Aggie Legends Podcast S1E5: Devina Rankin ’98

DEVINA RANKIN:

If you’re not great to people and kind to people, then I’m not sure that the work matters. On the other hand, you can be the nicest person in the world, but if you don’t put the work in, I don’t know that you’re going to see the reward associated with that kindness.

BEN WIGGINS:

Welcome to Aggie Legends, where we talk with founders, CEOs, and other successful Aggies about the lessons in leadership they’ve experienced throughout their careers. I’m your host, Ben Wiggins, Mays Full-Time MBA Class of 2018, and today we are here with Devina Rankin. Devina, thank you for joining us today.

DEVINA RANKIN:

Thank you so much, Ben.

BEN WIGGINS:

It is our pleasure, truly.

Devina is the recently retired CFO of Waste Management, where she spent 23 years. She’s also a cancer survivor, philanthropist, and visiting lecturer at Mays Business School, where she co-teaches the popular CFOs and Financial Leadership course. She was recently named a 2026 Mays Outstanding Alumnus.

Now, you grew up in a military family. If you would, tell us about that and how it influenced your path to Texas A&M, which obviously has a rich military history. But tell us about that road, if you would.

DEVINA RANKIN:

So both my dad and my grandfather are retired Air Force and spent their careers serving in the military, both here and abroad. I would just say that the lesson I learned from them that really made A&M resonate for me was self is below service and knowing that we’re all here to be providing some greater good and contributing to our society in a way that extends beyond what we see just right in front of us.

BEN WIGGINS:

Okay. What were the most immediate echoes of that that you saw on campus? I mean, there’s obviously the MSC and so forth, but were there any that are a little bit more off the beaten path?

DEVINA RANKIN:

You know, what’s really interesting is my dad retired when I was ten years old. We retired in a town right outside of San Antonio called Schertz, Texas, and it’s very much a military community. I knew, as someone who was going to be largely responsible for helping to fund my education, I needed to go to a public school.

I really thought I only had two choices: one in Austin and then…

BEN WIGGINS:

Which one is that?

DEVINA RANKIN:

Yeah, that other little school in Austin, Texas.

… and here. I was lucky enough to be invited by both schools during that summer before your junior year where you’re investigating and trying to learn and make this huge decision about where you want to be. I went to both campuses, and quite frankly, there was just no comparison. I remember stepping on this campus and feeling home. It was culture and community that stood out above all else.

Sure, the academics are going to be great at either institution, but it really was about the other education. For me, I felt that the second I came here, and it was the thing that kept me.

BEN WIGGINS:

What are your best memories or most striking memories of your experience at Texas A&M and at Mays?

DEVINA RANKIN:

Culture and community stand out.

You know, for me, I was in the PPA program, the Professional Program in Accounting, and I knew from the beginning that that was going to be important to me because I wanted to be a CPA and approach one of the big, at the time, big six firms. The PPA provided that pathway, so the professionalism of the programs that A&M puts forth really stood out.

But the other things that stood out were friends and the significance of the relationships that we were able to have with some of our professors. While Dr. Benjamin certainly stood out for me, the other one for me was Dr. Flagg.

I remember Dr. Flagg actually just retired here about five or six years ago, and I sent him a note upon his retirement just thanking him for the impact that he made on me. In particular, what I think he tried to get us to do is just be intellectually curious and thoughtful, not just read and memorize but actually learn. There’s a difference between taking a test and actually being able to have an engaged conversation about a topic. I think he challenged us to do that, and I’m all the better for it.

BEN WIGGINS:

One of the most impressive things that I think a professional or anyone can say, something that makes someone instantly rise in my estimation, anyway, is, “I might be wrong about this.” Like questioning what you talked about – critical thinking, the idea of questioning your own assumptions. I think the best professors teach us our own postulates about how the world works.

