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After spending the entirety of her life living and working in the Dominican Republic, four years ago Genoveva Alba moved to Pittsburgh and started a new life in corporate America.
Though the location was different, Alba continued her career in finance at Eaton, where she has served as a lead analyst, accounting manager, and FP&A manager. She even had a unique opportunity to be interim plant manager and campus controller for the electronic manufacturing company for more than a decade before her transfer to the US.
In January of this year, Alba was promoted to CFO for one of the company’s joint ventures and began her seventeenth year with the company. Following a 2017 merge, Eaton Cummins Automated Transmission Technologies was formed. This 50/50 partnership focuses on producing and marketing industry-leading, heavy-duty automated transmission technologies for medium- and heavy-duty commercial vehicles.
“I have over-succeeded my expectations by far more than what I thought I was going to be at this point in my career,” Alba explains. “I never thought I would be living in the US and at a company that I’ve been in for seventeen years.”
As the CFO for the joint venture, Alba is leading the development and implementation of financial strategies that align with the joint venture’s overall goals. This includes budgeting, forecasting, and financial modeling to support the venture’s financial health and sustainability. She collaborates with leaders from both companies to arrive at the best financial decisions and be the best business partner for her general manager.
“I’m taking the position that is best for this joint venture as opposed to one of the parents or the other,” Alba says. “The opportunities are immense. The things I have had the experience of implementing already are looking at the whole scope of the business and selling the fact as why my recommendations are the ones to follow. My responsibility is to drive us to the future growth we want.”
Alba’s career choice was not surprising to those who were around her growing up.
“I always knew I wanted to be in finance,” Alba shares. “Normally, everyone goes into finance as an afterthought—if you like numbers, you could be in finance—but in my case it wasn’t. My dad has always been a successful entrepreneur, with a lot of companies he created from scratch, but he was always unsuccessful in maintaining those businesses through the long term. So, since I was very young, I noticed something was missing in his management and his ability to interpret the financial conditions of the company to redirect and adjust the strategies to achieve success.”
She understood what that missing link was at only twelve years old, and then she started planning for a career, studying accounting and learning what she could about the industry. Alba had her first job at seventeen, working at one of the largest beauty salons in the Dominican Republic. From there, she worked at a furniture store and learned valuable lessons in finance and management at both jobs.
“Then I got my first career-wise-role at Nestlé, where I started to work in standard costs and understanding the whole process of how to cost products,” the CFO recounts. “After a year and a half, I was selected for the SAP implementation team for finance and controls.”
Alba was always very focused on being a plant controller, so even though there were other opportunities available for her to grow at Nestlé, the position at Eaton was more in tune with her goals, and she quickly landed her next job.
“I am a believer on creating your own destiny and really affirming your way throughout the process.”
Genoveva Alba
That was in 2008, and she spent thirteen years working for Eaton in the Dominican Republic before transferring to Pittsburgh.
“I didn’t want to move from DR, I had been asked in the past years if I had interest in transferring to the US, but that was not in my plans. I created a great support system with my family and I valued that immensely, but in 2021, I got a call about a dream role as director of finance, so I had a difficult conversation with my family, and we made the decision to come,” Alba explains, noting her two kids had yet to start high school, so it seemed like a good time to do it.
The transfer was a bit challenging because when she came, there were a lot of difficulties because of the US still recovering from the pandemic, which made it difficult for Alba to get all the needed setups in the US: The social security office had very limited appointments, the driver’s license offices were had limited accesses, bank accounts needed to be set up, and even the processes of purchasing cars and furniture for their homes came with a lot of setbacks and long lead times.
Knowing what it takes to come to a new country and find success, Alba now passes her knowledge and experience on by empowering her colleagues who are making the same international transition.
“One of my coworkers and friends who came to the US about the same time also suffered through the process so much that we created this support system for anyone else who would come here,” Alba says. “That has been very beneficial for the people who have come after us. I don’t want anyone to live through the same lack of information that we had.”
In the past four years, the community at Eaton of those who came from outside the US to live in Pittsburgh has grown larger.
“We have a great community who support each other,” the CFO says. “We talk about the best places to live, restaurants and things to do in the city, and we’ve created a very fun community for ourselves.”
Alba shares that she’s been creating vision boards well before they have grown in popularity as they are today. This approach has helped her be very clear and focused on her career and the goals she sets for herself.
“I am a believer on creating your own destiny and really affirming your way throughout the process,” she notes.
The greatest qualities of Eaton that the CFO highlights are the incredible culture they have created, doing things right, with ethics, and focusing efforts creating an inclusive and diverse workforce where all employees can grow.
“Everybody has an opportunity to rise to the level that they want, and for me, that is super-important,” Alba says. “I’ve never felt that the company has limited me because I am Latina or a woman, and that’s why I am proud to be with the company.”
