Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) CEO Lisa Su said she built her career by following advice she received as a young engineer at IBM, where an executive urged her to stop avoiding complications and run towards the hardest problems.
Su Learned To Chase Hard Problems
Su, now one of the most prominent leaders in the semiconductor industry, has said that IBM executive John Kelly gave her a lesson that shaped her path.
"I was given a piece of advice when I was a young engineer at IBM that has really stuck with me. Someone told me, ‘You should run toward problems,'" she recalled in an Austin Woman profile. "If you're going to work on something, work on something that's really important."
That mindset later drew her to AMD, a company that had fallen behind its rivals and faced doubts about its future when she joined in 2012. Speaking at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's commencement in May 2025, Su said Kelly told her to "run towards the hardest problems," because that is where people find opportunity, learn fastest and grow.
"When I joined, it was clear the company had a mixed track record. But I saw the potential, the people, the vision and the opportunity to help lead a company that mattered … It was actually my dream job," she said.
AMD Turnaround Began With Risk
Su and her family immigrated from Taiwan to the United States when she was a child. The daughter of a bookkeeper and mathematician, she grew up in Queens, New York, took apart and repaired her brother's remote-control cars, and later graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1986. She attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she earned bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering.
Before AMD, Su worked at Texas Instruments Inc. (NASDAQ:TXN), IBM and Freescale Semiconductor. AMD says she became president and CEO in 2014 and later chair, leading the company's transformation into a high-performance and AI computing player.
Huang Also Values Difficult Lessons
When Su became CEO of AMD in October 2014, the company had a market capitalization of roughly $2 billion, with its stock trading at around $3.28 per share, according to a CNBC report. Today, AMD stock trades at over $500 per share, with a market capitalization of more than $841 billion according to Benzinga Pro data.
Su's view echoes that of Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ:NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang, her first cousin once removed, who often frames pain, setbacks and hard technical problems as the source of resilience. Huang has said innovators must be willing to fail and learn from difficult experiences, a philosophy that, like Su's, treats trouble as the training ground.
Benzinga Edge Stock Rankings indicate AMD stock has a Momentum score in the 98th percentile and a Value score in the 3rd percentile.
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