- Union Pacific CEO Jim Vena started out as a teenage laborer making mere dollars a day, maintaining tracks. Now he’s earning over $17 million at its helm. And as his company plans to become a railroad empire by acquiring rival Norfolk Southern for $85 billion, Vena’s secret for success hasn’t been reading management books or nabbing a top mentor. Instead, he tells Gen Z to have curiosity and grit.
America’s dream of having a transcontinental railroad is finally speedily heading down the tracks, with Union Pacific planning to acquire Norfolk Southern—two of the country’s largest railroad companies—in a $85 billion deal. For Jim Vena, the CEO of Union Pacific, this deal is just the latest part of a 40-year climb up the railroad ladder.
Vena got his start in the late 1970s as a teenage laborer at Canadian National (CN) railway—likely earning just a few dollars an hour. Over time, he worked his way up in the field to brakeman, conductor, locomotive engineer, trainmaster, and superintendent.
And he’s consistently told the next generation of workers the secret to having success like his isn’t in an MBA or finding a brilliant mentor: It’s grit, curiosity and attitude.
Just yesterday, he shared his simple career advice for Gen Z: “Stay curious, embrace challenges and always lean in.”
Learning the power of hard work and perseverance traveling across North America is something that likely became invaluable to Vena once he jumped over to the corporate marketing and sales divisions of CN. By 2013, he had been promoted to chief operating officer before retiring in 2016.
But after being called out of retirement to serve as Union Pacific’s COO in 2019 and being named CEO in 2023, he echoed:
“From a very young age, I learned the importance of grit. I know railroading firsthand… I spent many nights away from home, with an unpredictable schedule, in unrelenting weather and extreme conditions,” he wrote to his new colleagues.
“You can count on me to be frank, thoughtful, nimble and resilient. I won’t mince words when the truth must be spoken. I will ask a lot of you—and I will demand even more from myself.”
Fortune reached out to Union Pacific for comment.
Attitude over aptitude for success
Vena’s view that having the right mindset can do wonders on one’s career is something that other top executives have harked on as invaluable advice for Gen Z.
That includes Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, who said that controlling one’s attitude can make a “big difference” on the path to success.
“An embarrassing amount of how well you do, particularly in your twenties, has to do with attitude,” Jassy told LinkedIn.
For Cisco’s chief executive in the U.K., Sarah Walker, having a good attitude is the No. 1 green-flag trait she looks out for when it comes to hiring and promotions: “You cannot teach positive attitudes and engagement and energy,” she told Fortune.
Even Walker’s predecessor, David Meads previously echoed to Fortune that “EQ is at least as important as IQ.” The now EMEA chief at Cisco stressed: “You need that EQ to be able to read the room and understand what’s being said by what’s not being said.”
Keeping the frontline worker in mind
Vena always had a railroad company at the top of his paystub—with a total compensation package reaching over $17 million last year alone, according to the AFL-CIO. However, sticking to the industry that he knows has played to his advantage as a leader. In fact, never forgetting his roots and making decisions with those on the front lines on the tracks has been one of his priority mindset.
Shortly after becoming CEO, he recognized that he wanted to turn Union Pacific into an organization focused on down-top decision making.
“You can’t have nine levels—from the CEO to the people who actually do the work—and expect that the message is clear, the decisions are made clear and there isn’t some hiccup. … I want to drive it so that we have way less layers,” he said during Union Pacific’s third-quarter 2023 earnings call.
“I want decisions to be made at the local level — and the lower the level, the better,” Vena added to Progressive Railroading in 2024.
It’s a mantra that is shared by many business leaders, including one that’s been learned from billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
In an interview earlier this year, Coursera CEO Greg Hart told Fortune that his time working with Bezos helped him understand the value of trusting employee decisions.
“Pushing decisions down as close to the customer as possible was certainly something that I learned from Jeff,” Hart said. “The fewer decisions that have to go to the CEO, the faster the organization will move.”
For Vena, the most decisions that come across his desk, the better. After all, in his experience the best insights don’t come from the boardroom, but rather the rails.
