The new CEO of one of Nevada’s best known companies — gaming equipment manufacturer IGT — says he and his team are only on chapter 1 of the story about the company’s return to prominence.
IGT CEO Hector Fernandez was selected for the job in December 2024, but had to wait an entire year to take over because of a noncompete agreement he had as CEO of his previous employer, Las Vegas gaming equipment manufacturing rival Aristocrat Gaming, a subsidiary of Australia’s Aristocrat Leisure Ltd.
That whole year of not working gave Fernandez an opportunity to address other things in his life, reflect — and plan for the challenge of bringing IGT back from the global gaming conglomerate run by Italian executives from its London headquarters to a new Las Vegas entity that’s still famous for producing the 30-year-old classic Wheel of Fortune slot machines.
“I remember thinking when I had to sit out a year, because I’d never not worked, I was like, ‘This is going to be horrible.’ And it was the first month. It was pretty bad,” Fernandez said in an interview at IGT’s southwest Las Vegas headquarters.
But Fernandez said he got through it by embracing three things he felt he needed to do better.
Getting fit
“I got physically fit,” he said. “Part of doing this job is hard, and you have a lot of work dinners and things like that. But because I had the time, I got physically fit, which is really important.
“The second thing is I got mentally fit. As you run a business, you’re on the go all the time. And it can be a very reactive role because it’s the issues you’re facing today.”
Because Fernandez had the time, he was able to research and plan for the future.
“So I spent the whole year essentially working out, and then I would have these blank pieces of paper that I would tape on the wall and I would write down ideas, and I would write thoughts down, and I would do a lot of analysis on the industry,” he said.
“I could read anything I wanted still. And I formulated the plan, the strategy, and the execution for this job. I couldn’t compete, but I could use my brain. That’s what I did. And then the last thing I did, as I call it, I got emotionally fit.”
The emotional fitness piece involved dedicating time to his family members.
He went on one-on-one trips with his daughter, his son and his wife. Then, he explored some of his past.
“I went with my two sisters and I took us back to Guatemala, to all the little towns we’d never been to, to where our parents grew up. And then we did some family vacations,” he said. “The emotional piece of it allowed me to have this reset moment around prioritization. So one of the things that I feel like I’m much better now and I’m pretty ruthless about is prioritization. Because you realize you can get sucked into work all the time, but you have to prioritize the things that are important.”
Importance of family
The connection to family is extremely important to Fernandez, who credits his mother with instilling in him the drive he needed to become educated and to be a successful businessman.
“My mom created this vision of the art of the possible,” he said. “She would drive us around with her friends who had a car to ritzy neighborhoods, and she would say, ‘Do you want to live in that house?’ and I could see in the backyard they had a water slide. And I thought to myself, ‘My God, did we win the lotto?’ That may have been the first time I thought about gambling. ‘Is that what just happened here?’ And she said, ‘No, no, no, this is a place where you could live one day.’”
The reality was that Fernandez’s family were typically poor immigrants and had no car. The principal at the public school he and his sisters attended recognized them as bright students and, with their mother, worked to get scholarships to attend a private school. But to get to school every day, they had to ride and make three public bus transfers to get there.
“I dreaded taking the bus. Dreaded it. I dreaded going to the private school. Dreaded it. But for me, it was a means to an end,” he said.
College life
It paid off.
Fernandez’s good grades enabled him to win financial aid to attend Claremont McKenna College, a small Southern California liberal arts school that has a reputation for being one of the toughest to gain admittance. He studied economics with a minor in accounting and government and then received an MBA from the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business where he also became a certified public accountant.
Early in his career, Fernandez held senior-level positions at Deloitte, Procter & Gamble, Amgen and Western Digital.
In November 2018, Fernandez left Western Digital in Irvine, California, after a four-year career there to become the chief financial officer of the Americas for Aristocrat in Las Vegas. After spending some time as president of the Americas, Europe, Middle East and Africa for Aristocrat, Fernandez was named CEO there in March 2022. After nearly three years doing that, Apollo Global Management, which became the new owner of IGT in July 2024, came calling.
