Cydni Tetro spoke at a recent BYU-Idaho Business and Communication Forum, and she has quite the decorated career.
She is a three-time CEO and has started up and sold multiple of her own businesses. She is a former Disney imagineer and CIO of Swire Coca-Cola.
In an interview with BYU-Idaho Radio last Thursday before her forum talk, Tetro said she made sacrifices at work to make time for her family amid all her business and career responsibilities.
“Balance is a little bit of a misnomer. You don’t really find balance. What you figure out are your priorities,” Tetro said. “You make tradeoffs based on those priorities. Life’s busy. I decided early on when my kids were young that it was going to be really important for me to be super involved and available and at the things they were doing.”
Tetro says she has taken many redeye flights from business meetings to her house and back to be with her family.
She says being with her family took priority over additional career success.
“Maybe I didn’t make as much money as I could have at that moment, but I decided being there for my kids and my family was more important,” Tetro said. “I’ve really tried to tailor the opportunities that I’ve taken and the way that I work in such a way that I could show up at every soccer game and every soccer tournament. I’ve taken thousands of calls from soccer fields, and I’ve just made that my priority.”
Tetro says it takes a lifetime to figure out what someone wants to do, and that many times, people will find opportunities they didn’t know existed as they move forward.
“I’ve taken the philosophy of ‘go as far as you can in moving forward and doors will open and some will close and you will be led to do the thing you’re supposed to do,’” Tetro said.
Tetro says the students at BYU-Idaho today are more than capable of making their dreams a reality.
“You can do anything that you believe and want to spend your time doing,” Tetro said. “Don’t be fearful of all the change in the world. You have a lifetime to figure things out, so do great things and have the courage to just jump in, and because you do that, opportunities will come to you and doors will open and you will find your path.”
To listen to the full forum talk, click here.