Shelley E. Kohan (00:57)
Lori, I’m so excited to have you today on Lead Like Her. I’ve been watching you for years. I think I met you, I don’t know, has it been a decade ago? It’s been a long time. But welcome. ⁓ you actually began your career at Procter & Gamble, and you later served as chairman and CEO of MarketMax, which is a company that provides

Lori Schafer (01:07)
Probably, yeah. It’s a showing pleasure to be here.

Shelley E. Kohan (01:24)
retail planning and merchandising intelligence software. So I’d love to start the conversation with understanding how did you end up in retail tech and what appealed to you about CPG industry.

Lori Schafer (01:38)
Well, we’ll start with how I ended up in the CPG industry. And ⁓ I wish it was a more glamorous story, but it was ⁓ pretty simple. I majored in mathematical modeling, which today is called AI. And ⁓ back then it wasn’t called AI yet, it was operations research, but it was a serious math major with a ⁓ business.

as a second degree. so Procter & Gamble to a 21-year-old coming out of college paid great. No other way to say it. I had heard it was a great company to go work for, but I wasn’t thinking about CPG at the time. Once I got in, I fell in love with the idea of brands and

because it was something I could relate to as a consumer. And so from that standpoint, ⁓ I was very enamored with how do you bring something like crust toothpaste or tide detergent or, you know, one of the hundreds of other products to market and the rest is history. So that’s how I got into P &G. And very quickly into P &G, ⁓ it was at a time in the…

80s that I’m dating myself, but it was in the 1980s that the CEO of P &G was looking for young people. He picked four of us, I recall, that could build technology that would help P &G sell more products to retailers. Those were the early days of category management and it was direct product profitability and space planning and

those sorts of things, the very early days. And that’s how I got my start. ⁓ after that, I was recruited away to ⁓ consulting and software in retail, and the rest is history.

Shelley E. Kohan (03:51)
that’s amazing

Lauren. I have to ask you if you don’t mind answering this question. So four of you were recruited in. Were you the only female?

Lori Schafer (03:54)
Yes.

Yes, I was. I was the only female. And I was the, I was the youngest one. Cause I, at that point I was, yeah, I was 21. And soon to be 22.

Shelley E. Kohan (04:00)
Interesting. Okay. Wow, that’s…

That’s amazing. So when you were in school, did you have like this natural ability for like math and stuff? Like how did you like, that’s amazing that back then you kind of saw the future of where we’re headed. And I’m just curious, did you find that you had this awesome skillset in math modeling?

Lori Schafer (04:33)
Well, I have to admit that I majored in mathematical modeling because my father, who is an engineer, said, this is where you need to go. My brother was ⁓ in medical school. And quite frankly, was, you know, we can’t afford to pay your way to college. Because back then for females, it was still pretty much, you know,

I mean, I had plenty of people tell me I was going for an MRS degree, which I was not. ⁓ So I was very gifted at math, and I was very gifted at just being a quick study on things. ⁓ thankfully, my father just said, go here. I think computers are going to be the future, personal computing, and that’s really what happened.

Shelley E. Kohan (05:27)
I love that, Lori, that’s outstanding. And so when I think of ⁓ digital wave technologies, you’re the founder and CEO of that company now. And I think about you in the field, I believe you are so far ahead of innovation in terms compared to the retail industry, and you’re so far ahead in terms of thought leadership. How do you keep your team ahead of this curve?

Lori Schafer (05:52)
Great questions again. I do want to clarify, I’m one of the founders. I am the CEO. So it’s a great company. Digital Wave technology was named Digital Wave because just quick story and I’ll get to the question, but the quick story is that technology happens in waves. About every decade, there’s a major wave of

in the computer industry, software industry happens in waves. you had, first you had mainframes and you had mini computers and then you had ⁓ cloud, then you had ⁓ internet and then the cloud. And these were all big changes, mobile ⁓ and then AI really start taking off, generative AI. And now those waves aren’t happening in every decade. They’re happening now in a shorter and shorter frequency.

And so we named the company Digital Wave because we want to keep our customers ⁓ future-proof and ready for the next big digital wave. So that’s a little bit about that. One more time, what was the main question? Yeah, how I get prepared, how to prepare the team, right? Yeah.

Shelley E. Kohan (07:04)
Just how you’re… No, just how do even…

Yeah, how’s the team always like you

guys are so innovative. How are you getting them out there and how are they staying so innovative? How are they staying ahead of the curve in this now this every five year wave or three year wave?

Lori Schafer (07:21)
Yeah, it’s more like a couple years. ⁓ A few things. When we first started, the company’s not that old. ⁓ We’re very seasoned veterans in the industry, but I handpicked a team that is very innovative. And so the company’s about going on at four years old next month. And you’d think we’ve been around for a decade or more because we all come with a lot of strong

retail business acumen and also strong technology leadership. But when we started before the whole generative AI wave, and then shortly after we started, ⁓ OpenAI came out with ChatGPT and all of a sudden it took off. But luckily before all that, ⁓ I could see what was happening and

I actually went to a class at MIT for myself. So I would learn all this. And it’s like a two week class, know, work nights, weekends, that sort of thing. And it was so good, I thought, you know what? I’m going to put my whole leadership team through it. And I took the time and gave them the time to do that. And it was probably the best investment I could have done because it got everybody on the same page.

Shelley E. Kohan (08:24)
Love it.

Lori Schafer (08:47)
this is where the world is heading, this is what we need to do. And I give all the credit to the team, they’re very, very sharp people, but it formed that foundation they needed. So that’s one example.

Shelley E. Kohan (09:01)
Can you,

no, that’s great, I love that example. ⁓ Can you think about a time when you had to lead your organization through a significant change or massive disruption? I mean, I’m sure there’s a lot just because of the field you’re in, but does one come to mind specifically?

Lori Schafer (09:19)
Well, I mean, again, what we just talked about, leading a tech company is constant disruption. This is, it’s nonstop innovation. That’s the world we’re in. So pretty much everything we do comes to mind. I think of that MIT course, ⁓ that was certainly one where I knew if we didn’t ground everybody ahead of the curve, you know, we may not get the right ⁓

thinking to the market. ⁓ There’s been a number of things. mean, I have built several companies and from the ground up. So, you know, when you’re starting a company from scratch and you you are building and bootstrapping and I think that’s a very important point. Bootstrapping is not going out and saying I need to raise 30 million dollars.

Bootstrapping means prove it. Do the really hard stuff first before you ever raise money. And make sure you’re profitable. That’s hard. So that’s leading. That is, and that is every single day. you know, my first company, I ended up taking over the company. I was not the CEO, but the company had some difficulty, financial difficulty, and I stepped in and had to turn it around and then.

Shelley E. Kohan (10:30)
Yeah.

Lori Schafer (10:48)
get it successful and eventually we took funding. we first made sure it had a good healthy P &L before we ever ⁓ went to the next step. So I’m all about innovation and I’m all about making sure we have a healthy P &L and balance sheet.

Shelley E. Kohan (11:09)
a good way to go for sure. ⁓ Let me ask you about, so on your path to leadership, so I grew up in operations, to operations, and back when I grew up in the 80s I was at Macy’s, Macy’s West, but it, you know, I was one of the few females in operations, and I can imagine in engineering and tech you might have had the same similar experience. So it’s

Lori Schafer (11:18)
Mm-hmm

huh. Yep. Okay.

⁓ yes, absolutely.

Shelley E. Kohan (11:37)
Tell me what was it like being a female leader in your field? Was it a challenge?

Lori Schafer (11:43)
You know, certainly in the 80s and even 90s, it was a real challenge. I think it’s gotten a lot better. I’m not going to say that there’s still things you can see, but I have to admit ⁓ it has gotten better. I look back and I think about the first company. I was with one of our salespeople, and this is again, this is in the 90s.

We walked into a retailer to do a demonstration and I’m not gonna say who or where because that’s gonna bias things. But we walked in to do the demonstration and the retailer said to this account executive salesperson that I had with me, ⁓ you’ve brought her along, she must be really smart.

And I pulled him aside and whispered in his ear and I said, I’ll do the demo, you lead. And he said, okay, and we did. And I don’t care what role, I wanted to make sure we got the deal done. And so from that standpoint, I was the person doing the demonstration, the lady doing the demo, and my salesperson was… ⁓

my boss for purposes of this meeting and it worked beautifully. We got, we ended up getting the deal. I forgot all about the situation until probably a few months later and that retailer found out I was a CEO and they called and apologized. But I said, I said, I said, apologize. said, don’t apologize. It’s okay. You know, we do what you, my attitude is always do what you have to do.

Shelley E. Kohan (13:31)
What? my gosh, that’s amazing.

Lori Schafer (13:41)
Don’t get offended. You know, you have to roll with the waves or the world you live in. And you can’t get offended and you can’t get upset and you just have to say, how do we make this work? So that’s one example.

Shelley E. Kohan (13:56)
I love that,

the ego at the door literally is what you did. So I think that’s great. So you’ve been recognized as retail voice by NRF. You are a rethink retail top expert. You are Consumer Goods Technology Data Leadership Award. And you are also an honoree for Women of Excellence by the Path to Purchase Institute. So you have lots of accolades in the industry.

Lori Schafer (14:01)
Always. Always.

Shelley E. Kohan (14:25)
What are you most proud of?

Lori Schafer (14:29)
What I’m most proud of is my team and being able to build companies in a difficult industry from the ground up. It’s hard. ⁓ I have to say, and you need a great team of people. And I have to say the team, the team, the team, the The rest of the accolades are for the team.

I mean, it’s really about the company. It’s not about one individual.

Shelley E. Kohan (15:02)
And I’m going to add a descriptor to what you said about building companies. It’s not just you’re building companies, you’re building profitable companies. And that’s amazing. Yeah, it’s very hard. So as a prominent leader in the industry, how do you prioritize your time? And more importantly, how do you decide like which projects you’re going to work on?

Lori Schafer (15:05)
Okay.

It’s hard. Yeah.

