Vivek Parthasarathy: The growth strategy starts in the field
When asked about a typical day for him looks like, he says, “My job is to listen to what our customers are saying through our [brands] and field teams, look at where the market is going, and stitch those two pieces of information together to figure out what makes sense for us to grow.”
This approach is the result of a career that has moved between technical work and business leadership. Vivek began as an electrical engineer, designing hardware and software for communications devices. After earning his MBA from Chicago Booth, he joined Johnson Controls, where his work included consulting, Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A), and Profit and Loss (P&L) management. He later ran a building-products startup and grew its revenue from about $10 million to $40 million before the company was sold. Before Legence, he spent nearly six years leading Industrial M& and Ventures at Ecolab.
At Legence, he comes back to one advantage: durable client relationships inside our brands. Those relationships give teams a clearer view of what customers trust them to do today and where another Legence team could solve the next problem. “The secret sauce of Legence is really at the [brands],” he said, pointing to teams with long records of success in their local markets.
Vivek spent much of 2024 and 2025 working through the IPO readiness from an operating standpoint for Legence while he was still relatively new to the company. It gave him a compressed view of the business and required close work with internal colleagues and outside advisers. “Going public is one thing. Staying public is a totally different ball game.” Quarterly performance, consistency, and operating discipline became harder requirements, not abstract goals.
Aside from work, Vivek plays tennis with his daughter and hikes or camps with his family. He reads history, science, and exploration, and visits museums when he can. The curiosity is consistent with his work: understand how something arrived at its current state and look closely at the evidence.
He joined Legence because the company was in development. He could help build the foundation, see the effect of his decisions, and work with people whose judgment he respected. His advice for people thinking about their own next move is less polished than the usual career script: do your current job well first.
“As you grow in an organization, it becomes less about your accomplishments,” Vivek said. “It’s about how do you enable other people to be successful.”
