Ellsworth Creamery CEO Credits Carlson for Career Pivot

Part-Time MBA, Full-Time Work

Pieh started Carlson’s Part-Time MBA program in 2009. He was still working full-time for Ameriprise Financial in Minneapolis, his first job out of undergrad. The MBA, Pieh admits, “was a little bit of a check-the-box thing” as he continued to build his career in corporate finance.

Balancing work with graduate school wasn’t easy. He remembers the busy days: “I’d ride my bike from my house five miles to downtown for work. I’d get a $5 footlong at Subway and eat half of it for lunch. Then, I would ride my bike to Carlson for night class, and I’d eat the other half of my footlong for dinner, trying to save a few bucks. After class, I would ride my bike home. That was a 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. day, two days a week at least.”

Amid these hectic workdays, Pieh had some other life challenges arise as well, he says. It all brought him to a point where he felt he needed to shift his career.

“I knew I had to make a change, and I had one semester left in my MBA program,” he recalls. “For my last class, I did a study abroad in China.”

Life-Changing Travels

The study abroad through Carlson Global Institute involved a market research project for Best Buy in partnership with Tsinghua University in Beijing. This cross-cultural work — plus his first major international experience — was pivotal for Pieh as he continued to feel the need for a change: “I was really reflecting on, ‘What do I want to do next in my career?’”

He decided to go back to China. After he finished his MBA, a family friend helped him connect with a small American-owned furniture business in the Xinjiang Province. Pieh worked there for about two years. “I took a hiatus from the corporate life,” he says.

Pieh’s experience from his Carlson study abroad helped him along the way. “There’s a certain amount of risk-taking to step back from a corporate job and a career. Having that familiarity from the study abroad helped me think, ‘It’s going to be OK. I can do something out of the box,’” he says.

Getting Into Dairy

When Pieh returned to the Twin Cities in 2016, he became a financial analyst at Land O’Lakes, which led him to the dairy industry. He credits his MBA for helping him land that role after his corporate hiatus. “I had the network and the credibility through my MBA,” he says. “It allowed me to step away for a few years and then come back and still have that.”

Troy Heifort, advanced analytics and insights director at Land O’Lakes, hired Pieh. “This position involved supporting our C-suite and managing critical responsibilities for our CFO,” Heifort says. “Kevin stood out immediately for his combination of strong financial leadership and his approach to problem-solving. He demonstrated a rare ability to look at business challenges from multiple strategic perspectives, and he became an indispensable colleague.”

A few years later, Pieh transitioned within Land O’Lakes to a finance lead position in the dairy foods division. “I just loved it — the culture, the team, the business model,” he says. “Land O’Lakes is one of the largest cooperatives in the U.S. dairy, ag, and feed business. So, I learned a lot about the cooperative model and the dairy foods business.”

Still, after a few more years, Pieh felt pulled to his next career move. “I was really looking for a stretch opportunity,” he says.

After talking with recruiters and interviewing, he ended up with two job offers — CFO at Ellsworth Cooperative Creamery, or a director of finance role at a private equity firm in Minneapolis’ North Loop. He had to choose between the corporate finance life he’d once aspired to and the dairy cooperative industry he’d come to love.

“To me, it was a no-brainer,” Pieh says. “I came to Ellsworth.”
 

Ellsworth Cooperative Creamery

From day one, Pieh has felt the impact of Ellsworth’s legacy. “We’re known for our cheese curds, and that’s just super fun. There aren’t too many companies where the product itself is synonymous with the brand — when people think of cheese curds, they almost immediately think of Ellsworth cheese curds,” he says. “But we do a lot more than that.”

One of Pieh’s goals as CEO is to leverage Ellsworth’s strong brand recognition beyond cheese curds to its other dairy products. He also aims to increase the brand’s name recognition outside of the Midwest. Additionally, he worked in his first year as CEO to revamp some of the company’s organizational systems to foster continued growth for years to come.

“Over the past several years, we’ve grown to a size where we can’t continue to operate the same way that we have in the past,” Pieh says. “So, one of the things that’s been really exciting over the last year is that we’ve been working on laying a foundation for our systems, our practices, our policies and our standards so we can continue to operate at the level we are, but then also set ourselves up for growth down the road. And there’s so much opportunity and potential to do that.”

Ellsworth Chief Information Officer Roger Kannel believes in Pieh’s vision and leadership. Though the two started working at Ellsworth around the same time, Kannel has a longer history with the company — his family shipped milk to the creamery for about 70 years. With Pieh at the helm, Kannel believes Ellsworth will continue to grow and thrive.

“He always tries to do the right thing for every situation and for his team,” Kannel says of Pieh. “He’s very thoughtful, very caring, very collaborative. He’s very genuine.”

Always Learning

Pieh’s first year as CEO reminds him a bit of his busy days at Minnesota Carlson. He’s been learning a lot about leading different parts of the business all at once.

“At Carlson, I gained an understanding of all of those different areas and how they operate,” he says. “I already had my career in finance, but then in the MBA program, I had these opportunities to work on a marketing plan, to do strategic operations, and so on. It gave me general knowledge across multiple different functions that has helped me be successful in working through those things here at Ellsworth.”

Still, there’s nothing quite like learning on the job, and Pieh says he’s only become more passionate about the cooperative dairy business as he’s settled into his role as CEO.

“This last summer, I got to visit more than 30 of our farmer patrons who ship to Ellsworth. It was just really fun to hear their stories and how long they’ve been doing this,” he says. “I’ve learned something new about our business almost every single day in the last year, and I’m always learning. We should always be learning and growing.”

Photography by Pat Vasquez-Cunningham