hillshire Brands included
assessing what worked in previous years and
what didn't - she calls it "slowing down in
order to speed up." This meant getting to know

AMASSING ACCOLADES
In the past three years, Sally Grimes, who joined Tyson Foods in 2014 as leader of its innovation,
sales and global brand strategy, has garnered recognition as an innovation and marketing maven:
2012 Made the cut on Fast
Company's "100 Most Creative
People in business" ranking;

20

MEAT+ POULTRY | 06.15 | www.meatpoultry.com

2013 Ad Age singled out
Grimes as one of its "24
Women to Watch in 2013";

2014 Advertising Women of
New York named Grimes its
"Game Changer of 2014."
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