A slice of wisdom from Russell Weiner ‘90

Russell Weiner ’90, CEO of Domino’s, has been getting a lot of screen time recently.

In one of the company’s new ads, Weiner goes undercover as a focus group moderator to get feedback from New Yorkers on Domino's newest hand-tossed pizza, “the pizza you won’t believe is Domino’s.” At one point in the ad, everyone in the room talks about what they don’t like about Domino’s pizza. Pan to Weiner, looking dejected. Of course, they come around when trying the new pizza and are bowled over to realize it’s also Domino’s. 

Weiner isn’t afraid to go against convention, and he encouraged students to do the same in a Sept. 20 career talk on campus, challenging students to take risks and explore possible careers until “you find what energizes you.”

For Weiner, that career was marketing. But he didn’t discover that until finals weeks during his senior year as a government major, when he ended up helping a fellow senior with a last-minute marketing paper. 

“I finished my finals and my roommate still had two papers to write, so he offered me $20 to help him write one,” Weiner said with a smile, adding “it’s been a while so I think it’s OK for me to talk about this.”

Reading that case study and writing that paper was life-changing. He turned down law school, moved home, “pissed my dad off” and eventually landed a job as an administrative assistant at an ad agency.

“I loved it, and I was good at it,” he said. “I started out at the bottom, but it turned out OK.”

Today, Weiner leads Domino’s, which operates 21,000 stores in 95 countries and is the world’s largest pizza company.

The Sept. 20 talk, sponsored by the College of Arts & Sciences Career Development office, was set up as a conversation between Weiner and Shelby Williams ’25, a government and College scholar major in A&S and a past chair of the University Assembly.

Williams led Weiner through discussions about the transformational changes he directed at Domino’s, the company’s embrace of technology and his decision-making processes. They also talked about life lessons and the elusive work-life balance.

“The business was not doing well,” Weiner said about 2008, when he joined the Domino’s marketing team. “We were faced with having to reinvent the company, starting with fixing the pizza.”

After improving the product, his team needed to somehow tell people the old pizza wasn’t great and encourage them to try the new product. This process was delicate and handled carefully, with lots of focus groups and backup plans.

“If you want to make a big difference, you can’t be afraid to jump out of the airplane, but you need to have a parachute,” he said.

Weiner was promoted to president of Domino’s U.S. operation in 2014, then chief operating officer before earning the CEO title in 2022.

“There’s never a typical week and that’s what I like about it,” Weiner said, comparing his job to his education in A&S. “I think a liberal arts education gives you the best breadth for those decisions that could be coming up anywhere in your career.”

Weiner said he’s always thinking of the thousands of people who work in Domino’s pizza locations around the world.

“Our motto is ‘if you don’t make, bake or take it, you support those who do’,” he said. ”I have the utmost respect for the people who work in our stores. Their hard work pays all our salaries. Our job is to support them in doing theirs”

One way Domino’s tries to stay ahead of competitors is by embracing technology, Weiner said. Its online ordering system alerts a store when a customer logs in and “we are making that pizza before you hit order,” he said, using a AI as a guide. The company also employs “runners,” team members that carry the order partway so that drivers don’t have to waste time coming back to the shop for every order. 

“Technology makes your life as a customer better and the lives of our team members better,” Weiner said, adding that customers get a hotter pizza in less time and drivers make more deliveries (and consequently tips) per hour. 

At the end of the day, Weiner said he wants to know that the decisions he made were the best thing for his company.

“I’m always going to make decisions that someone disagrees with,” he said. “I have to be OK with people not liking every decision.”

Throughout his career, Weiner said, he’s tried various fields and roles until he found the right fit. “It’s just as important to cross something off your list [because it’s not for you] as it is to check a box,” he said. “don’t be scared if you keep crossing things off. Your career is what you’ll be doing for the rest of your life.”

Similarly, as a student, he took a variety of classes, including some in business and statistics. “The only time someone looked at my GPA was for my first job,” he said.

After Weiner’s talk, students were treated to pizza and drinks in Klarman atrium. Weiner’s favorite? Pepperoni pizza, New York style.

“But the lava cakes, now those are a secret that some people don’t know about,” he said. “We have a store in the office, and I’ll go down and take one out of the freezer and just it eat it frozen.”