For This Distinguished Business Speaker, Desire to Learn is a Driving Force

Published on: April 14, 2025

For Melissa Smith, the chair, CEO, and president of WEX Inc., a desire to learn has been a major driver of her success in business. That’s among the insights she shared during a Distinguished Business Speakers Series held at Husson’s Gracie Theatre on April 9, 2025.

“In their careers, people too often make choices based on money,” said Smith. “Being really open, understanding what’s important to you, and being around people that you want to be with is really important.”

After growing up on a farm in rural Maine and going to college, Smith joined Ernst & Young in 1991 as an accountant. In 1997, she began working for WEX, an international payment processing provider based in Portland. Four years later she rose to CFO of the company. She became CEO in 2013.

That rapid promotion through WEX led Smith to work with a number of different managers, and she focused especially on the ones who tended to say “no” to anything she did. She posits that working with challenging higher-ups can improve your abilities. 

“The magic of that is that you [had] to really think through your position when you went in there,” said Smith. “You knew that you were going to get some kind of pushback, so you had to be prepared with your counter. Even though it felt difficult at the time, it actually was a really good learning experience.”

Smith looks back on her early life in business and fast ascension through WEX with a sense of pride, but believes that as you move up, you need to start giving others the same chances you got.

“Early in your career, you’re very interested in establishing yourself, and I always wanted to be the person doing it. Give me the hardest thing you have. Give me your biggest problem that we have,” said Smith. “And then over time, you get into this arc where it becomes much more about how are you developing other people, and giving them the shot at doing the hard things”

Overall, being supportive towards your co-workers is the most important aspect of a healthy business in Smith’s eyes.

“I find great satisfaction out of allowing [employees] that ability to shine,” said Smith. “Let people have the flexibility to show what they can do, and give them the space to do it in their own way.”

— Rin Gately