Great questions ⁓ and I’ve as the company companies in this case digital wave now has grown quite a bit ⁓ As they grow it gets easier because you have to do less ⁓ And focus on the bigger things and if it’s innovation And or if it’s P &L That’s it if it doesn’t move the needle and it doesn’t help our customers

and it’s not something that’s differentiating, I’m the wrong person. So, I just keep those things right in focus and I try not to deviate at all. Because I get pulled into everything, but you have to be able to say no. Are we growing our business? Are customers happy? And three, are we innovative? And that’s where I play.

Shelley E. Kohan (16:26)
I love that. What I’m hearing from you, one, you have a very clear focus, which is outstanding. And I think that’s a great leadership skill. But also for students and young women out there, the other thing that’s really coming through is this financial acumen, which is so, so important in our field, in any field, but I think particularly in our field. ⁓

Lori Schafer (16:41)
critical.

Absolutely,

absolutely. And go ahead.

Shelley E. Kohan (16:52)
So,

no, you go ahead.

Lori Schafer (16:56)
I was going to say, I can’t stress enough for people coming, young professionals coming out of school. ⁓ It’s becoming, you can’t be everything, but to get to the top of a company, you really do need to understand how a company operates. And what drives revenue? What drives ⁓ profitability? Margin? How do you keep costs more efficient? Those kind of things.

Shelley E. Kohan (17:26)
Yeah. So now in our industry, it’s very easy to get burnt out. So I’m going to ask you, you have like specific strategies that you use to like maintain your wellbeing balance? I know you’re laughing because it’s kind of a joke for our industry, right? But you know, how do you do it?

Lori Schafer (17:39)
Alright.

Yeah, no, they’re all very good questions. I laugh too because I don’t think I’m the best role model. ⁓ I’m kind of driven. So I’ll start off by saying that. I do, you know, do I get burnt out on occasion? Yes. But what I really try to do, I’ve always used exercise, so physical fitness, as something that’s an outlet. I’m a very high energy person.

So I have to burn the energy some way. And that’s a good way to burn it if it’s not thinking about work. And then the second thing is making time for family. ⁓ look at, throughout my entire career, I’ve been very good at that. think, you know, now both parents of my parents are in hospice and I’m caretaking for them. And that is my first priority, work a second. ⁓

And between, you and I’ve had to prioritize throughout different, you know, between family, work, and physical fitness, caring for myself, those change at all times. And sometimes you just have to say, is one for the next few months, this is two. A few months from now, the other one may go one, the, you know, let’s say the personal caretaking might go to one, and work may go to two for a week, and then it’s gonna flip again.

But you just have to keep personal well-being, family, and your role, your job, as I think the three most important things.

Shelley E. Kohan (19:26)
Yeah, I’m sorry to hear about your parents.

Lori Schafer (19:28)
Nah, it’s hard, but you know what? I’m gonna give him all the love I possibly can right now.

Shelley E. Kohan (19:34)
Yeah, I like how I think ⁓ the change is important, that it changes all the time. It’s not like one set of priorities, ⁓ depending on what’s happening around you. Let’s shift gears and talk about employee culture. So how do you promote diversity and inclusion within your organization or the industry?

Lori Schafer (19:41)
It does.

That’s right.

Sure.

Again, I’m probably going to say an answer that you may not, I don’t wanna say you may not like, but you may, it might cause question. I don’t promote it. I get it. And what I mean by that is if you look at either of the two retail software companies that I’ve run, both of them look like the United Nations, literally.

And, ⁓ but it’s not by design. I really focus on hiring the best people for the role. And luckily in software, and it’s gotten better, certainly after COVID, companies can be, they can be a lot more virtual. ⁓ Take for example, in software development or IT,

You can have people from around the world and you get far better results by having people from around the world. And I don’t look at ⁓ race, gender, creed, ⁓ ethnicity, religion. I don’t look at that. But it’s ended up both times where when I am running the company, both times.

I have ended up with complete diversity and you get a much better result from that.

Shelley E. Kohan (21:34)
Yeah, definitely a richer output for sure with diverse mindsets. Yeah.

Lori Schafer (21:37)
Absolutely.

And I’m sure as we get big, you know, as you get bigger and you get over certain limits, HR has to watch for those things as well. I’m just saying personally, I’ve been blessed that I’ve been able to assemble a team that, you know, and you can look on our website and you could see the team is diverse. It’s ⁓ an incredible team.

Shelley E. Kohan (22:01)
Yeah, all right, so let’s talk about mentors and role models. So as you were going up through the industry, did you have any role models or mentors that influenced your leadership?

Lori Schafer (22:13)
I’ve always had mentors and I’ve always picked role models. Mentors are closer ⁓ to me. Role models, sometimes I watch people from afar and I say, I wanna be like this and I wanna be like this and I don’t wanna be like this. So I’ve had both, meaning role models as well as mentors. Mentorship, I have always believed

And maybe because I started in the industry so young that I don’t know nearly as much as people that have already been through the ropes. So for example, in building an enterprise software company, I think back to my first one, I knew what the customer wanted, but I didn’t know what enterprise software meant at the beginning.

I was like 30 years old. didn’t really understand that. ⁓ And I also didn’t understand retail enough. And I didn’t understand consumer package goods or consumer goods enough. So when I think about my first company, I said, okay, I’m going to go get a board of directors that can shape me to run this type of company. So who can I get?

that is one of the best people in enterprise software. Who can I get that’s a well-known retailer? Who can I get that’s a well-known CPG CEO? And I set my mind to it and all three of them came onto the board. So I had actually, this was a long time ago, I’m dating myself again, but that’s a great example. ⁓ I got the president of SAP who became the CEO of SAP.

that, you know, years later, and he taught me enterprise software. A wonderful gentleman. And I got a top retailer, retail CEO, and I got a top CPG CEO. And those three were my true mentors, not just my board. So that’s one example. But I always, to this day, I have great respect for individuals that are

Shelley E. Kohan (24:10)
Love it.

Lori Schafer (24:38)
further along than me in whatever I’m setting my mind to do. Doesn’t mean they’re older, although usually they are, but it doesn’t mean that necessarily, certainly in today’s AI world, but it does mean people that are stronger and have more wisdom in the areas that I feel I need to be challenged.

Shelley E. Kohan (25:02)
I love Lori that story and I’ll tell you why. It’s great leadership lessons because one, you actually identified maybe where your strengths were not. So for young people understanding, you have to understand where your strength, where you don’t have strengths. And number two, I’ve never heard of this, hiring a board to help you in the role of a company. I think that’s like outstanding.

Lori Schafer (25:32)
Well, it’s again, I was only thinking about how do we make this company great? And I’ll tell you one other quick story that that now former CEO of SAP story, wonderful gentleman, Leo Apataker. ⁓ Somebody in the US had said, ⁓ you know, I’ve heard of so and so ⁓ who is this fine gentleman, Leo. And ⁓

He understands all this and he understands enterprise software and he’s creative. And I said, where is he? Well, he’s in Paris. And it was Thanksgiving, I think of it this week, it was Thanksgiving. And it was 25 years ago, something like that. And I was determined that I’m gonna meet this gentleman.

sent him an email and I just said, here’s what I do, here’s who I am. If I ⁓ ever have the opportunity to be in Paris, I’d love to have you and I have a cup of coffee. And he wrote back and he said, that would be great. Well, I took that literally and I said, okay, well, he must mean that. And so I actually came back a few weeks later, Thanksgiving week, and I said, I’m going to be…

in Paris on such and such a date, which was Thanksgiving, which was my only day off, because I was running around the clock. And he said, OK. And so I flew to Paris to meet him so that on Thanksgiving Day was my day off. I met him. We connected. He said it helped me. And the rest was history. And I flew home. That’s my story.

Shelley E. Kohan (27:26)
god. I love

that. That’s very creative and I love the fact that you really went after that.

Lori Schafer (27:37)
It’s called, when you’re building companies from the ground up, it’s called survival. And he, to this day, has said, don’t, have, Lori has such high energy, she doesn’t have a dimmer switch. She’s either on or she’s off. And when I’m off, meaning I prioritize sleep, I prioritize health, and I prioritize family, I’m off. But I’m pretty much lit up most of the time from an energy standpoint.

Shelley E. Kohan (27:42)
Yeah.

that’s great. Okay, so now we’re in the favorite part of my interview with you and it’s called rapid fire questions. So I’m gonna throw some questions out at you and I want you to answer them quick, quick, quick. What comes to mind? Are you ready? All right. What one piece of advice would you give to female leaders that are currently working?

Lori Schafer (28:12)
⁓ Okay.

Okay, yes, try it, try me.

Protect your confidence as fiercely as you protect your time. And I say that because a lot of female leaders deep down are not as confident. ⁓ I can say that about myself. My biggest, you know, I’m empathetic. I have a lot of great qualities that a woman brings oftentimes to the role. But confidence, I always have to be really well-versed to feel confident.

⁓ And I think it’s very important that female leaders show confidence.

Shelley E. Kohan (29:12)
Excellent. What three tips would you give students, our emerging leaders?

Lori Schafer (29:19)
only three. ⁓ That’s all right. Let’s see. ⁓ So students meaning they’re just coming into the workforce. Okay. Okay.

Shelley E. Kohan (29:20)
No, you can get more.

Yep, coming out, coming into the workforce. We’re studying now,

soon to be a leader in the industry.

Lori Schafer (29:35)
Okay, first and foremost, listen more than you speak. ⁓ Too many people have to talk too much. Listen, you’re new, you have a whole career ahead of you. There’s a lot of people that know more than you do, listen before you speak. So that’s one. ⁓ Be intellectually curious. Intellectual curiosity in today’s environment, without it,

you probably won’t survive, especially with all of the AI coming and, you know, genetic AI and so forth. You have to be intellectually curious. You have to ask questions. You have to, whether it’s, you know, whether you are on the shop floor like you or Shelly, whether you’re a merchandiser, wherever you are in retail, whether you’re in IT, you just want, you want to learn, learn, learn.

And there’s so many ways to do that now. And so I know within my organization, if you’re not intellectually curious in an interview, you don’t make it past the interview. So that’s two. The third one I would give, I would say, is critical for students or people first coming into the workforce. Keep your personal opinions about politics, religion.