DEVINA RANKIN:

Yeah, you know, the words intellectual curiosity, I think, can be overplayed. But at the same time, they’re just so important. It’s the thing I would look for in interviewing a candidate for just about any role.

It’s one thing to think that you’re going to come in and follow a playbook or go by the rules of sorts, and you know the job description said, “I do this, this, and this.” I really want people who reach beyond the boundaries of this specific black and white that’s written. That was always something that served me well professionally, and it’s something that I think I learned here at Mays.

I look for it in the candidates that I work for in roles today or people I get the privilege of working beside on a board or something else.

BEN WIGGINS:

Appreciate you sharing that.

From here, your first job was at Arthur Andersen, and you were at the firm during the Enron scandal and the company’s subsequent unraveling. What was that like?

DEVINA RANKIN:

So I have to start by saying, to this day, I believe that when I left Texas A&M University, just like I felt like I picked the best university in the country to attend, I think I picked the best firm of the six to start my career with. I still think that today.

It was a privilege to be part of that firm, but it was almost heartbreaking to watch it unravel in front of me. I worked alongside so many great people, and certainly to this day. I know we’ll talk about it in a little bit, but the course I teach here on campus, we talk about the Enron era and what I learned at Waste Management and how Waste Management, Enron, and Arthur Andersen are just this interesting part of my story and my journey.

While there can be bad apples in a bunch, it doesn’t mean the whole bunch is spoiled. I think that’s what we got wrong with the benefit of hindsight and looking back at what happened with the unraveling of Arthur Andersen. I think we all know that now, but I think we had to extend ourselves into a place of consequences and deal with the significant lapses in judgment and ethics that happened at Enron and by some of the Andersen partners.

BEN WIGGINS:

What can you share about the mistakes that were made? Obviously, I mean, some of that is privileged, I’m sure. But for our younger listeners, perhaps, who might not be as familiar with the scandal and what happened, what did go so horribly wrong?

DEVINA RANKIN:

So, you know, I was a senior financial analyst-level kind of position. I wasn’t a partner, and I actually didn’t even work in the energy sector. I worked on the commercial side. What I experienced is very different from the people who were on the engagement.

What I can tell you is I talk to students all the time about this. If you ask me, as a finance professional and as a CFO, what the most important financial statement is, people often look at the P&L, and I actually think it doesn’t tell the whole truth. The cash flow statement is the one that tells the whole story.

I think we learned that during the Enron era.

BEN WIGGINS:

Okay.

Obviously, the core value of integrity was one that came into question at some point during the proceedings. Do you think that there were any other core values that perhaps were not being pursued as fully as they should have been?

DEVINA RANKIN:

Yeah. You always have to start and end with integrity. That is something that makes sure that when you put your head on the pillow at night, you know that you’re doing the right thing the right way each and every day, whether someone’s looking or not.

While I learned that there, I probably learned that from my parents and my grandparents beforehand. Unfortunately, people during that era got that the wrong way, and I can’t begin to understand their why. But I know for me, my why is always grounded in integrity.

The other thing that’s really important to me is humility. Humility is actually the thing that I enjoyed probably most about the culture of Waste Management, WM. If you think about the men and women on the front line at WM, they serve our communities, our neighborhoods, the places we live and work and play, day in and day out — largely unseen, largely unnoticed. They do that for us so that they make everything else we enjoy possible.

That humility is the thing that took me to WM, but it’s probably one of the things that I think was missing in the Enron and Andersen situation as well. If you do things the right way, you do them without ego and set all of those things aside. I think that was somehow lacking as they went through all of the decisions they were making.

BEN WIGGINS:

So humility was what got you to WM. What made you stay?

DEVINA RANKIN:

Opportunity and community again, and culture.

You know, at WM, we say that we really are like a family, and we talk about our culture being people first. We put our people at the front of the line because we know that when we take care of them, they take care of our customers, the communities they serve, and the environment. All of those things eventually benefit the shareholder. But when you live people first, you really do feel that.

