How Helen Vaid is Leading Pizza Hut's Digital Transformation

Born in a small village outside of Delhi, Helen Vaid grew up in a tight-knit family where her parents taught her that anything was possible as long as she worked hard. Her father was a professor at a local university, and together with his wife, nurtured Vaid in delivering quality work at all times. This upbringing developed her competitive mindset, where she leaves no stone unturned. 

Today, Helen Vaid is the Global Chief Customer Officer for Pizza Hut, which serves and delivers more pizzas than any other pizza restaurant company in the world. With more than 16,000 restaurants in more than 100 countries, Pizza Hut is the biggest pizza restaurant in the world and was founded 58 years old in Wichita, Kanas, when two brothers borrowed $600 from their mother to start a pizzeria. 

Vaid oversees the transformation of Pizza Hut's in-restaurant and digital customer experience, and her mission is to provide the best customer experience and better pizza for all customers. She is building a digital ventures team based in London, while also concurrently managing another in Dallas, where the global leadership of their parent company, Yum! Brands, Inc (NYSE: YUM) is based.

She is also leading the international e-commerce, technology and operations business. In this newly created role, Vaid's responsibilities are to build digital assets for Pizza Hut, including point of sales software, kitchen management, website, and other operational tools.

Before Pizza Hut, Vaid was the Vice-President of Digital Store Operations and Experience at Walmart. Based out of San Francisco, she was responsible for the growth, profitability, traffic growth and conversion of the second largest online retailer site in the United States. Prior to Walmart, Vaid was with Hewlett-Packard (HP), where she managed the global business for Snapfish. In her time at Snapfish, Vaid played an entrepreneurial role, where she scaled the business and developed Snapfish's global presence, growing the brand from 1 to 13 countries during her nine-year tenure. Vaid was previously also the Sales and Marketing Director at Servecast Ltd., a wholly owned streaming media provider; where she served clients including NADAQ, Logica CMG, and EMAP. 

Throughout the course of her career, Vaid had the opportunity to work in Russia, United States and the United Kingdom. Despite being an immigrant, she never felt like an outsider. Shebelieves that it is important to earn the right to belong anywhere one goes, and tries her best in every opportunity she is given. Vaid has an entrepreneurial mindset, where one has to break rules and think differently to succeed. She also believes that a startup environment is about how you operate and take risks. 

Author's note: This is a series of articles featuring 1st generation and 2nd generation entrepreneurs in America to showcase their immigrant story, and how they worked hard to start their businesses. The author himself is an immigrant entrepreneur who moved to the United States from Singapore.