Etc off of social media and out of the workplace and I say off social media as well because everything You’re you’re when you’re in the workplace, even if you’re not in the workplace and you’re off hours It’s accessible and You want to always protect the brand that you represent? So I my advice is Try to keep that

Shelley E. Kohan (31:05)
Mm.

Lori Schafer (31:30)
part of your life very personal. It doesn’t have to be brought into the workplace. ⁓ I can continue, but I guess, so that was three.

Shelley E. Kohan (31:37)
That’s excellent.

I love it. Those are great. ⁓ Okay, so what’s your legacy? What do you want to leave behind for the next generation?

Lori Schafer (31:58)
I I hope that I can leave a legacy of, she really built some great companies. But more importantly, I hope that my teams look and learn something from me where they can point back and go, wow, she really taught me. She was an awesome boss. She got me further in life than I would have gotten otherwise. She taught me.

how to deal with life, not just the job. ⁓

Shelley E. Kohan (32:34)
Okay, this is your last question and it can be fun. So here it is. What is your secret power?

Lori Schafer (32:37)
Okay.

I have a very good ability to see the future, not way out, but the next few years. And to be able to identify business problems and…

identify where the technology is heading and bring those together for our customers. I would have to say that’s it.

Shelley E. Kohan (33:08)
I love that. Excellent. Any closing thoughts that you want to share?

Lori Schafer (33:16)
Boy, this was quick and fun. Closing thoughts.

How about leadership isn’t about being right, it’s about being ready.

Shelley E. Kohan (33:31)
that. That’s awesome. Well, Lori, thank you so much. I know our students and young executives will be so thrilled and learned lots from your advice. So thank you for being here. Greatly appreciated.

Lori Schafer (33:32)
Yeah

Thank you, Shelley. It’s always a pleasure

to see you again and keep on moving like I do. firepower. That’s what we do. Absolutely.

Shelley E. Kohan (33:52)
I’ll try. I don’t know if I can keep up your energy,

but I’ll try.

Lori Schafer (33:59)
Absolutely, no, you’re great and I so appreciate the

time with you. So thank you.

Shelley E. Kohan (34:05)
Thank you. ⁓

Shelley E. Kohan (00:02.018)
Melissa, I am so excited to have you on Lead Like Her. Welcome.

Melissa Gonzalez (00:06.8)
Thank you so much for having me.

Shelley E. Kohan (00:09.408)
I love watching you in the industry. You are such a dynamic leader. You’re founder, principal, you’re among other roles. You’ve done so much for our industry. And I really truly believe that your genuine mission is to help our industry. I think it’s great.

Melissa Gonzalez (00:26.832)
Thank you. Well, you know, it’s funny. I had a meeting yesterday at Columbus Circle, and I do find that I always, when I go to these destinations, I’m just always watching. I’m like, you know, who’s delivering joy? What’s making people excited? What’s making people want to engage? And I just think it’s like a constant study, especially as the world continues to evolve so much, and that’s part of what keeps it so exciting.

Shelley E. Kohan (00:50.668)
I know you have this kind of mission, this unwavering mission, to make the industry better and to really connect the dots and to make the customer experience better at the end of the day. So my first question is really about you are dealing with employees, you have to deal with investors, you have business partners, you have manufacturers and on and on. How do you stay true to your mission and how do you get others to join that mission with the same passion that you have?

Melissa Gonzalez (00:54.884)
Yeah.

Melissa Gonzalez (01:18.958)
I mean, I think it’s a constant study and curiosity and that’s how, know, I think, again, it’s like, it’s just ever evolving. If I think of from, you know, when I started my career on Wall Street and things we kind of studied, right, because you’re trying to figure out what we’re gonna make stocks move and what was gonna make management teams successful and stuff. And then to today, so that’s a span of 25 years, it’s like, you know, so much has changed, right? So much has evolved how we interact in our everyday life.

And so we have to continuously understand how that’s going to shape expectations of how people want to interact in general, you know? And so I think it’s just constantly educating best I can. And others will translate that through their own mediums, whether that’s through design or architecture, through technology integration. But for me, it’s sitting as much as they can at that forefront of the thought process of,

you know, what does this say? Like what is driving behavior? What are the big drivers in the world? And then what does that mean about how people are beginning to interact in their everyday life for that constant evolution of it? And then what does that mean, you know, about how they want to interact with brands and retailers from a consumer standpoint, physical environments, but even the holistic ecosystem of a brand. And because people don’t think of brands as just…

one touch point, they don’t think of a brand as a store, they don’t think of a brand as a website, they think of a brand as the holistic experience. So what does that look like? And then to that question too, like right now we’re actively working on our Gen Alpha report, which will be released in January. you know, there’s so many assumptions about what that generation wants, technology being one of them. We just think they want tech in stores, but when you talk to them, they don’t think about tech, right? It’s born in their hands, it’s not novel to them like it was to our generation.

for them, it’s what is it unable for them, what access it gives them, you know, how does it allow them to engage, discover, and all of that. And so we then are challenged to make sure that we’re bringing the right lens to how we think about how that then translates into physical environments.

Shelley E. Kohan (03:34.882)
That’s amazing. So now I’m curious. So in your early days on Wall Street, first of all, I can’t even imagine being on Wall Street. To me, it’s so far. It’s such a different world from how I grew up. But how did that inform your future kind of vision? And how did that inform you those early years for you?

Melissa Gonzalez (03:37.251)
Yeah.

Melissa Gonzalez (03:44.087)
It’s a different world, yeah.

Melissa Gonzalez (03:55.782)
I think it’s because I spent so much time listening to management teams, whether they were coming to present to us or if I was going on the road show with them and literally sitting in all those meetings with investors and listening to the questions and how people are thinking of valuation and what would move the needle, what would set them back, what would give them competitive differentiation. And so always being that hard at those conversations. And at the time it was cross industries because I was a generalist, so it wasn’t just consumer, it was

you know retail companies it was CPG companies it was Internet so I mean back in the day was like you know if you think of like IMAX and Netflix and all those things it was super early days for all of them trying to figure out who they were gonna be and how they were gonna make that work so taking that thought process and then bringing it over to working with founders and digital natives and

you know, them trying to figure out how they were going to continue to scale their brand and, you know, how they think about what their brand positioning, you know, means and how that translate across different platforms. So I learned a lot and I think I learned a lot also because when you’re on Wall Street, you have constant information coming at you. the ability to, okay, there’s all these different points of information coming at me, being able to distill that information, synthesize that information.

Shelley E. Kohan (05:12.44)
Right.

Melissa Gonzalez (05:20.293)
and understand how to translate that into opportunities or risks, and then kind of jump off from there. So I think when I sit in meetings on average, I’m not an analyst, but I am always thinking of kind of the bigger picture while I’m in the conversation, like, well, what does this mean? What does this mean? And so that’s kind of, think, what I brought from my days on Wall Street.

Shelley E. Kohan (05:48.578)
That’s amazing. So what were some of your significant challenges that you faced on your path to leadership and what did you do to overcome them?

Melissa Gonzalez (05:58.308)
Yeah, think, know, like being somebody who pivoted from Wall Street to the retail industry, I didn’t leave Wall Street saying I wanted to be in retail, to be honest. I always had an affinity to consumer-based companies, so, but, and retail just happened to be where it ended up manifesting due to an opportunity that crossed my path when I left Wall Street, but I knew I wanted to leave because I wanted to pursue more creative path that could leverage my skillset.

And so…

I think the first thing was being able to translate that and really build a whole new network. So I had support from those on Wall Street, but entering a whole new field, really having to build that network and kind of understand the challenges and the nuances and understand not just the consumer side, but the brand side and the considerations and understand what would work and what wouldn’t work and how do we test and learn together. So that was the first part. And then, you we were

acquired and so and then were acquired again. I think then there’s the and Christina Nunez just came out with this great blog on her sub stack about this and the beauty industry and it’s not the founder dilemma but kind of you know I think that was my next learning is as a founder you have vision and you have to build teams and there’s this like dance you have to do and figuring out like what is letting go look like successfully but also letting go doesn’t mean you disappear.

either, so what is the evolution that’s most successful for that mindset, that’s that visionary mindset, but that can still have impact both internally and externally. And I think sometimes there’s more of an ability for a company to understand the external impact than the internal as you grow and scale.

Shelley E. Kohan (08:00.63)
Yeah, definitely. So can you share a time when you had to make a difficult decision and maybe the thought process behind that?

Melissa Gonzalez (08:09.291)
I mean, all the time, I feel like I have to make difficult decisions. So do you want it more from a team standpoint, a client standpoint, a career standpoint? Career. Yeah, I think from a career standpoint, my first difficult was leave Wall Street and start a whole.

Shelley E. Kohan (08:19.534)
Career, let’s do career.

Melissa Gonzalez (08:29.829)
whole new path and I learned so much in retrospect from that and I think with there I didn’t really have a defined path but I gave myself a runway. I said I’ll give myself six months, I have this kind of budget to live off of and this is how it’s gonna measure success in that time period to decide if it was like a go no go, am I continuing in this path? And I actually had three ideas at that time and one very clearly showed itself as the path to

Shelley E. Kohan (08:51.352)
time.

Melissa Gonzalez (08:59.783)
Revenue, know the others I was passionate about and it was really fun But one was driving organic inbound and then even through that process, you know, even as a founder then I was always like, okay I saw growth and then I saw it be stagnant. So how are we gonna evolve? You know, are we gonna go into this or that and I think I learned a lot too of you know Just because you see opportunity For growth doesn’t mean you’re the the person or the team to go chase that

that either and I think that that could be really seducing sometimes because you still have to understand, everything’s competitive. And so if you see a growth opportunity, many do too. So do you have the right vision for it? Do you have the right team for it? Do you have the right approach for it? So right time, right place. And many times I’d have an idea it was too early. The market wasn’t ready for that and it would cost too much to get it off the ground.

Shelley E. Kohan (09:50.114)
Yeah, I’m sure.

Melissa Gonzalez (09:58.316)
So a lot of learnings along the way with that stuff.

