A Breakfast Invite Built a CEO Alliance Worth a Quarter of EY's Revenue

By Olivia Hart

Roughly 25% of EY's $57 billion in global revenues last year came from work generated through alliance and ecosystem partners, CEO Janet Truncale said on stage at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit — and one of the firm's client relationships traces back to a breakfast table.

Lumen Technologies CEO Kate Johnson approached Truncale at a Business Roundtable event a few years ago, when Truncale was eating alone and new to the top job at EY. "I sat down next to her and I said, 'Will you be my best friend?'" Johnson said. "I was looking for connection so I could have a better day."

Truncale agreed on the spot. She recalled Johnson showing her where to place her name tag on the table as "everybody rushes in to put their name tag somewhere early."

Did the friendship change anything concrete?

By Truncale's own account, it changed how she operates at such gatherings. "In the last two years, I've frankly tried to pay that forward, so when there are new CEOs, I try to reach out and say, 'hey, I've just been through this.'"

The relationship stayed private enough that colleagues initially believed the two women didn't know each other — until EY won a deal to help transform Lumen's network inventory. The friendship, in other words, preceded the contract rather than the reverse.

That distinction matters at a time when women's share of C-suite and board roles has stalled below 30%, according to Fortune's reporting. Both Johnson and Truncale describe themselves as introverts.

What does Johnson say actually drives the partnership?

Johnson was quick to separate sentiment from strategy. "Liking each other isn't nearly as important as respecting and trusting each other's capabilities," she said. "I'm a capital allocator. I allocate human and financial resources, and there's no way on earth I'm ever going to have enough of either, so I partner for expertise."

That is a CEO acknowledging scarcity — of talent and of money — as the operating condition, not abundance. The partnership with EY is framed as a rational response to that constraint.

Truncale made the broader case. "As a leader, you have to be really comfortable with what you are good at and partner to gain expertise. That is not a sign of weakness, it's a sign of strength," she said. "Those who figure out how to combine those capabilities with confidence are the ones that are going to reach their ambition sooner and further and grow faster."

The caveat: neither executive quantified how much of the Lumen–EY relationship rests on personal trust versus commercial fit. The 25% alliance revenue figure covers EY's entire partner network, not this deal alone.

Who else is leaning on networks?

The summit produced a cluster of executives making the same argument from different angles:

• Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber said corporate boards value not just your skills but your network.
• Sam's Club CEO Latriece Watkins said: "when I feel most powerful is when I see the people I've invested in make moves."
• Olivia Walton is investing $100 million in partnerships aimed at halving America's maternal mortality rate, telling the audience that "everybody wants healthy families."

That is philanthropy, procurement, and talent development all running on the same premise: relationships are infrastructure.

Johnson writes about the human side of leadership in her "Daring Diaries" blog on LinkedIn. The summit's remaining sessions include fireside chats with ADP CEO Maria Black, Flex CEO Revathi Advaithi, and Silicon Valley veteran Marissa Mayer.

The unstated risk in all of this: partnership-driven revenue concentrates power in whoever holds the relationships. Truncale's pay-it-forward habit — reaching out to new CEOs — suggests EY intends to keep building that pipeline.