For Sasan Goodarzi, the current chief executive of Intuit, powering prosperity has long been his mission.
The Tehran Iran born executive, who grew up in Orlando, Florida and currently resides in San Francisco with his wife and children, has successfully led each of Intuit's largest businesses over his 14 years of service.
Goodarzi was named CEO on January 1st, most recently acting as executive vice president and general manager of the company’s Small Business and Self-Employed Group. He had previously been in charge of Intuit’s Consumer Tax Group, was the company chief information officer and general manager of its ProTax unit.
Prior to joining Intuit, he was employed by Invensys, the global provider of automation, transportation and controls technology. He’s also held several senior leadership roles at Honeywell. The electrical engineering graduate of the University of Central Florida also has a master’s in business administration from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
For a long time, becoming the CEO of a company was the only goal Goodarzi was focused on. In a recent interview with Forbes, he said getting that title was all about proving to himself than he can get the job. But over the years that desire dissipated as he realized it was more important to do something he loves and to make an impact that truly improves the lives of people around the world. “I believe my ambitions changed for the better because when you are too focused on a role, you may not always do what is necessary to achieve the role,” he told Forbes.
The Intuit CEO is known for placing a lot of focus on the company culture. It’s the reason he came back to Intuit after a brief departure years prior. “Intuit has consistently been recognized as a top place to work as our culture carries in every office with every employee that we have, regardless of how new they are,” said the executive in the interview. “We are a people-first culture, as everything we do is designed to inspire, motivate, and enable our employees to truly do their best work. When you ask our new employees what they love about their first hundred days, they will immediately talk about how kind the people are, people’s laser focus on the customer, and how anyone will do anything to help you achieve greatness for your customer. No one has a personal agenda, as the common goal is to help one another and deliver for customers.”
Under Goodarzi’s helm, Intuit has been doing well. For its fiscal fourth-quarter which ended July 31, it was able to post a narrower loss than Wall Street was expecting and revenue that was higher. For the quarter, the loss was $0.09 a share, better than the $0.14 share loss Wall Street expected. Revenue of $994 million topped the consensus for sales of $961 million.