Shelley E. Kohan (10:02.594)
That’s great. So, I mean, if you look at our industry, I mean, can it be more complex than it is today? I mean, it is, is. my gosh. It’s so challenging. And when we came out of COVID, I’m like, okay, can’t get any more challenging than what we went through COVID. But now I’m finding it actually is very challenging. So how are you in empowering and supporting your team members to Excel?

Melissa Gonzalez (10:07.365)
I know, especially with AI. Yeah.

Melissa Gonzalez (10:26.105)
I mean, I think we had to embrace very quickly different ways of working. And I think that that’s not going away in that we have to have that mindset. So it’s challenging in that there’s so much optionality out there.

when we work with our clients, it’s like, how are we going to help them authentically cut through that noise and stand out and also understand, you know, the point of a store today is very different than 10 years ago and really five years ago, right? And it’s going to continue to evolve even more, especially as you have Gen Z, they’ve come to age, Gen Alpha is coming to age next, and you know, their expectations of what they want are

Shelley E. Kohan (10:58.744)
that five years ago.

Yeah.

Melissa Gonzalez (11:13.367)
are going to be some part of it kind of going back to what was, but with a new spin on it. And so how do these environments cultivate community and connectivity and personalization and all the things that they want and working with our clients to understand that how we measure success in a store in the next couple years is different than the last few years.

And holistically, just all of us understanding that. And I think if we’re successful, our job is to be a coach to our clients too. So we kind of have to be ahead of the curve in understanding that so we can bring that thought process to them as well. And a lot of the times, unless you’re working directly with the leaders, then you’re working with the next tier that then has to go to their leaders for that buy-in. It’s not easy.

Shelley E. Kohan (12:08.076)
Yeah, no, it’s definitely not easy. So I want to talk a little bit about your leadership skills. So our mission in doing this podcast is to provide inspiration to future female leaders, but also help our existing leaders in the industry to succeed. So how do you actively mentor and support the development of future female leaders? How do you incorporate mentorship in your everyday life?

Melissa Gonzalez (12:29.443)
Yeah, I mean, I think I’m always learning on that side and it’s hard because,

Well, right now it’s been a busy time, but when you’re not in everything, don’t have the purview of all the challenges that they all have, right? So I think as you’re a leader, you’re understanding like, I gotta step out of the day to day, so I’m not gonna see the day to day, but how do I still stay on the pulse of things so that as a mentor, because sometimes I think it’s tricky. Sometimes leadership can feel so disconnected to what that everyday looks like that

there can be a mindset like, don’t really understand my challenge, right? So how do you create those lines of communication so you can be stepping out and enabling and empowering them, but also be able to have those grounded conversations. And so, you know, I put either a monthly or a quarterly on the calendar, depending on what that person’s role is. And I really present it to them as it’s their meeting.

So, you what do you want to get out of this meeting? You know, ideally they’re coming with some sort of thoughts or agenda. And I try to ask them how I could be helpful versus making the assumption of like, this is how I’m going to solve your problem. Sometimes I just want to talk it through, you know, sometimes they’re not seeing their blind spots, you know, sometimes. So it’s a lot of different things. So it’s that. I try, I’ve tried to over the years learn that my job isn’t necessarily

Shelley E. Kohan (13:56.894)
yeah.

Melissa Gonzalez (14:06.951)
to solve their problems unless that’s where we’re at. Sometimes you do, sometimes you have to step in and be like, okay, I to solve this problem. But other times, you know, they want the ability to solve it. They’re just like kind of zigzagging away from the right way to get to that solution. And so sometimes you just have to bring them back. And then the other thing I think is…

Shelley E. Kohan (14:11.182)
Yeah, true.

Melissa Gonzalez (14:29.717)
I’ve tried to cultivate relationships outside of me, which I think is sometimes hard as a leader also because you want to be in that connectivity with the team and that saying. There’s a few things I’ve seen on Instagram lately. was one that he, was a founder of,

It was an athletic brand, but it was so ready. like I wake up every morning and I basically know I’m gonna disappoint somebody and like that’s true. It’s very true. And then the other thing is just, you know, you…

Shelley E. Kohan (14:54.926)
Melissa Gonzalez (15:04.065)
you’re not their friend. As much as you’re friendly with them, it’s this realization of knowing you just aren’t because you’re the boss. So I think you have to get to be at peace with that a little bit. And I think when you transition from being a small company founder led this and that, you know everybody. know every intern and every employee. know everybody’s birthday. You know all the things. And then as you grow in scale, you know less of those things. And others do. And others have that connectivity. you’re kind of more on the outside trying

Shelley E. Kohan (15:08.045)
Right.

Melissa Gonzalez (15:33.912)
trying to be cognizant of those things. So I try to make sure that I know the important things and realizing I’m not gonna know everything and try to balance out like, okay, what are the big things that I’m gonna make sure that I’m touching base on or remembering? Somebody’s got a big exam coming up or obviously if they’re having a baby or whatever, the big things that I can kind of remember so they know I think they’re important.

But I’m not going to have that same connectivity with them that I would have had ten years ago.

Shelley E. Kohan (16:09.922)
Wow, that’s great. What do you think are some of the barriers that hold women back from rising to the top of their fields? There’s clearly a dearth in our industry with women at the top levels. And so what do you think holds women back?

Melissa Gonzalez (16:25.313)
I mean, I think, you know…

It depends. think it’s situational a little bit because not every environment infrastructure is the same. I think now in today’s age, there’s more women groups that are supportive of each other, which is great, which I think is helpful. at the end of the day, you need people who are going to say your name and opportunities in the room. And I think that, you know, there’s been a little bit of a gap in that because there’s been so few women at the top, it created a competitive environment versus a collaborative, supportive

Shelley E. Kohan (16:58.51)
Right. Right.

Melissa Gonzalez (16:59.345)
environment, right? Because it’s like there’s only room for one or two that I want that person to be me. I’ve been fortunate. Yeah.

Shelley E. Kohan (17:05.304)
I never looked at it that way. my God, you’re so right. That’s what’s created this kind of competitive nature of women getting to the top.

Melissa Gonzalez (17:14.091)
Yeah, like external forces. So we have to open the doors for each other. I’ve been in male dominated industries for sure. I would say architecture, more so than design, but architecture and then for sure Wall Street. But I’ve also been fortunate that I would say like, it’s not necessarily been the mindset of leadership.

You know, MG2 board has been balanced. It’s like 50-50 male-female. But yeah, I think it’s that unconscious competitiveness that rises because of that dynamic. And then I think, you know, men just have to get more comfortable with different communication styles and all this stuff that I think. But also we can too, because I don’t think we’re going to necessarily change each other. And so I’ve learned that

delivery differs a lot of the time and how things are communicated, the tone, the pitch of the tone, all the things that translate very differently. You could say the same exact message, right? And the way it’s delivered is different and we can’t be intimidated by that, right? And we have to learn how to navigate through that. I think, you know, being able to come head to head in conversations, you know, sometimes I think has translated

where sometimes women think like, okay, well, I gotta put my battle gear on, you know, or I gotta, right, because I gotta be as tough and I gotta be there. But I do think that we have this differentiated talent, if we embrace it, to actually disarm them more than we think, because I think we have an ability to cut through that with rationale. And I’ve personally had a couple of examples where I’ve done that in a conversation, where I’ve been the only woman in the room

Shelley E. Kohan (18:38.168)
Yeah.

Melissa Gonzalez (19:03.173)
where.

I’ve seen it become this dialogue that even the male counterparts themselves are kind of coming a little head to head and being able to be the one to say in the room, like, hey, are we willing to have a different point of view on this conversation? And I think that we can come with a different level of emotional intelligence, but a lot of the times they’re just not wired the same way. And if we can trust that, I think we actually can navigate more conversations.

than we think.

Shelley E. Kohan (19:36.035)
Yeah, we the emotional intelligence is a big thing for sure. So I want to go back to something you said early about networking and how when you left Wall Street, you had this network of Wall Street people and then you go into this new industry and you got to start from scratch. So one of the biggest concerns with young leader is, you know, networking is so important, but they don’t have the breadth and depth of contacts. So how did you build this? Like you are one of the most connected networked people that I know.

Melissa Gonzalez (20:02.851)
Yeah.

Shelley E. Kohan (20:03.224)
How do you build it? How do you start from scratch and how do you build it?

Melissa Gonzalez (20:07.469)
Yeah, I mean, think definitely with authenticity and that, you know, nobody wants to feel like you’re trying to network them. You know what I mean? And so and also there’s different levels and tiers. so there’s your peer network. Right. Like, who’s that? And then there’s like people who have further along in their career, but you aspire to be like, know, I think that clarity as to what they’ve achieved that you are aspiring to achieve is helpful so that you’re intentional about that.

Because you’re going to intersect with those communities differently, right? The way you interact with your peers. You could be door openers for each other. You can learn from each other in different ways. you a lot of my network, they’re further in their career than I am. Some of them are even retired. But I’ve admired things that they’ve accomplished. And I can clearly articulate in a conversation to them what I’ve

what those things are. And you also have to understand what the value exchange is in those different tiers of network, I think, so that you’re appropriate about them, you know? So I think…

For example, if it’s somebody who’s achieved a ton, I usually like, I got my one ask. I’m not going to them all the time for that, right? And I’m also trying to make sure I’m providing value back where possible. Whereas your peer network, you might partner in different ways because you’re more at that equal playing field of what you can bring each other in the table, but you could still learn from each other, open doors, support each other, et cetera. So I think intentionality is just

Shelley E. Kohan (21:22.23)
Right, right, yeah.

Melissa Gonzalez (21:43.51)
a really important part of it. sometimes it’s a network just based on the fact that it’s women. Sometimes it’s a network because it’s grounded in design and architecture. Sometimes it’s a network because it’s founders. And so it’s different elements too that I think it’s important to have clarity on.

Shelley E. Kohan (22:04.952)
So let’s turn to your fantastic new book that you just launched, The Purpose Pivot. It is an outstanding read. I suggest everyone read it. I love the book. I love the stories. But one of the things that you say in the book is this normalizing slow. And I think that’s really important for young executives to understand. How have you implemented this philosophy at the executive level? And did you face any resistance, really, I guess, from yourself more than anything else?

