‘A big ripple effect’: Two top business figures discuss their new roles for CT

Nooyi, the retired CEO of PepsiCo, and Smith, the retired CEO of Webster Financial, have exited in an orderly changing of the guard of Gov. Ned Lamont’s top business advisers. Under Sonnenfeld and Keane, AdvanceCT, headed day-to-day by CEO and Wilton resident Peter Denious, must lay a new foundation for Connecticut’s economic growth coming out of the pandemic.

“Because of the pandemic, it’s put a spotlight on some great qualities that were somehow lost in the national buzz of other parts of the country,” Sonnenfeld said Monday. “We are seeing a big ripple effect, an influx of businesses coming in and bringing in jobs.”

Sonnenfeld, an expert on CEO culture and corporate management, is senior associate dean of the Yale School of Management and a regular national business voice in Fortune, CNBC, The New York Times and other media. He said that Connecticut has re-emerged as a “destination” for companies considering expansion.

Keane stepped down as CEO of Synchrony this past April, having led the retail finance giant since its 2011 inception as a spinoff of General Electric. She chose to keep its headquarters in Stamford even as GE decamped for Boston.

“We’ve had great success here in Connecticut,” Keane said in an interview Monday. “Look, it’s not perfect but nowhere’s perfect, and I feel like the state has definitely shifted.”

She added, “I wouldn’t have done this if I felt it wasn’t a business-friendly state, and we have a lot going for us.”

Sonnenfeld noted the pandemic prompted thousands of families to relocate from New York City and the choice by companies such as Philip Morris International and Haier to establish new offices in the state.

AdvanceCT works alongside state agencies and municipalities to steer businesses to incentives and potential sites for expansion in Connecticut, and promote workforce development initiatives.

The quasi-public agency was reconstituted in 2020 from the former Connecticut Economic Resource Center. Lamont wanted a “market-facing” organization that could work in better coordination with state Department of Economic and Community Development and municipalities in assisting expansion-minded employers.

The influx of people is creating new tax revenue for Lamont and the Connecticut General Assembly. The question now is whether that will continue, and whether businesses will follow in significant numbers, as the pandemic fades. Connecticut lost about 20,000 residents per year to other states in the five years before the pandemic, and it’s not clear how that will shake out now that millennials are in their prime parenting years, many seeking suburban lives.

Nooyi lives in Greenwich and was the longtime CEO of PepsiCo, based in Purchase, N.Y. Smith led Webster Financial, which was founded in the Great Depression by his father, Harold Smith , and is the parent of Webster Bank. Webster has begun the process of moving its headquarters to Stamford from Waterbury.

In the spring of 2020, Lamont appointed Nooyi to co-lead the formation of the state’s “Reopen Connecticut” rules alongside Yale epidemiologist Albert Ko. Both Nooyi and Smith helped draft an “economic action” plan alongside the DECD which Lamont credits as a foundation for how to disburse federal assistance during the pandemic.

More than any other act during the pandemic, Sonnenfeld singled out AdvanceCT’s help forming the 4-CT philanthropic effort to raise cash for nonprofits faced with massive demand for services, coupled with uncertainty over their own sources of revenue via donations.

“Of all 50 states, nobody had anything like that,” Sonnenfeld said.