You get to enjoy the community that you’re part of, and far and away, that’s the thing that kept me there. But I also saw an opportunity to contribute. The organization that I am leaving as I retire is better than the one I joined, and I’m happy to have been a part of that.

BEN WIGGINS:

And you did contribute. You became the first female CFO at WM and at a young age. What obstacles did you face along the way? Were there moments of doubt? Were there moments of frustration? What was that journey like?

DEVINA RANKIN:

Both. I would say that doubt and frustration kind of went hand in hand. I started in 2002 as a senior accountant who wrote the company’s financial statements and implemented new accounting pronouncements. You know, a lot of listeners may yawn at that point.

I did that work diligently and with a level of care and professionalism and discipline for eight years. I got to a point where I was frustrated because I felt like I was being overlooked for promotions. I was underappreciated and undervalued. I was a workhorse. I’ve always been a workhorse, and I’m proud of that.

But what I have to say is I want reward to be a strong complement to the extra effort that comes with the extra work, and I wasn’t feeling that.

So I started to look outside the company, which was a tough moment because I had invested so much and established so many great relationships. But I wasn’t loving my boss. We’ve probably all been there, and I needed a change.

In addition to looking outside of the company, I started looking for a job inside the company, too, because I knew that I had built credibility and a reputation and relationships. I wanted to preserve those things.

I spoke to someone who became a mentor, and we’re still friends to this day. She had a role within her organization that I thought I’d be great for, and I asked her what I needed to do so that next time it was open, I might be a viable candidate. She gave me a few suggestions, and we had a great coaching conversation in that moment.

The job was open six months later, and I was lucky enough to be the selected candidate. It really did change the course of my career in such a positive way. I went into the treasury organization. Instead of looking backward, I started looking forward. It was a more strategic role, something where I was involved in how we allocated capital to strategic investments, how we talked to the Street, how we engaged with debt investors and the rating agencies.

I learned so much in that time. That’s when I established a close personal relationship with then our CFO, Jim Fish. He’s now our CEO. We have worked together for about 15 years, and it’s been a really mutually beneficial learning relationship. We’ve accomplished a great deal.

BEN WIGGINS:

I want to go back to when you were talking about your frustration with the lack of rewards.

From an expectancy theory perspective, you know, you’ve got expectancy, instrumentality, valence. What were the elements of reward that you felt most frustrated that you weren’t getting? Was it financial? Was it recognition at the company meetings? Was it extra time away? Was it simply a promotion, a new title? I’m always fascinated by what motivates people, especially people in kind of early mid stages of career.

DEVINA RANKIN:

So, for me, it was never money, which is interesting to say. I had my student loans, I had car notes, but I think by that point I had paid those off and felt like I had found my footing financially.

For me, it was promotion and promotion relative to peers. When you look across an organization, it’s really important to feel like you’re being recognized for your contributions relative to those you work alongside every day. I often felt like the person I was working for at the time really liked the job I did in the role I had, and he wanted me to keep doing it. If I had been happy doing that for the foreseeable future and until he retired, I think he would have been really happy.

But I was ready to spread my wings and do something else because at some point, you don’t want to rewind and repeat a year over and over again. I had done it for eight years. I was ready to do something new and something new meant a step in a different direction. Hopefully a step that came with a bigger title, a title that I felt was more representative of the work I was doing across my peer group.

The other thing for me was the leadership development programs. The company had leadership development programs that I wanted to be a part of because that’s how you establish a broader peer group. At the time, I wasn’t included in those. It was because I was too busy.

Reward for good work is sometimes more work.

BEN WIGGINS:

No good deed goes unpunished.

Then what were some of the defining moments either where, looking back, you can say, “This was a moment where I changed. This was where some of the arc happened,” if you will? Or even at the time you recognized something’s moving, something just clicked. What comes to your mind from that perspective?