Melissa Gonzalez (22:33.669)
Well, I think it’s hard when you say it that way. It sounds very unattractive. Like normalizing slow, what? You know, I think we wear the hustle as the badge of honor, for sure. And you know, the impetus of my book was a medical experience I had in 24.

And I can’t say it wasn’t because I was necessarily burnt out, but it was the realization that I didn’t make my well-being as high a priority as I could have alongside my career journey and my leadership path. And so, you know, for younger generations that read this book, I think there’s just so much that you can learn to be preventative about it so that you don’t wait till you have those crucible moments that make you say, like, wait, why wasn’t that more important? My body was talking to me and I didn’t prioritize making space for that.

Normalizing slow doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re gonna, those terms of what, like the quiet resignation and all of that. just means that you’re going to…

Shelley E. Kohan (23:27.565)
no.

Melissa Gonzalez (23:32.016)
Think differently about your energy preservation and allocation, and really focus more on the things that fuel you versus deplete you. And be less seduced by the whole thought process of FOMO, which I think we live in this constantly connected world, right? We’re just always, we’re always connected to seeing, like I’m in a chat today and it’s some things that I can’t make, where other women are going to and I could feel a lot of guilt and pressure about it, but I have a really important executive

team meeting tomorrow that I cannot miss and so I can’t be there and the woman who’s being honored like I message her on the such side right away to say nobody deserves to be celebrated more than you and the right friend the right counterparts gonna know that you genuinely mean that and not gonna give you the guilt about it like so instead of turning myself into 20 pretzels tomorrow and disappointing and upsetting you know my exec team or whatever like this is the choice I have to make

Shelley E. Kohan (24:08.174)
Aww.

Melissa Gonzalez (24:29.825)
And because I think also when you try to be in all the places and all the things, you actually stop being present in most of the things you do. And so to me, normalizing slow is also honoring your presence in the things that you choose to spend time doing. And so I think when you turn that switch from fear of missing out to joy of missing out, you’re going to do things with more intentionality. It’s not about that constant comparison cycle. It’s not about over

Shelley E. Kohan (24:44.044)
Hmm.

Melissa Gonzalez (24:59.719)
extending yourself, it’s not about valuing the busier I am, the more valued I am, the more events I go to, the more important I am. It’s saying, okay, where can I have impact? Where do I need to be now? Where can I give myself the grace to say this is where I’m gonna be present? And you can actually do so many less things from a quantity standpoint in your day or in your week or in your month, but achieve so much more.

And so it’s learning to trust that which is not easy, but that is what that theme is about

Shelley E. Kohan (25:33.366)
I love that and JoMo, you just came up with a new Ackerman, JoMo. The joy of missing out.

Melissa Gonzalez (25:36.234)
well, I can’t take full credit of it, but it is funny as they talk about it. A lot of people are like, I haven’t heard of it. But I think it started a little bit in COVID where people were kind of like, you know, I’m in my pajamas tonight and not going out and things like that. But.

But yeah, because don’t put that guilt on yourself so much that you can’t be at all the things. You can’t be at all the things, just you can’t. It’s impossible to be at everything all the time. But where should you be? Maybe it needs a different filter.

Shelley E. Kohan (26:08.128)
I love one thing I learned from you. went to your book launch, which was fabulous down at the Creighton Barrel store on Broadway. And one thing I learned that just kind of hit me really hard was that when you were talking about, you just mentioned like these Instagramable moments. So our whole life is seeing this perfect snapshot of something, but there’s a whole backstory behind those perfect visuals. And I never really thought about that. There’s a lot of, you know, to get to that point.

Melissa Gonzalez (26:12.783)
Yes.

Shelley E. Kohan (26:36.718)
Our life is not a perfect snapshot and you have to like let go of that, you know, visualization that your life is a perfect snapshot or trying to get to that perfect snapshot. That’s just not what it is.

Melissa Gonzalez (26:49.475)
No, it’s not. It’s not what it is. And I think if you ask a lot of people, how did you get to that moment, there’s probably a lot of bumps along the way to get there and stuff. So yeah, and I think the book is not just my point of view. I interviewed dozens of women, and I think it’s realizing that that is the human side of all of this. And I think when you trust that, it can give you the ability to give yourself more grace through all of it.

Shelley E. Kohan (26:56.43)
You

Shelley E. Kohan (27:20.032)
It’s great, great book, recommended read for sure. Okay, so now we’re gonna get to my favorite part of our conversation called rapid fire questions where I’m just gonna ask you questions, quick, quick, quick, and you’re just gonna give me answers. Are you ready? Okay, here we go. What one piece of advice would you give female leaders that are currently working?

Melissa Gonzalez (27:25.605)
Mm-hmm.

Melissa Gonzalez (27:33.881)
Okay, yes.

Melissa Gonzalez (27:44.165)
Just keep your purpose as your North Star. I think when you feel overwhelmed and you need that filter to say like, what am I saying yes to, what am I making space for, think of your purpose.

Shelley E. Kohan (27:57.623)
What three tips would you give students, our emerging leaders?

Melissa Gonzalez (28:03.845)
Be constantly curious, be humble, and remember the long game because everything can feel catastrophic in the moment when it doesn’t land exactly as the way you see it, but take that as an opportunity to learn from it and you’re gonna do it differently and better the next time.

Shelley E. Kohan (28:23.262)
And lastly, what is your legacy? What do you want to leave behind for that next generation?

Melissa Gonzalez (28:30.213)
Gosh, mean, I think that’s evolved a little bit through writing the book. So I think it’s that well-being is not a side project in life. And if the more people that can embrace that, then I will feel like I left an impactful mark.

Shelley E. Kohan (28:49.834)
Okay, so this is my last question. It can be fun, it can be anything. What is your secret power?

Melissa Gonzalez (28:53.08)
Okay.

Melissa Gonzalez (28:57.269)
my secret power.

I mean, I think my secret power is my ability on average to cut through the noise. I have a lot of things coming at me all the time, and I don’t always get it perfect for sure, but I think my ability, I don’t get trapped in the inertia of it. I’m able to step back and be like, how are we solving this? So sometimes it’s a downfall because I don’t have the patience for it, but most times it’s successful in that it allows me to move on to the next thing versus getting stuck

on it.

Shelley E. Kohan (29:32.364)
Well, Melissa, thank you so much for being here and thank you for sharing lots of leadership tips. Is there anything you’d like to close with or share?

Melissa Gonzalez (29:40.709)
You know, I’m just really excited about the year ahead. I don’t know if this is going live in 25 or 26, but, you know, for 25, I feel like there’s been just so much discovery and conversation. We’ve been on this five-year trajectory through COVID and inflation and…

politics and tariffs and this hyper connectivity across all generations. And I do think across a lot of those generations, you’re starting to see this recognition of it’s not all healthy. And so I’m really curious to see how that’s going to translate into 26. You know, how all environments, physical environments will evolve, how retail environments will evolve, how it’ll brace the aspect of slowing

Shelley E. Kohan (29:58.819)
tariffs.

Melissa Gonzalez (30:27.813)
down to connect more, you know, and what the evolution of that community building and brands being at the nucleus of that, what that will continue to look like, and how well-being will continue to intersect with the industry.

Shelley E. Kohan (30:44.812)
Well, thank you and thank you so much for all the wonderful work you do in the industry and I look forward to seeing what’s up next for you. So thank you for being here.

Melissa Gonzalez (30:53.232)
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I always love our conversations.

Shelley E. Kohan (01:21)
Sharon, I’m so excited to have you on Lead Like Her. So I want to start at the beginning. I’d like to talk about how did you fall into the toy industry? When you look at your background, you worked at Mattel with one of America’s most iconic brands, Barbie. Did you know when you graduated from college that you wanted to take this path?

Sharon John (01:42)
I think that I knew that I wanted to do something that I was passionate about. ⁓ It might not have been necessarily toys. ⁓ And after undergrad, I actually went to New York and worked in the advertising industry. So I spent time on the confections business, so still a bit kid-centric, which fit for me, in my opinion. ⁓ And then I went ⁓ to Columbia and got my MBA while I was in New York.

⁓ And when I got to the end of that ⁓ fabulous experience, I decided that I wasn’t as interested in a lot of the typical types of companies that interview on campus at Columbia. Very quantitative school for those that might not know. ⁓ Very finance focused. a lot of the aspirations of many of my classmates would have been something like,

high-end consulting or investment banking or being an analyst, know, venture capitalism, things like that. And I’m like, no, I don’t want to do that. So I put together my own interview list that was all super brand-centric and consumer facing and with, you know, a really, you know, high-end thinking ⁓ filter of fun.

And on that list was Mattel. So that’s how I ended up there. But they all were toys, not all of it was toys, entertainment, some kind of confection and kids’ foods kind of stuff, things that I felt like I knew about.

Shelley E. Kohan (03:14)
I’m

I love that because oftentimes when I talk to students and they say, want to get a job, can you get me a job? I’m like, well, where do you want to work? You got to start from where you want to work, not what are the jobs out there. So I love that.

Sharon John (03:36)
Right. mean,

that’s a great, that’s actually just such a great point, Shelley. mean, so many times, almost with conversations, even to this day, even with senior people, it’s so much of the challenge is people have not created their own clarity, you know, and it’s shocking how many problems I can solve, quote unquote, in business by saying, well, stop telling me what you don’t want. What?

do you want? What is it that you want? What are you trying to achieve? the long, long list of everything you’re not trying to do. Tell me what you’re trying to do and we will work on that. And it’s just an odd situation. So yeah, I’ve had that down pretty early in life.

Shelley E. Kohan (04:24)
Well,

I think it’s great. so when I think about you and your career, I don’t think I can think of a more difficult thing than transitioning into a CEO role from a founder who had led the company for two decades. So how were you able to step into the CEO role at Build-A-Bear Workshop? And what leadership skills did you learn from the past that helped you in this role?

and you’ve been just tremendously, tremendously successful in.

