Corporate America has long been drawn to the self-made executive narrative. But Curtis Campbell, the new CEO of H&R Block, tells his version with a realism that gives it unusual credibility.
Campbell, who grew up in a small Southern town and became the first in his family to attend college, traces his rise to a combination of luck, tenacity, and strong mentorship. The answer sounds straightforward, yet it reveals a view of leadership grounded in endurance and self-awareness rather than corporate mythology.
Campbell readily concedes that intellect alone does not determine who reaches the corner office. As he says, “There are a lot of people in that room that are much smarter than I will ever be.” Career progression, he says, emerges through persistence, learning, and a willingness to seek guidance before it arrives on its own.
His advice to younger professionals reflects that belief. He encourages them to identify colleagues with specific strengths and ask for their time. Someone who excels in presentations, leadership, or communication may offer lessons that are more valuable than a formal development program. “If you find somebody who has a superpower, they’ll love to talk to you about it,” he says. In his view, those conversations can help ambitious professionals recognize patterns in how strong performers operate and apply those lessons to their own careers.
Campbell is also describing a workplace reality in which deeply human feelings, including fear of rejection, intimidation, and reserve, can quietly shape a career. Those impulses are familiar to almost everyone, yet they can still become barriers to advancement when they keep capable people from pursuing the conversations and relationships that might move them forward. “That’s what makes a difference between somebody being caught in mid-level management and getting to higher levels of the organization,” says Campbell.
He is equally clear that visibility carries weight only when it rests on strong execution. Performance comes first, and reputation follows the quality of the work. “You can’t put yourself out there and expect people to take a meeting if you don’t perform well,” he says. His standard is exacting and elegantly simple. Whatever your job may be, do it exceptionally well.
That ethos becomes more vivid when he describes the examples that shaped it. Campbell points to his mother, who worked as a janitor, and says the principle applied to her work just as surely as it applied to his own. Excellence is not situational, he says, nor is it tied to title. He carried that same standard into his early years as an engineer, where he distinguished himself through the quality of his work before others took his larger ambitions seriously.
In the end, Campbell’s ascent story rests on a simple hierarchy that places performance, persistence, and earned credibility first. “My mom was a janitor. Be the best janitor on the planet. I was an engineer. I had to be the best engineer in the company,” he says. “If you can do those things, people will take your meeting.”
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