DEVINA RANKIN:

I’m a big believer in bloom where you’re planted. What I mean by that is you’ve got to do the job that you have really well to earn the next one. I was doing that.

The arc for me was trusting myself and no longer thinking it was okay for me to be a passenger on my career journey. I needed to be the driver. Making the decision that I wasn’t going to allow someone else’s decision about whether I was ready for a promotion to determine my future — I had to take that decision on my own shoulders.

I did that, and it made all the difference.

BEN WIGGINS:

Okay. Then a few years ago you were faced with a battle with cancer, and you took the same workhorse approach to that and thankfully beat it. What was that like? How did you get through that?

DEVINA RANKIN:

To tell a little bit of a story about how that happened, you know, it was post-COVID. It was July of 2022, and I was on a Teams call and getting ready for a long weekend. We were going to the river with my family, and I had some test results from a biopsy that I had just had and really had thought nothing of it.

While I’m sitting on this Teams call, I got the notice from MyChart, and I opened up those test results thinking it was going to be a green light. We can move forward. Instead of that green light, it was the most devastating news I’ve ever received.

BEN WIGGINS:

You found out you had cancer on MyChart.

DEVINA RANKIN:

On MyChart at 4:30 in the afternoon on a Thursday when the doctor’s office was already closed.

Yeah, it was tough.

BEN WIGGINS:

That’s so upsetting.

DEVINA RANKIN:

It was awful.

BEN WIGGINS:

I’m so sorry.

DEVINA RANKIN:

It was really, really hard. Thank you.

You know what, though? The news would have been hard if someone had called me, so I don’t know that the manner…

BEN WIGGINS:

They still should have called you.

DEVINA RANKIN:

They should have, but the manner of learning that I had cancer was not the bad part. It was learning that I had cancer in the first place. And you know what? What I did then is I chose to put one foot in front of the other. I chose to be a student of the disease I had just learned that I had. I chose to lean on my family, my loved ones, my friends, my wife, and say there is only one choice, and that is beating this. Whatever I have to do, we’re going to get to the other side.

The other choice I had to make in the moment, though, which is one that I think some people questioned, but I never did, was that I kept working and stayed in my role. I went to board meetings. I was on my earnings calls and didn’t miss one. Really, from most perspectives at work, I didn’t miss a beat.

When I look back on the why — why was that the choice I made? Anyone who’s gone through a cancer journey knows that your world doesn’t feel normal. Everything feels like it’s been stripped away. I love to travel. I love to drink great wine. I love to go to nice, fancy restaurants and have a nice dinner. I couldn’t do any of those things.

When everything that you love is taken from you in a sort of strange way, you look to hold on to something that feels normal. That’s what I was doing with work. It made me feel powerful in a strange way, and I needed to be powerful to overcome stage three cancer.

Losing your hair feels like you’re losing part of your identity. Just because I lost my hair didn’t mean that I lost my ability to show up in the office, get the job done, and serve our shareholders or our team members. That’s what I did.

BEN WIGGINS:

I’m not sure what the right words are at this moment. Thank you for continuing to serve in the way that you did. Obviously, you had to do what was best for you, and I’m glad you made a choice that felt authentic.

DEVINA RANKIN:

Thank you. I really need to highlight, in addition to Dianna, my wife, who was really my rock getting me through that moment, there’s an angel on this earth named Misty White. She was my nurse practitioner at MD Anderson. She breathed strength into me in every opportunity I had to meet with her.

She gave me what I still say to this day is the very best advice I’ve ever received. It’s not just personal advice, it’s professional advice. It’s that energy will breed energy, which means positive energy can breed positive energy, and negative energy will breed negative energy. You have the choice, so choose positive energy.

The resilience I had to show getting through my cancer diagnosis and all of the treatments and the surgery and everything I went through was tough. But we can do hard things. Choosing positive energy and being resilient came because I have a really great community that loved me and supported me. It’s also because I’m strong and capable and determined. I put all of those things together to get through it.

