His dad worked on the factory floor at Johnson & Johnson. Now he’s the CFO

Joe Wolk, Johnson & Johnson EVP and CFO, considers the New Brunswick, N.J.-based company part of his family’s heritage.

“My dad worked on the factory floors,” Wolk tells me. “His brother, my uncle, got him the job. And I had an aunt, who, back in the day, they called her a secretary for one of the businesses. So it’s kind of in my bloodline, and I couldn’t be more humbled, and, quite frankly honored, to serve in the capacity that I do today.”

Wolk has been with J&J for over 25 years, taking on the role of CFO in 2018. He heads the finance and global services organizations, which includes about 9,000 colleagues worldwide. Before his current position, Wolk was the VP of investor relations and he’s also led the finance function for pharmaceuticals and the global supply chain. 

“My dad actually retired five years before I got to the company, but it feels like I’ve been here my whole life,” he says. “Growing up in Central Jersey, back in the early ‘80s, you would go to a CYO basketball game or a Little League game and you’d run into folks who worked at Johnson & Johnson and it was just something that was always very special.”

With more than two decades at the 137-year-old company, Wolk is betting on the company’s innovation path. The multinational health care giant (no. 40 on the Fortune 500) may have been known for products including Tylenol and Listerine, but there has been a pivot to an exclusive focus on pharmaceuticals and medtech segments—the biggest revenue drivers in 2022, bringing in $52.5 billion and $27.4 billion, respectively. 

In August, J&J split off its consumer health business as Kenvue, Inc. and secured $13.2 billion in cash proceeds. (J&J is facing liabilities from lawsuits involving baby powder. The company has not admitted wrongdoing.) Over time, J&J’s, pharmaceutical segment, known as Janssen, will be named Innovative Medicine, and the medical technology segment will keep the name MedTech.  

Consumer health was about $15 billion in revenue, which was a small business in J&J, Wolk says. But outside of the company, Kenvue is pretty sizable, he notes. “It’s trading at roughly at a $40 billion market cap,” he says. 

Although a lot of emphasis was placed on the financial aspects of the split off of the consumer health business, “we started first with the strategy,” Wolk explains. “Pharmaceuticals and MedTech require years of investment in research and development, very heavily regulated,” he says. “You can contrast that with consumer health, where it’s become much more influenced by celebrity endorsement.” In years past, endorsements from “nine out of 10 dentists or nine out of 10 dermatologists,” held significant weight, but that’s no longer the case, he says. Customer needs have changed, Wolk says.

At its investors event on Tuesday at the New York Stock Exchange, J&J forecasted operational sales growth of 5-6% for 2024. The company expects the MedTech business to grow at the upper range of its markets, which are projected to grow 5-7% through 2027 and will generate one-third of sales from new products by that year. J&J projects the Innovative Medicine segment will provide 5-7% operational sales growth from 2025-2030, and deliver more than 20 novel therapies and more than 50 product expansion filings by 2030.

Some of the areas of innovation at J&J include oncology, neuroscience, and cardiovascular, Wolk says. And then there’s robotics, such as equipment for bronchoscopies and for knee replacements, he adds. 

Wolk says the finance team is involved in the operational aspects of the company. “You need to be a business leader with finance expertise,” he says. “Not just somebody who understands the debits and credits, debits and credits. Finance is very unique in that we bring analysis, which is usually pretty objective to the conversation, and while that may not always be dispositive, it certainly gets the right conversation as to how realistic potential projections are, and where are the best opportunities to invest.”

Wolk’s father passed away in 2006 before he became CFO. But in 2018, immediately following his appointment announcement at a shareholder meeting, Wolk received a special message. 

“People were dispersing, and there was an elderly woman, not very tall in stature, and she was standing behind the velvet rope smiling at me,” he recalls. “It was a woman who my dad worked with. She was there just to say how proud my dad would have been, and how proud she and her colleagues from back in the day were about the level I have obtained.”

Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

Leaderboard

Dave Stephenson, CFO at Airbnb since 2019, is stepping into a new role as the company’s first-ever chief business officer. Ellie Mertz, an 11-year veteran of Airbnb, has been promoted to chief financial officer. “We’re introducing the role of chief business officer because we’re about to embark on our next chapter as a company," Airbnb cofounder and CEO Brian Chesky said in a statement. Stephenson is tasked to drive growth across existing and new businesses, including international expansion and growing global host supply. He will also lead all business and corporate development activities at Airbnb.

Zankhna Vasha was named CFO at Cordillera Investment Partners, an investment management firm, effective Dec. 1. Vasha is based in San Francisco, where Cordillera is headquartered, and reports directly to the firm’s three co-managing partners Agustin ‘Gus’ Araya, Chris Heller, and Ashley Marks. Vasha has over two decades of finance, operations, and accounting experience in private equity and venture capital. She was most recently the CFO of the $8 billion equity business of SVB Capital Management, LLC (formerly SVBCapital, the venture capital arm of Silicon Valley Bank). Before that, Vasha spent 12 years at Oaktree Capital Management where she held various accounting and finance roles.

Big deal

A global survey commissioned by BlackLine, Inc. (Nasdaq: BL), a financial close automation software provider, finds C-suite and finance and accounting (F&A) leaders believe using new technologies like AI to streamline their financial operations are necessary. However, many respondents noted a lack of talent to execute it. 

Cloud computing (80%), generative AI (78%), and new kinds of AI (76%) were named as essential for improving business resiliency in the face of future disruption. Although 34% said the ability to use new technology or software is a key skill, just 28% said not having the right skills on their F&A team would be a hindrance to adopting the technology, according to BlackLine.

The findings are based on a survey of 660 C-level and 679 F&A professionals in the U.S., Canada, U.K., France, Germany, Australia, and Singapore. 

Courtesy of BlackLine

Going deeper

How Much Can AI Improve Human Performance? is a new report in Wharton's business journal that notes how AI training enhances strategic skills. But, the research shows it isn’t a perfect substitute for human training partners.

Overheard

"While achieving net zero is the main reason companies must tackle Scope 3 emissions, regulation is another. From 2025, companies in Europe, including those based elsewhere with European operations, will be required to report on their Scope 3 emissions. Several U.S. bodies are also working on Scope 3 regulations. The rest of the world is likely to follow suit."

—Sanda Ojiambo, CEO and executive director of the UN Global Compact, and Patrick Chalhoub, group president of Chalhoub Group, write in a Fortune opinion piece.