It’s difficult to forge friendships with employees of a rival company in the business world. So what happens when your rival’s employee also happens to be your sister?
Such is the case for Jamila and Denise Cutliff. Jamila, an MBA graduate from 2005 who now works for PepsiCo, is the regional finance manager for the $750 million business. Her sister, Denise, who graduated in 2006, works as a human resource manager for competitor General Mills. But that doesn’t seem to threaten their bond.
“We are both very competitive, especially working for rival competitors in the grocery stores,” says Jamila. “But we are very close personally. We talk frequently and give each other advice. Because we’re not in the same function, we have an opportunity to coach each other.”
Even though the sisters’ time as MBA students overlapped for a year, their different emphases kept them from attending classes together; Jamila focused on marketing and supply chain, while Denise studied organizational behavior. Still, Denise says her older sister helped her prepare for graduate school.
“My sister played a role in sending me to graduate school, while I was finishing my theater degree,” she says. “She helped me know what to expect. Because I’m a very structured person, I like to know what to look forward to before I start something; she helped me with that. We also lived together for a year. It was great to spend more time living together before we went our separate ways.”
Besides having the MBA background, the sisters are alike in many ways. They both served missions for the LDS Church (Jamila in Hawaii; Denise in Spain), and they both had to adjust to different climates after graduating and moving away from Provo (Jamila lives in Alabama, while Denise currently resides in Wisconsin).
And the Cutliff sisters aren’t the only business-minded people in their family. They are third-generation business school graduates, with a father who earned an MBA and a MAcc from Central Michigan University and a grandmother who used her business degree to manage a store in the early twentieth century.
“Not only can the two of us speak ‘business lingo’ with each other but also with our father,” Jamila says. “It’s nice to have someone in the family who can understand what you do on a day-to-day basis.”
Despite the family ties, each sister is loyal to her brand.
“I’m a Frito Lay enthusiast,” Jamila says. “If you go into my pantry, you will find it filled with its products.”
And no family relationship will change that.