BEN WIGGINS:

Thank you for sharing that journey with us.

You now teach a class at Mays. Tell us about the decision to take that on alongside a busy career and personal life and so on.

DEVINA RANKIN:

Yeah, so, Dr. Sharp approached me and a fellow former student from the PPA program about an idea he had for a class that would take real-world experience from financial executives and bring it into the classroom for students who were going through the PPA program.

We sat down and brainstormed about how we could bring this idea to life, and we did just that. It’s been at least five years now, and I absolutely love it. It brings me so much energy, positive energy.

I had friends who were saying, “What in the world are you doing? You’re a sitting executive. You sit on a board. How do you have time for this?”

I think it’s important that we recognize that we make time for the things that we value and that are important to us. What I value is giving back and feeling like the university that gave me so much and a solid ground off of which to launch my own professional journey and career. I was ready to give back in a different way.

We all have the ability to give time, talent, and treasure. While I had given some of my treasure.I had written checks. I hadn’t been all that diligent about finding a way to give back my time and my talents. I feel like this class has done just that.

Every semester when I was driving in on a Tuesday from Houston, Texas, to teach this class for three hours, I would think, “Can you really do this again?” Particularly if I had an earnings call two days later. But when I tell you that the energy I am given from these remarkable and bright and smart and driven students pays me back tenfold what I give to this class. I enjoy it.

I firmly believe that our future is bright because these students are far more capable than I think I was when I was sitting in their seat.

BEN WIGGINS:

Gen Z is so polished.

DEVINA RANKIN:

It’s exciting. I’m very excited about our future. As much as Aggies lead today, Aggies are going to lead our future.

BEN WIGGINS:

Yes. There’s also the thing of if you want something done, give it to somebody who’s busy. I’ve found that to be true. Busy people tend to do things well, so thank you for giving back in this way. As we start to bring this to a close, what are your top leadership lessons for students and young professionals? What are your top leadership lessons for students and young professionals? What has surprised you? What’s subverted your expectations? What have you found to be, maybe counterintuitively true? Your top lessons in leadership.

DEVINA RANKIN:

The quote that I refer back to over and over again is from a wise man named Conan O’Brien. Not exactly where most people think you’re going for top leadership lessons, but it’s one that has stuck with me. It is, “Work hard, be kind, and amazing things happen.”

I couldn’t believe in anything more. You have to do both. Hard work is really, really important. But if you’re not great to people and kind to people, I’m not sure that the work matters.

On the other hand, you can be the nicest person in the world, but if you don’t put the work in, I don’t know that you’re going to see the reward associated with that kindness.Hard work and kindness are at the top of the list. Positivity is huge for me. You get to choose whether or not you’re a positive person and approach situations with positivity. That choice has to be made every single day in multiple moments.

Beyond that, gratitude.I certainly have gratitude for the strength and resilience that I learned I have from my cancer journey. I have gratitude for the fact that I found my way to WM and built a career there.

My wife and I contribute to another cause, the National Marrow Donor Program, formerly Be The Match. When Avery was 13 years old, we didn’t know who she was. But Dianna was called and told that she was a match for a 13-year-old girl somewhere in the United States with acute lymphoblastic leukemia and that her bone marrow could save her life. Dianna donated her bone marrow. Avery is now thriving, and she’s a mom. It’s been the most amazing gift to us.

I’m grateful each and every day for my own health, and I’m grateful that we were in a position to give when Avery needed Dianna so much. I now sit on the board of NMDP because I’m going to look for ways to continue their mission as best I can.

So really, I think those are your four words: kindness, hard work, gratitude, and positivity. I guess that’s five. But yes, you know, it’s those four key themes that really, I think are so important to your professional journeys and to how you approach life.

BEN WIGGINS:

Do you find that the gratitude makes it easier for you to find the positivity? What has been your journey with that?

