President and CEO Corey Watton is Fusion’s guide for strategic direction and achieving long-term goals. A finance leader with decades of experience, he is always striving for excellence and building internal resources that support growth and a strong internal culture. In this article, Corey explains his path to CEO and how being an approachable and relatable leader has served him well in his career.

Can you describe your journey to becoming the president and CEO of Fusion?

I'm a corporate finance guy by trade. Growing up, I always knew I loved business, and I loved numbers, so I put those passions together and worked in public accounting and then corporate finance for a long time. Then 13 months ago, Fusion’s founder Sam Wageman asked me if I wanted to step up from the Chief Financial Officer role and lead the organization as its President and CEO and, it’s been a tremendous 13 months to say the least.

After just over one year as CEO, what has been your biggest takeaway?

The importance of listening has been lesson number one. I will tell you people always said that, and I don't know if I believed it to my core, but now I do. I have done more listening and less talking in the last 13 months, and that has been a huge benefit to me. Lesson number two is that leading an organization that is people-centric is so much fun. It can be challenging, but it's really meaningful at the end of the day.

What are some of your big priorities here?

My priority is to build a framework of fiscal responsibility here at Fusion. We didn’t necessarily have a ton of processes around where our resources should be allocated and what our priorities were. There is a whole planning process of what would be the most impactful thing to the organization and how much in resource do we have to put behind that? That's been a real focus for me. I was really fortunate to help lead the company next to our prior CEO. He brought me into a lot of conversations, a lot of decision making, and that really equipped me for this role.

Can you tell us some things you’ve been passionate about since you stepped in the Fusion doors?

The culture and philanthropic things we do are so near and dear to my heart. Some of the best times that I've had here at Fusion have been at places like the Stephen Center, QLI, and Habitat for Humanity. Or things like the tornado cleanup effort that we helped with in April; that’s when you really get to see people roll up their sleeves, show care and compassion, and get to know them on a different level. I’m also a big fan of Fusion’s Wellness Program. The great thing about that program is that it isn’t just physical wellness. It's also financial and emotional wellness. Work is hard and life is hard. If we can be a help to people, that's a huge win.

Explain the work of your teams and how they impact the Fusion mission.

I lead our executive team, which is a room filled with hard-charging, passionate, intelligent folks leading their specialty areas for the common goal. I pride myself in building teams where I'm not the smartest guy in the room, and that room is a clear-cut example of that. Those folks are wicked smart, all have business acumen, great communication skills, and awesome interpersonal skills. Then you layer on their area of specialty, and you've got a top-flight team. Keeping them harnessed in one direction is my challenge, and it's one I don't take lightly. It obviously gets challenging at times. There are competing interests and only so many resources to go around. My role with that team is cheerleader, resource allocator, and mediator, if need be. I’m there to show the vision of where we want to go as a company and keep us on track for that.

What does “Refresh Healthcare” mean to you?

I would say Refresh Healthcare is taking so much of what we've already built and making it better. We want to make it better for our clients, better for our travelers, and better for our internal folks. Elevating healthcare to a level where we are like we're the envy of other competitors in our space. That's a lofty goal, but it's one that I'm just not going to stop at until we get there. We've got all the pieces. I know we do. It's just putting them in the right place and then putting our foot on the accelerator.

Pretend you’re talking to someone who wants to be a CEO someday. What advice would you give them?

The number one thing I would tell anybody is to continue to work hard, build relationships, do things the right way, and stay true to yourself. Sprinkle in a little patience, and you're going to get to where you want to be. There's hard work involved. There's doing things you don't like doing. But I firmly believe that if you want something, and you're willing to work hard and bide your time, good things will happen.  I always wanted to be a CEO. I just didn't think it was in the cards for me when I took the job here. I thought I could ride off into the sunset as CFO at Fusion and that would be a really great professional life. Lo and behold, the opportunity presented itself, and I'm more than ecstatic to lead this company.

What’s your philosophy in leading Fusion and its people?

I'm just being myself. People often tell me, “It's so great that you're genuine and that you're honest and transparent. You just seem like a real person.” Well, I hope they like that trick because it's the only one I've got. I want to be honest with people. People want to know where they stand, whether that's good or bad, and sugarcoating it doesn't solve anything. Just be yourself, work hard, and stay humble.