Sharon John (04:55)
Yeah, that’s an interesting question. ⁓ Maxine was a little short of two decades, but the point made. ⁓ look, I think the only reason that people think that’s difficult is because of the history of it being difficult. But in reality, every situation is unique. The company’s unique. There’s three factors there. The company’s unique. The incoming CEO is unique.

Shelley E. Kohan (05:13)
Uh-huh.

Sharon John (05:24)
And the outgoing CEO founder is unique, right? And it really is a requirement that the incoming CEO and the upcoming CEO can have a meeting of the minds, right? It’s really up to these individuals. And then the next question is, can the corporation accept the new leadership? But that’s really part and parcel with the outgoing CEO.

being gracious and setting up ⁓ a runway for that person to be successful, which then has to be, I think, reflected in, like in this situation, me being respectful of the outgoing CEO and founder. And you have to stop and ask yourself, what would be in it for me to vilify all things that they had done?

And this may be an unpopular opinion. ⁓ But I have to say that in my opinion, seriously, I find it to be the lazy turnaround approach to come in and say, classic terminology, the previous administrators, all, everything that’s wrong with this company is because of everything that person did.

Shelley E. Kohan (06:44)
Ha!

Sharon John (06:52)
I will fix it all, right? and I, particularly in an organization that the heart and soul of it was so intertwined with Maxine’s persona and vision, there would be nothing, even if all I was was a, you know, was a, just trying to manipulate the situation, there would be nothing in it for me to do it that way, right?

It was only, there was, it was not only the right thing to do, which was to preserve Maxine’s legacy, it was a smart thing to do. And so because she knew where my heart was, she was willing to not kick and scream, you know, which is partly some of the problem there. And I think that she’s actually spoken to me multiple times about how we should write something, you know, or do something.

Shelley E. Kohan (07:17)
Yeah.

You should.

Sharon John (07:44)
about because ⁓ on the sidebar, my god, Shelley, you’re going to love this because you know, Maxine, ⁓ she was like, many people were saying you shouldn’t even hire a woman because that’s going to be so hard. The woman to woman transition is going to be impossible. In particular, I know you’d love to hear that. And for this show in particular, it’s like that just even just all of that voice, right? Does that make you mad? it’s so packed fighting and that’s not going to happen. And we were textbook.

Shelley E. Kohan (08:05)
That makes me so mad.

Sharon John (08:14)
Textbook transition.

Shelley E. Kohan (08:17)
Yeah, you guys should write this as a story. Seriously, this has to be a story for sure. you know, one of the things, ⁓ so students always see leaders and they see positives of leadership and they see the end result of lot of ups and downs. Can you talk a little bit about how leadership is really not about a trail of successes? What have been some of the challenges for you?

Sharon John (08:19)
Yeah, it’s crazy.

Yeah, and that also feeds into the second part of the question that you were asking before, you know, what did I learn from people? And you learn as much from people and situations that went right as well as you do that went wrong. And then more importantly, what went wrong and then what did they do? Those are big chunky lessons. And when you’re sitting ⁓ in an organization at any level of

even moderate leadership where you get to see sometimes you’re sitting in that boardroom and you might not be at the table but you might be at that you know one of those seats over there by the window pay attention pay attention to the dynamics of what’s happening in both the good times and the bad times and how the leaders are engaging with each other and attacking the problem or transitioning from the success you will learn a lot

about leadership and business ⁓ and how to bring people along with you. no, leadership is not about a trail of success. Now you have to have a certain number of success or you’re not going to be a leader for very long. The organization, the universe, something’s going to take care of that. You’re not going to be moving on. ⁓ But the things that people don’t want to talk about, to me, it’s you…

Shelley E. Kohan (09:50)
True.

Sharon John (10:06)
you’re going to, if you’re good, you’re going to create a lot of success, but you’re not going to take a lot of credit for a lot of that success. You’re, know, right. And, and, and yeah, it’s just, and if you think that, that this is a glory, like some kind of, you know, glory lap, is nothing like that, right. Or it shouldn’t be, in my opinion, because you’re also in the long run as a CEO, particularly,

Shelley E. Kohan (10:17)
I love that.

Sharon John (10:36)
You’re not an expert in every functional area that reports to you. That’s technically impossible. So you shouldn’t be taking success. You’re a strategist, right? You’re a motivator. You’re clearing the paths. And the flip side of that, that you probably should not be taking credit for everything, mostly because you didn’t do it, is secondly, you should be taking the blame.

And again, that’s no flag-waving, you know, glory position. And if you can’t handle that, if you can’t look at yourself and say, I could have done this better, I could have avoided that, recognizing that your job is to obsolete yourself by making everybody around you better, it’ll work for a little while, but that’ll come home to roost.

Shelley E. Kohan (11:28)
Yeah, it always does. I love how you, since the day I met you, feel, first I feel very fortunate to have met you. ⁓ from the day I met you, every time I give you a compliment, like, great, you your earnings were great last quarter, or the Stoors local meeting, you always say, ⁓ it’s the team, it’s the team. You always give credit to everybody else. And I love that about your leadership style.

Sharon John (11:56)
I’m just giving it where it’s due. It’s really easy. Yeah, I mean, I, know, and I’m not like humble. I’m really not. It’s, ⁓ I think that I had a lot to do with the turnaround at Build-A-Fair. Don’t get me wrong. And I speak up for myself and I have expected all through my career to be fairly compensated for the value that I create.

Shelley E. Kohan (11:58)
I

Sharon John (12:26)
And my focus is to create value, even as a very junior person. ⁓ And then when I do that, ⁓ I talk to people about, I being fairly compensated for this value? So that’s a very, I don’t want to conflate these ideas because I think that that is sometimes a misconstrued ⁓ concept for women, particularly. It’s not, know, all this.

I’m sorry. I’m a wild, you know, I have to be a wallflower. I didn’t do it. No, no, no. Even if you wrote the whole freaking deck, you go, I didn’t write that deck. That’s lying too. You know, both of those are lying. When you take complete 100 % credit for something that you didn’t do, it’s a lie. And when you completely abdicate yourself from something that you actually did do that was great, also a lie. So who’s worse?

Shelley E. Kohan (13:03)
Yeah.

Right.

Sharon John (13:21)
You know, just find the right way to do that. You know, wow, you know, say you did write this deck that broke open an entire new, you know, account or something. And people say, my, and the boss is like sitting around a table and saying like, who, so who did this? Who made this happen? You can say that.

Listen, it was a team effort. I got a lot of information from everybody, but I was the lead on that. And I was, you know, I was honored to be able to do it. And I’m so glad that it worked out and I appreciate the opportunity and move on.

Shelley E. Kohan (13:49)
Yeah.

Yeah, that’s great. I love that advice too. So I had the pleasure with your support, of course, to actually interview Maxine Clark earlier this year. She’s amazing. And one thing that really… She is a powerhouse. ⁓ One thing that stood out to me was her vision to ensure diverse perspectives are valued and integrated into the decision-making process. So tell me, how do you achieve this through your leadership?

Sharon John (14:07)
⁓ powerhouse. ⁓

Well,

I was very fortunate to walk into a company where I didn’t have to change the culture ⁓ to do that, right? Because I’m a believer in that as well. ⁓ And that diverse idea, ⁓ you know, it doesn’t necessarily ⁓ always line up with a lot of what, you know, is now kind of in some political rhetoric about whether what that means or what that doesn’t mean. But it can be people that have

just different perspectives. And yes, sometimes they’re different genders or, you know, they’re different backgrounds, but we often have people, we’re a global company. I have people on my leadership team from, you know, that grew up in different countries. You know, like you really do, and you want people from different generations. Like, so don’t get trapped in the paradigm of what that means.

It just means that you don’t want to accidentally create an echo chamber. That’s all. And that would be true if it was all women that, you know, if I like, I could go out and find, well, not maybe because I’m a weirdo, but you know, people that look like me on paper, but you know, like,

Shelley E. Kohan (15:26)
Mm-hmm.

Sharon John (15:40)
Everybody’s from, you know, the Southeast and we’re all from this generation and we all did this and we all think that way. And you put all of us in a room and you say, that’s a very diverse board. No, we’re just all the same. We’re still all the same. That’s not being diverse, it’s just diverse because it’s not a bunch of white guys. That’s all. So that’s not diverse either. You know, it doesn’t mean diverse versus the macro norm. It means who’s sitting around the table.

Shelley E. Kohan (15:53)
Hey.

Mm-hmm.

right.

Sharon John (16:10)
And are they getting a fair shake to get hopefully a knowledgeable, well thought out opinion presented in situ. So you can roll that around as a team and think about it and ask questions and go, oh, you know, I never thought about it that way. If somebody says that, you’re on the right track.

Shelley E. Kohan (16:36)
Yeah, I love that phrase. That’s great. People really get when you get other people thinking. which leads me into my next question, which I already know the answer to this question, because every time I’m with you, my brain is on overdrive. You have this ability to get me to think outside of the box. You inspire me with intellect and purpose. So for those of you for those that don’t know you, however, how do you empower and support your team members to excel?

Sharon John (17:04)
Well, I set big goals and I start with the goal first, not the steps to the goal.

If you give your, if you have the right people with the right intellect and the right background and give them the right tools, you don’t have to build the stairs for them.

Shelley E. Kohan (17:28)
I love that.

Sharon John (17:29)
You tell them where the stairs are leading. You have to be an inspiring visionary. And then, all that’s necessary, there’s two things that’s necessary after you create this inspiring vision. You have to convince a broad constituency that that is possible. It doesn’t have to be probable.

It has to be ⁓

Shelley E. Kohan (18:24)
Hahaha!

Sharon John (18:24)
No!

And then, you know, momentum starts to happen. They should be able to build the rest of this. Now you could do it, but if you do it, it won’t be done with the same passion and inside in again, it’s going to, every single stair is going to look like a stair you would build. And like, if you let other people start to create this, there might be an offshoot. Whereas like, ⁓ my God, that’s a whole different revenue stream. I wasn’t even thinking about that. Or I didn’t think about that.

Shelley E. Kohan (18:45)
Right.