DEVINA RANKIN:

I think that it’s really important to be grateful for what we have and recognize that someone will always have more or different. If you get caught up in looking at the comparisons, you’re really losing an opportunity to just really be beyond grateful, just humbled by all of the gifts that you have been given.

We all have gifts that need to be shared and there is no way to accomplish gratitude
without being a positive person. They really do go hand in hand.

BEN WIGGINS:

I love that. Was there ever a time in your career when these principles were challenged and you had to recenter?

DEVINA RANKIN:

You know, there’s always tough moments and tough times in our careers. I’ve talked about the tough times in my personal life, but I would be kind of glossing over things to ignore the tough days at work, and there certainly were some.

Whether it’s feeling undervalued or underappreciated or, you know, the finance folks are always, or generally, first in and last to leave. In our business, our drivers get to work at 2:00 and 3:00 in the morning. So I’m not beating them in, but I do beat most of the rest of the team in on a daily basis. It can be really hard to feel like the work is worth it.

As much as I try and live by those four key pillars, you have to remind yourself sometimes to plug into those instead of allowing yourself to be plugged into the negativity that can come when you don’t get the job that you thought you deserved or you don’t get the opportunity that you saw someone else be given.

We’ve all had those disappointments. There’s very few people who will navigate a career and get to, you know, this kind of a level without having some twists and turns or some, you know, some steps backward. But you can only move forward if you demonstrate a level of professionalism, courtesy, and thoughtfulness when you are faced with steps backward. We’re all going to face them. It’s how you handle them.

BEN WIGGINS:

What was the single hardest moment for you to do that?

DEVINA RANKIN:

We haven’t discussed this, but you did say in the intro that I am retiring from my role as CFO of WM.

That was such a bittersweet decision for me because I have thoroughly enjoyed my time with this great company and the team that I’ve built, the people I’ve worked alongside for 23-plus years. Making the decision that I had run the course and that I was ready to move on was a time when I had to really step back and reflect on whether I was making the right decision.

While I can’t in any way say that it was a step backward, what it was was a decision that meant that I didn’t know what those steps forward would bring me. I don’t know what my path will be from this point forward, and that’s scary, especially when you’ve spent your entire career really with one great company.

I think this life lesson, this professional lesson, is probably going to be one of the biggest ones that I’ve ever taken upon myself. I don’t know what it will teach me yet because I’m just stepping out now into the next chapter.

BEN WIGGINS:

Do you think you’ll be tempted to do something else? You seem like such an action-oriented person. I wonder how retirement will sit with you. I mean, we don’t know each other well, but is that going to be challenging for you?

DEVINA RANKIN:

Yeah. Retirement is not the right word for me. It is closing one chapter to open another.

BEN WIGGINS:

I see.

DEVINA RANKIN:

When I was in school, I always thought that one day I’d be a professor. Because I had so much in student loans, that just didn’t seem like the best option for me at the time. I needed to get to work so I could pay off some of the debt. Which I’m happy to say I did.

So what’s next? Am I going to spend more time in the classroom? Am I going to spend more time on boards? Am I going to spend more time in philanthropy and giving back? I hope the answer to a lot of those questions is yes. Will I reenter the corporate world? I don’t know the answer to that question yet.

BEN WIGGINS:

Okay. Fair enough.

Either way, thank you so much for the insights that you’ve shared with us today. We really appreciate the time and the wisdom.

DEVINA RANKIN:

Thank you, and thanks to Texas A&M University for giving me all of the opportunities that they gave so long ago and for continuing to build our future leaders.

It’s a great university. I’m proud to have been a part of it.

BEN WIGGINS:

On behalf of Mays Business School, I’m Ben Wiggins. We hope you’ll like and subscribe. Leave a comment if you have a moment. It really helps others find the show.

Here at Mays Business School, we’re building a better future through business, and we thank you for being a part of it.