2026 has been a year of change. As Caterpillar has deployed our enterprise strategy for profitable growth, we’ve reorganized portions of our business to ensure we are best positioned for long-term success. As part of that, many employees find themselves in a new role and with a new supervisor, me included. After spending the first 20 years of my career at Cat Financial, at the end of 2025 I was presented with the opportunity to move to Caterpillar’s Construction Industries (CI) segment. While I was excited to take on something so new this far into my career, the move raised questions as well. I enjoyed my job at Cat Financial, and I was confident in what I was doing. I had a network that I’d spent 20 years developing which meant I always knew who to reach out to if I had a question. Moving to CI would mean that everything would change.
But then I thought about what would not change: the customer. I’ve spent 20 years working directly with dealers and customers to create financial solutions that allow customers to purchase our products and services. A move to CI would allow me to take what I had learned during this time and apply it in a new and expanded way. And that is exactly what has happened. As a leader in Caterpillar’s Customer Solutions Growth Regions Division, I have the opportunity every day to work with our dealers in some of the most complex countries in the world to do business in. And my objective is still the same: work with the team to create solutions that make it easy for our customers to purchase our products and services.
And the network I depend on so much to get things done has grown exponentially in the process! It turns out I never truly appreciated its depth before making this change. I am still working with colleagues from Cat Financial, but I am also working with dealer contacts and internal counterparts in Construction Industries, Resource Industries, Power & Energy, Distribution Services, Enterprise Strategy, Logistics, and other groups that I’ve met along my career journey in the various countries in which I have lived and worked. And now I am developing new relationships with new colleagues and learning how their roles impact our strategy. The opportunity to move to CI has allowed me to expand my thinking and look at our customers’ challenges from a 360-degree viewpoint, not just how they are going to pay for a product or service. How are they going to connect it? How will they monitor and maintain it? How will they enhance their capability with technology?
I now have the opportunity to influence customer experience and have an impact on our results in a way that I had not fully considered.
No matter where my career journey takes me in the future, making this change, while uncomfortable at times, has been a great decision. I feel I am a better, more well-rounded employee for Caterpillar. I will be able to leverage the challenges, lessons, and connections from the commercial side of the business to complement my financial background to better solve our customers’ toughest challenges. And the best part of it all is the people I get to work with. From colleagues across the business, to dealers, to the customers we serve – there is nothing better than showing up with a mindset to succeed and win together.
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If you ever find yourself faced with a job change that you weren’t expecting and maybe that you weren’t looking for, I encourage you to take the leap. Growth and comfort do not coexist, and if you step outside your comfort zone, you will find that you will grow in ways you never imagined. That is my absolute favorite thing about working at Caterpillar. We are such a diverse company that you can have multiple “mini careers” and never have to step outside the organization to do so. When I joined this company, I never could have imagined that as I sit here today, I would have held 13 jobs in 21 years and lived in five cities, in four countries, on three continents. The variety of roles I’ve held has allowed me to continue to challenge myself and learn new things. And each job played a role in preparing me for the next opportunity when it came around. So, don’t worry about what is changing when you make these moves. Focus on what does not change. No matter where you are, we all play a role in supporting our customers. |
And while their needs may be different, at their core they just want to run a successful business, and they are looking for a capable company to help them do it. And we as Caterpillar are perfectly positioned to do exactly that!