Sharon John (18:57)
It’s sort of counsel, insight, a big story at the end of the day, but there’s, you know, I can use the stair analogy or you can use a mountain analogy. There’s lots of ways up the mountain, right? And people are going to do it different ways. You just kind of keep kind of like, let’s not get too far at this. You know, do you have enough money to buy that new backpack? I don’t know. Like just, and before you know it, you’re up there putting a flag in the ground.

Shelley E. Kohan (19:24)
I love it.

So have you had any mentors or role models who influenced your leadership journey?

Sharon John (19:31)
Everybody’s a role model, a mentor for me, maybe not entirely, ⁓ but I take, ⁓ you know, there’s this old saying about, you know, experiences, you take what was good for you and leave the rest behind. And, you know, and then you tell your own story about all that stuff because it’s all made up anyway. So you might as well tell an empowering story. That’s what I do for people in my life.

Shelley E. Kohan (19:56)
I love that.

Sharon John (19:56)
So,

⁓ you know, there’s never, no one’s ever gonna be like your exact cookie cutter mentor because never, no one’s ever gonna be exactly like you. Like, and that’s a good thing. You’re, you should be a multifaceted human. And you know, if you find that you’ve got to find your own path.

and your, you know, to leadership and success and to self-actualization and what you want out of life. And nobody can tell you what that is but you. But I’ve learned again, a lot by watching, listening, asking tons of questions. ⁓ And not the question about, so now what do we do? The question about, walk me through how you got to that or why does that matter? Or what am I missing here?

Those kinds of questions, not questions like, ⁓ so I did this now, now what? You figure out the now freaking what. I mean, that drives me crazy, by the way.

Shelley E. Kohan (20:57)
Ha

Sharon John (21:02)
⁓ is that is your job, right? So all of that stuff of certain, like how do you think, how do you move forward and watching how people do this? And I’m like, that was remarkable. I’m embracing that. That I will never do. And you remember that. You put that in your file folder to never do that. Now some of my never dos, I’ve gone back and said, no, I can do that.

Shelley E. Kohan (21:23)
Yeah.

Sharon John (21:30)
You know, there were times when coming up the ladder and I can be, I’m very ⁓ gregarious, often human. And I love to have a good time. mean, I’m like funny and stuff like that. So, but that, that package, I had to suppress that package for a while. And that’s everybody else’s problem, mind you, not my problem, but.

There are times when you’re just going to have to realize the world that you’re in, right? And so I did have a mentor that I would stick in the back of my mind. And it’s, don’t want to be, the sounds might sound ⁓ inappropriate, but like I would, instead of like a, you know, like a what would so-and-so do, this was, I would put their name in there in this situation. Like now would so-and-so get up and sing that karaoke song at this business experience? And I’m like, they wouldn’t do it.

Shelley E. Kohan (22:03)
Yeah.

Sharon John (22:27)
So I wouldn’t do that. Now, Sharon would do that, but for a long stretch in there that I would not do things like that. So I was purposeful in being seen as an executive. Right. And now I’m so far on the other side of that. I would probably get up and sing the karaoke song. I mean, what are they going to do? But.

Shelley E. Kohan (22:45)
Yeah.

Sharon John (22:52)
And that doesn’t mean that you’re not, and this is also a girl thing, it doesn’t mean you’re being disingenuous. It doesn’t mean you’re not being true to yourself. It means that we all, mean, don’t, please, we all have different sort of auras that you put first, know, face first, given where you are. You act different in a fancy restaurant.

than you do in a park. That’s okay. And I would love that we get to a place where you don’t have to think about your entire package and how you present and what’s going on. But that’s a long, long, long road from now. Mostly not because of where we are, but just because everybody you work with is, human.

And we compartmentalize things just to make things simple. Because if you tried to take in every piece of information as an independent piece of information, we would all probably not make it to work. You can’t process like that. you got to know, you got to be a student of psychology and understand how you’re being perceived.

Shelley E. Kohan (23:51)
That’s right.

It’s so true.

Sharon John (24:20)
⁓ period and understanding that in the context of where you’re being perceived and that’s just knowledge for you and you can decide what to do with it but there’s a reality that exists about how you’re being perceived and how people are that just all there is to it

Shelley E. Kohan (24:45)
Absolutely. So what do you think are some of the barriers that hold young women back from rising to the top of their fields?

Sharon John (24:53)
There might be some of that.

and, it’s different in different companies. It’s different in different industries. ⁓ but you know, there, I sometimes I, I’ve had people say to me, well, you know, I’m going to go in there and I’m just going to do, me. I, and I thought, did I, did I, did I, did I, I, I’m like, would you do that on your French vacation?

You’re entering into a culture.

Sometimes it could be, you’ve got to understand the culture that you’re entering into. There’s going to be norms and mores in that culture just like there is in any other culture. And there’s cultures in every single, your own personal family has a culture. Like everything has cultures and subcultures. And again, the student of psychology would say, don’t have to bend to that culture, but you should understand it.

Shelley E. Kohan (25:58)
Mm-hmm.

Sharon John (25:59)
And so that’s one thing. There’s a woman that I actually use this as an example every now and then. Back in the day in one of the companies that I would work for, we would often take a private jet to a big customer. And was a bunch of senior people. We’d be on this.

We would go and do a big presentation, biggest customer, if that was a great meeting, we’d all be happy. And this particular ⁓ person, one of the senior guys, this is a silly story, but he loved fried chicken. I can’t explain why. And so when he was excited about the outcome of this meeting, he would call ahead and get the guys to get fried chicken and put it on the plane so we could all.

have, you know, celebrate with fried chicken. And look, ⁓ I’m a healthy person, I usually don’t eat fried food. But there was another woman that would come with us on occasion. And she would have like, be visibly distraught about this and just say, I can’t eat that, I’m not, I don’t eat fried food, I’m not, you know what? I would eat the chicken. Eat the chicken!

Shelley E. Kohan (27:21)
Ha!

Sharon John (27:24)
my god! Again, if you went over to somebody’s home for dinner, that’s a culture!

Shelley E. Kohan (27:35)
Right.

Sharon John (27:36)
Why would you do that? Even if you’re not going to eat the chicken, you don’t have to announce that you’re not going to eat the chicken. Just get over it and move on and be a part of what was really happening right there, which was the celebration and creation of camaraderie that you just extricated yourself from.

Shelley E. Kohan (27:57)
Right.

Sharon John (28:03)
Does that make sense?

Shelley E. Kohan (28:03)
That’s, that’s, that

makes perfect sense. Yeah. I mean, and we’re often in that position a lot and you really have to see beyond what’s right in front of you.

Sharon John (28:12)
It’s not about the chicken. And again, you don’t actually have to eat if you’re a vegetarian. I don’t want to get into all of that, but there was other options. You were going to survive. Even if you didn’t eat anything, you were probably going to survive this flight, but you didn’t have to do that.

Shelley E. Kohan (28:14)
It’s not about the chicken.

That’s right.

You gotta join in.

Sharon John (28:34)
You know, and again, I get there’s like this, if it’s something illegal or immoral or, know, against your religion or, you know, again, I don’t want to like have people misinterpret this inappropriately. I’m just saying that understand like really what’s happening here.

Shelley E. Kohan (28:40)
Yeah.

you

I mean, you’re telling everyone should understand culture, understand the moment, right?

Sharon John (28:57)
Yeah,

and that the person in charge was genuinely excited about the outcome that you were a part of creating, right? And wanted to, and was doing the way in his language, saying thank you. That was his language. I love chicken. I want you to love chicken too.

Shelley E. Kohan (29:07)
Exactly. Yep.

All right.

Sharon John (29:25)
It’s just,

you know, it’s like, there’s a, that’s just the kind of the human and psychology side of this. And, know, and fine, if you want to fall on the chicken sword, fine, but then don’t expect the guys to, if it’s a, you know, let’s say it’s, you’re a girl and it’s more a woman and it’s more of a masculine culture, not necessarily men, but more of a masculine, you know, and there’s, there are things that’s, everything’s a spectrum, everything’s a spectrum. Then,

Shelley E. Kohan (29:42)
Thank

Yep. Yep.

Sharon John (29:55)
You can’t get like what do you what do you want when you go into the board room the next in the next week and They’re not including you in the conversation about who won the football game last weekend

Shelley E. Kohan (30:10)
Right.

Sharon John (30:12)
Does it matter? Maybe not. But maybe.

Shelley E. Kohan (30:20)
Well, what changes would you like to see in the retail landscape in terms of female leadership in years to come?

Sharon John (30:30)
Well, there’s two sides to that. Of course, what would be ideal is that, you know, that leadership and reward and opportunity were based on ⁓ skills, success, ⁓ ingenuity and outcome. Right. But that’s not probably it’s better, but we’re probably

Shelley E. Kohan (30:51)
you

Sharon John (31:00)
a long way from that because again, is a big thing and you do have to be conscientious of those things. But I will tell you that the creation of value magically knocks down lots of preconceived borders to success. Because most of the time, at least in most of my experience,

Shelley E. Kohan (31:20)
you

Sharon John (31:29)
The people that are making those decisions just want to do well. They want to create shareholder value. And if you’re doing that in a moderately tolerable manner, ⁓ it’s probably going to work out in the long run. And look, I’ve had all kinds of crazy stuff happen. Not a woman in my role has not. ⁓

Shelley E. Kohan (31:37)
Mm-hmm.

Sharon John (31:58)
And there’s that whole idea that there’s some sort of career ladder that’s broken into equal increments going one direction up is not true. And I do believe that it is the responsibility of women who have…

I don’t want to say made it, but have hit a certain level of success ⁓ that you’re willing to share the

the inconvenient ⁓ route. Because I worry sometimes that young women believe that it is supposed to look like a corporate ladder, but it’s all just, you know, like maybe what my CV might look like. But only because I’m not trying to hide anything. It’s just you try to get it on a couple of pages when you work for 30 years, and so it just ends up looking like it’s these.

Shelley E. Kohan (32:34)
Mm-hmm.

Sharon John (32:58)
know, clear steps of, you know, ⁓ you know, Not always the case. There’s side steps and you learn something and you go over here and I stepped out of the business for a while and I came back in and, you know, people need to know that’s okay. Cause I sometimes I’m so fearful that if there was a unexpected side step that they think their career is over and it’s just not.