The previous owners of IGT, key players in the Italian lottery business, announced in February 2024 that they were going to spin off its non-lottery business and merge it with another Las Vegas gaming manufacturing company, Everi Holdings. The new IGT-Everi blend was going to be based in Las Vegas under CEO Vince Sadusky and the lottery business was going to become a new entity overseas.
But about a month after the spin-off announcement, Apollo Global, the parent company of The Venetian and Palazzo, agreed to pay more for the new company and closed the deal. Fernandez resigned from Aristocrat knowing he had a one-year sit-out to complete.
Now that that’s over, Fernandez can begin writing the new IGT story. He gathered IGT employees for town-hall-style meetings.
“So in the opening town hall, one of the things that we talked about was we are writing a novel together and we are on Chapter 1,” Fernandez said. “So the novel has not been written. The introduction has been written and it is essentially Apollo buying two-thirds of the IGT public assets and putting them together.
“That’s kind of the intro of the book. And we talked about that we’re not going to try to replicate a culture where any of us have worked before, but we have this true unique opportunity, which is such a cool job, to build the culture we want.”
Five C’s
Fernandez told employees he didn’t want a remake of what IGT did 10 years ago, but to install five C’s in the business.
“It’s very simple,” he said. “Culture is No. 1. Capabilities is No. 2. Content is No. 3. Commercialization is No. 4. And cash flow creation is No. 5, in that order, by the way.”
Nailing down company culture comes first and Fernandez has some ideas about what that is.
“The simplest way I think of defining culture is when you wake up in the morning and you think about going to work, what is that first feeling and emotion you get?” he said. “Is it a feeling of dread? Is it a feeling of anxiety? Is it a feeling of anticipation? Is it a feeling of excitement? I have this rule that if three out of the five days you dread going to work, it’s time to find something you need to do. Life’s too short to dread going to work.”
Just because IGT isn’t setting out to be like it was a decade ago doesn’t mean it’s going to throw away past success.
Wheel of Fortune
Fernandez admitted when he was with Aristocrat he coveted IGT’s Wheel of Fortune slot machines.
“I think Wheel of Fortune has a long runway,” Fernandez said. “And I think as a company, we need to do better on innovating Wheel of Fortune. There’s so much opportunity there. I was jealous of Wheel of Fortune when I was in my prior place. I wanted it. I saw the value. And now I have a responsibility of making that, envisioning that dream and making it true.”
Fernandez believes Wheel of Fortune remains successful because the game show is still televised and it hasn’t changed formats over the years, even though it changed hosts. IGT didn’t see a dropoff in popularity when Pat Sajak retired and Ryan Seacrest took over as host. Slot players still love co-host Vanna White, and she continues to interact with slot players on some occasions. Because of its long run, the game has legions of fans of all ages, allowing its popularity to endure.
His Southern California roots has led him to become a sports fan of L.A. teams — the Rams, the Dodgers and the Lakers. He also loves the Olympic Games and, despite not being a big hockey guy when growing up, has become a fan of the Vegas Golden Knights.
While Fernandez is intense in the workplace, he still views family life and giving back to the community among his best attributes.
“I’m very committed to helping my family and other people as well,” he said. “So I really am big about giving back, not just money, but time and effort and energy.”
Fernandez recently was elected to the national board of directors of the Alzheimer’s Association and is a board member of the American Gaming Association and the Kravis Leadership Institute at Claremont McKenna College. He regrets that his mother didn’t get a chance to see all of the successes that she helped spur in him.
“My mom passed away four years ago of early onset Alzheimer’s, and she didn’t get to see this,” he said. “But I do believe she sees from above. I think about her and think about the responsibility that I have to her.”
Contact Richard N. Velotta at rvelotta@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3893. Follow @RickVelotta on X.
