David A. Ciesinski (MSIA '96)
President, CEO & Director of Lancaster Colony Corporation,
President of T. Marzetti Company
A prominent C-suite executive, David Ciesinski (MSIA ’96) is a forward-thinking leader who measures his success by more than just the bottom line.
“If you're a leader you work at the nexus of two really important things,” he explained. “One is to focus on accomplishing a mission (and that's easy), but the other – and I think this distinguishes leaders from managers – is a moral obligation to uphold the dignity of every single employee.”
Ciesinski has advanced through a distinguished career from Bronze Star Army First Lieutenant to leader at H.J. Heinz and Kraft, culminating in his current role as president, CEO, and director of Lancaster Colony Corporation and president of wholly-owned subsidiary T. Marzetti. A $2B manufacturer and marketer of specialty food products for retail and food service, Lancaster Colony operates 13 production facilities in seven states and employs 3,400 people. While at the helm, Ciesinski nearly doubled the size of the organization.
Recently, he shared his leadership insights with the Carnegie Mellon University community as part of the Tepper School’s W.L. Mellon Speaker Series. After a welcome by undergraduate business student Emma Shirzad and opening remarks from Dean Isabelle Bajeux-Besnainou, an inspiring discussion was moderated by Blake Rodenberger (MBA ’25), president of the Tepper School Veterans Association.
Early in the conversation, Ciesinski stressed the importance of fostering employee growth, both for individual as well as organizational benefit.
“If you really want to accomplish anything great you need to remember first and foremost that you're in the people business and it's about those relationships,” he said. “I fundamentally believe if you want to help a business grow you have to help the people in that business grow as well. When you engage their hearts and minds and do it authentically, it just unlocks magic.”
This attitude extends beyond the individual to the group, toward creating a positive and healthy company culture and monitoring effective team dynamics. Ciesinski underscored that organizational culture begins with the leader and should be built on trust, transparency, and honesty.
“What kind of culture do you want to create for the people that work around you?” he challenged the audience. “If you have trust and honesty then I think you can create collaboration and achieve performance – and that performance will drive results.”
He went on to describe foundational qualities of the employees that fit best into the values he’s fostered – respect, the courage to speak one’s mind, humility, and the inner desire to better oneself. Humility, he pointed out, is a key to growth. “If you don’t have humility, I’m not sure you can be truly open-minded and therefore learn and grow.”
Importantly, he extends this emphasis on personal dignity and growth to one of the most difficult professional situations. “If you're really committed to helping somebody grow it may mean saying, ‘Hey, I want to help you grow here but you have talents and gifts that just aren't a perfect fit with what we’re doing,’ and being willing to have that conversation with them courageously.”
Ciesinski then described a crisis that tested everyone to their limits. In 2019, the company was hacked with malware that “locked us out completely.” True to form, he relied on teamwork, from impromptu triage with leadership to company-wide meetings which he held from atop a table – the model of transparency and humility. It took six months of hard work, but they recovered. And in a quirk of fate, by 2020 they were in-the-cloud and working in a more distributed way – and consequently well-prepared for the impending COVID lockdowns.
Ciesinski also spent time highlighting Lancaster Colony’s emphasis on resiliency and succession planning, as well as their recent innovations, focused “less at this point on AI and more on improving manufacturing systems.” They continuously examine enterprise risk and redundancies, including systems, manufacturing, and increasingly supply. “It's a vital part of what you need to do running a business,” he observed. “We live in a complicated world.”
Ciesinski himself remains focused on the future, including that of his team. “You’re always going to ask yourself what sort of machine capacity do we have, can we keep up with demand, etc…but it's equally if not more important that you look within your team and ask, ‘Do we have the right capacity and capability to meet the evolving needs of the business?’”
In closing, Dean Bajeux thanked Ciesinski for sharing his wisdom, presenting him with a plaque of appreciation as the audience applauded in agreement.
Beginning in 2006, the W.L. Mellon Speaker Series has provided an opportunity for students to interact with global leaders, CEOs, and management experts. As part of this visit, Ciesinski also met with faculty, administrators and a small group of undergraduate and graduate students to offer his industry insights and career guidance.