Beth Wozniak had already distinguished herself in her 25-year career at Honeywell by 2015, when Pentair CEO Randy Hogan hired her as president of a key company business line. Less than three years later, Pentair’s board decided to spin off its electrical business, and Wozniak became the inaugural CEO of nVent.

Total revenue for nVent reached $2.2 billion for its first year, 2018. “Our longer-term goal is to get to $10 billion,” Wozniak said during a recent Twin Cities Business interview in the company’s boardroom in St. Louis Park. Based on nVent’s rapid growth, the $5 billion revenue mark could be reached in 2026 or 2027.

Now a veteran CEO who also became nVent’s board chair in 2023, the southern Ontario native continues to lead strong growth by quickly introducing new products to the marketplace, making strategic acquisitions to expand the company’s portfolio, and providing solutions to customers that include data centers and utilities.

In a nutshell, nVent connects and protects critical electronics and electrical systems in the industrial, infrastructure, data solutions, and energy markets. For example, its products ensure that sensitive electronics and data communication equipment aren’t exposed to environmental hazards. About two-thirds of nVent’s revenue comes from its systems protection business segment, while the remaining third comes from the electrical connections segment.

As a girl, Wozniak competed on her high school swim team, excelled in math and science, and went on to get a bachelor’s degree in engineering physics. She also earned an MBA from York University in Toronto.

That academic background placed Wozniak in a strong position at Honeywell, where she could leverage her engineering expertise and build her resume. She started working for Honeywell in Toronto before taking positions in Montreal, Phoenix, and, in 2002, Minnesota, where she stayed until 2015. She got operational experience, ran businesses, and did M&A work. At Honeywell, she says, “I learned a lot about world-class capabilities.” She worked in two of Honeywell’s four main business lines—aerospace and automation and controls.

At nVent, Wozniak leads a global company with more than 11,000 employees. It employs over 2,000 people in Minnesota and is growing in the state. While 300-plus people work in its corporate office in St. Louis Park, nVent has a strong presence in other Twin Cities suburbs, with facilities in Dayton, Anoka, and Blaine.

By 2025, Wozniak had nearly doubled nVent’s revenue since it became a freestanding company in 2018. Sales reached $3.9 billion last year. In May, nVent reported record sales of $1.2 billion for the first quarter of 2026. Wozniak also announced that nVent was boosting its full-year guidance. It now anticipates sales growth of 26 to 28% for 2026.

When Pentair spun off its electrical business and nVent was created, Wozniak says it was clear that the company had strong product brands and great capabilities. “We just lacked a growth strategy, and we lacked a focus on driving execution,” she says.

Wozniak wants to serve rapidly growing sectors. “At the time that we spun, our complete data center business was less than $100 million [a year], and today it’s $1 billion,” Wozniak says. Today’s data centers require high-capacity cooling solutions, which nVent delivers. “Heat is the enemy of electronics,” she says, an insight that helped nVent expand its capabilities in data centers.

“We developed a broader portfolio of solutions to meet some of the demand and different needs of customers,” Wozniak says. “It was a lot around product development, building out a new lab capability, building modeling competencies, building out a center of excellence in India, and expanding our manufacturing footprint.”

“Beth’s got a very strong innovation DNA that she’s put into the company.”

—Greg Scheu, nVent director

Wozniak and fellow board members also were eager to grow the company through acquisitions. In 2024, nVent completed the acquisition of Trachte, a Madison, Wisconsin, manufacturer, and in 2025, purchased a division of Georgia-based Avail Infrastructure Solutions. “Those two acquisitions strengthened our position in power utilities,” Wozniak says.

While expanding sales in high-growth infrastructure businesses—data centers, power utilities, and renewables—Wozniak was taking steps to exit nVent’s thermal management business. That occurred in January 2025, when Brookfield Asset Management paid $1.7 billion to buy the portfolio. That business entailed electric heat management, such as floor heating and industrial heating.

Wozniak’s goal was focusing nVent’s product line on electrical connection and protection. In closing out 2025, Wozniak says, nVent had expanded the portion of its product portfolio devoted to high-growth infrastructure companies. “We’ve completely replaced all the earnings that we lost with the thermal deal. We grew 30% last year,” she says.

Sara Zawoyski, nVent’s president of systems protection and a former CFO, has worked closely with Wozniak since she arrived at Pentair in 2015. Zawoyski cited three overarching reasons for Wozniak’s success.

“It starts with her bold vision and clear strategy and the way she communicates that to the organization, which is inspirational and motivational,” Zawoyski says. Next, she believes the company’s culture is a differentiator. “Beth really sets the tone for nVent. She embodies and exemplifies our values. That’s customer first, accountability for performance, innovation, adaptability, positive energy, respect, teamwork, and absolute integrity.”

Finally, Zawoyski says, Wozniak expects continuous improvement across the business,  supported through Wozniak’s curiosity as an engineer and her desire to promote a learning culture. “It allows us to continue to challenge each other and bring new ideas to the table.”

Greg Scheu, who held leadership roles in the electrical and automation industry for more than 40 years, joined nVent’s board in 2021. Scheu notes that Wozniak has been savvy about building internal capabilities and acquiring companies that will foster outsize growth.

“We’ve made six acquisitions in five years, with each of those taken very carefully with the proper discipline and homework,” he says. “Beth’s got a very strong innovation DNA that she’s put into the company. It’s not just to acquire companies, but continue to create new technologies and new products.”

Wozniak has accelerated the pace of introducing new products to the marketplace. “Now it takes us less than a year to launch a new product,” she says. In 2026, nVent launched a record 86 products.

Wozniak is proud of nVent’s diverse workforce and leadership structure, and believes diversity has enhanced her company’s performance. Her nVent board consists of six women and four men and is racially diverse. Her executive team is evenly split between men and women. Wozniak stresses that she wants employees who have varying work, cultural, and geographical experience, because that brings rigor to product development discussions and other aspects of nVent’s business.

“What we do well is we come together to solve problems,” Wozniak says. Instead of assigning blame, the emphasis is on finding solutions and getting better as a company. That’s “why we attract great talent and why people want to come to work here.”