Shelley E. Kohan (33:00)
Exactly. Yep.

Sharon John (33:27)
That’s mythology. So that’s worrisome to me. But I think, you know, overall, it’s being self-confident. There’s so much data on how women won’t even apply for the job unless they feel like they already have 100 % of the skill sets that are outlined on the job, you know, docket.

Shelley E. Kohan (33:38)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Sharon John (33:53)
guys will apply for the same job with 50 % of those things. if somebody, I mean, that’s overwhelming data, you know, and it’s persisted ⁓ in follow-up research. And, you know, and the guys answers to the questions of, know, well, how would you do this? I don’t see you have the experience, and they’re like, I’ll figure it out. And that’s the right answer. We apply to jobs that we’re already overqualified for.

Shelley E. Kohan (33:57)
That’s right.

Sharon John (34:23)
Right. And then you wonder why someone didn’t hire you. Because the answer to that is because it’s frightening. It says to me, you have no confidence to be able to figure out anything. Like that’s way too conservative to be in a senior role. Right. And, and so then, and here’s where it really, really gets precarious. It’s like, you’re not.

Shelley E. Kohan (34:28)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, for sure.

Sharon John (34:52)
messaging that you’re capable of things coming at you. You’re uncomfortable in uncomfortable situations. So I can’t put you in a senior role, right? That’s frightening. And then that, and this is where it all comes to roost. There is a single role, by the way, Shelley, that there’s no way you could have all the experiences to be able to fill that role. And that’s called the CEO.

Shelley E. Kohan (35:10)
you

I was gonna say, that’s gotta be the CEO for sure, yeah.

Sharon John (35:26)
And in one fell swoop, because you think about how you rise to a CEO, you’re probably the very best in a functional area. Right? For me, it’s product development marketing. Just ching, ching, ching. Just keep going up the line in product development and marketing. And because CEO is going to be likely selected,

from some sort of C level or maybe I was lucky I got to be a divisional president, which is kind of a junior CEO. So I had all these little smaller entities of functional areas and then some cross-functional sort of stuff reporting into me. So I got to kind of test that out. But a lot of times you’re coming up as the best of the best in a functional area. So the next level is all these other functional areas, all these other direct reports. You’ve never run them in your life.

Shelley E. Kohan (36:19)
Ha

Sharon John (36:19)
finance,

IT, whatever it is, you know, a finance person goes into that role, does nothing about marketing. That, right? That jump, which you have to be willing to take, is absolutely necessary for you not to have all 10 of 10 things on that resume that you’ve done. So you’ve got to ask the question, if that’s the tendency for women, how much of the CEO challenge is because a woman never applies?

Shelley E. Kohan (36:31)
That’s so interesting, so interesting.

You know Sharon, I have never thought about it that way, but looking at how you just presented it, it makes perfect sense. We’re trying to check all the boxes and you’re right, that CEO doesn’t have expertise across 15 different functional areas.

Sharon John (37:06)
It’s

impossible to check the boxes.

Shelley E. Kohan (37:09)
We have to fix that. We have to fix that.

Sharon John (37:11)
We do.

that has rolled around in my mind for two or three years after I read that data. And I’m like, huh, first of all, why do women do that? And again, isn’t our opinion, right, Shelley? This is facts, research data.

Shelley E. Kohan (37:32)
Yeah, facts. Yeah.

Sharon John (37:38)
And then that situation of that massive void of CEOs.

That’s the one. mean, you would never ever, ever, ever apply.

Shelley E. Kohan (37:55)
Well, now it’s going to be rolling around in my brain. Thank you very much. And I will be kept up countless. Wolfing. It is crazy. Okay, so currently you’re…

Sharon John (37:59)
If there’s anybody else I wanted to roll around into with the ears. let’s, it’s just crazy. No one

by the way, and here’s where it gets even crazier. If you just logic through it, there will not other than someone that’s already been a CEO, there will be no other person that applies for that job, male, female, green, purple, or you know,

I don’t know, glitter that has had every single one of those functionalities as a background.

Shelley E. Kohan (38:35)
Right.

That’s true. Okay, so what’s that?

Sharon John (38:40)
So what are you afraid of?

So what are they afraid of? What are you afraid of?

Shelley E. Kohan (38:45)
I know what are what what are they’re afraid that they’re going to fail in one of the functional areas, but ⁓ I’m going to do some research on that. I actually am too. I’m going look into this. But OK, so we got to move on. But you’re currently chairperson of the Toy Industry Association. You’ve been on the board and chairperson since 2004. You’ve probably been on the board many more years than that. You also. What? my God. ⁓

Sharon John (39:07)
First woman, the first woman in 100 years. Yeah.

Speaking of which…

Shelley E. Kohan (39:15)
my

god, okay. You’re also on a bunch of educational and philanthropic boards. have been named University of Tennessee top 100 alumni of the last 100 years. my god. I love it. Distinguished alumni by Columbia Women and Business.

Sharon John (39:30)
I think they got a little crazy there. That was too much Jack Daniels. ⁓

best food.

Shelley E. Kohan (39:39)
which is great. You’ve been recognized recently as being one of the leaders on the Forbes Top 20 Customer Centric Companies, and you were listed on the CEO Forum’s Top 10 CEOs Creating Culture. So what are you most proud of?

Sharon John (39:54)
⁓ you know, Shelley, nothing to do with any of that.

Those are just outcomes. I guess really it’s that through all of that, so far, it’s never pretty, and it’s often bumpy, and nothing’s ever perfect. But through all that, I was fortunate enough to be in a situation where I kind of got to follow my dreams to some extent, ⁓ but have multifaceted dreams as well, ⁓ including family and kids.

We’re healthy and I’m coming up on 30 years of marriage and my kids are, you know, they’re remarkably normal. And, you know, that’s just a massive blessing. ⁓ And I’m very proud of that. ⁓ And it’s not about being superwoman or it’s not. It takes a team of

Shelley E. Kohan (40:42)
I’m down. ⁓

Love it.

Sharon John (41:01)
you know, and, and you know, you there’s, there’s no good way and everybody’s got to find what works for them. ⁓ but I w I’ve been so happy to do that and I’m even happy to not do this anymore. Right. It’s I’m, I’m looking forward to my someday of being the more creative person that I am. ⁓ and I think that’ll be a blast too. So.

Some of it is, you you have, what do you want? Back to that question, what do you want? What do you really want? And being willing to put something down on a piece of paper and envision it and believe in it and fight for it, but also be willing to just, and that what do you want is also not always what you think you want when you first wrote that, what do you want? So here’s the thing, those stairs that you’re building, there’s going to be flashes of light or new information or your hammer breaks.

Shelley E. Kohan (41:34)
Yep. ⁓

Sharon John (42:00)
It’s okay because a lot of times, and not to get too esoteric here, but you can’t even imagine what the universe might want for you. Like you’re what do you want when you’re 20? You gotta get started. But if all I did was got what I wanted when I was 20, I would have been done 20 years ago. I’d be like, well, cause I couldn’t imagine.

Shelley E. Kohan (42:25)
Yeah.

Sharon John (42:31)
what it, what everything else wanted. So sometimes you’ve got to just let go a little and be willing to see what happens. And those are human things. That’s not woman things. These are human things. And that balance of a loose vision, the ability to get up and keep listening to your soul and

Shelley E. Kohan (42:35)
Yeah.

Sharon John (42:56)
leaning in on what creates energy and excitement for you. And when the work is hard, too hard, it’s wrong. But when it’s right hard, and you know what I mean when you get into it, you wake up and you’re like, you’re kind of mad, but you’re still energized. It’s not like, it’s not entirely exhausting. There’s something exhilarating and inspired about what you’re doing. You’re on the right path. Just keep leaning in.

Shelley E. Kohan (43:05)
⁓ I do definitely.

Ha

Yep.

All right, so this is the favorite part of my interview with you. It’s called rapid fire questions. So these are questions. I’m just going to like ask these questions really fast and you have to answer them quickly. Boom, boom, boom. Okay, you ready? All right. What one piece of advice would you give to female leaders that are currently working?

Sharon John (43:30)
god, I’m so bad at this.

Do my best. Do my best.

Believe in yourself, but it’s not about you.

Shelley E. Kohan (43:51)
What three tips would you give students, our emerging leaders?

Sharon John (43:56)
think it’s back to that. It’s like know what you want, be willing to go after it, but also understand that what you think you want might not be the greatest outcome for 40 years from now, 30 years from now. So you can keep evolving.

Shelley E. Kohan (44:13)
I love that. I love that. Okay, what’s your legacy? What do you want to leave behind for that next generation?

Sharon John (44:23)
I really hope that I can be at least one of an example of that you can have fun, lead with integrity, and still be successful. I think there needs to be more data points of that.

Shelley E. Kohan (44:46)
Excellent. Okay, this is the last question and it can be anything. It’s fun. All right. What is your secret power?

Sharon John (44:55)
I know that. I got two of them. The one thing that I don’t think is, if you have it, you have it. If you don’t, you don’t. So this one, sorry. I’m sorry. How balanced is your brain? How left brain, right brain are you? I’m incredibly left brain, right brain. I just flip, flop, flip, flop, flip, flop all the time, all the time. My little connector in there.

Shelley E. Kohan (44:58)
Great.

Okay.

Sharon John (45:20)
you know, that they chop apart when you’re crazy, that must, that’s gotta be like super thick. I don’t know. So, I mean, so I’m a dot connector, constant dot connector. The second thing though is truly the ability to find a way to stay positive and recognizing that that is choice. life, you’re predicting life.

based on the way you interpret now.

And everybody has that power.

Shelley E. Kohan (45:57)
Sharon, it has been such a pleasure speaking with you and I have to say I just love being in your presence.

Sharon John (45:58)
Okay.

This has been a joy. Thank you.

Shelley E. Kohan (00:47)
Cyndi I’m so excited to have you on Lead Like Her. Welcome.

Cyndi Rhoades (00:52)
Thanks so much. It’s such a pleasure to be here today, Shelley, and I’m looking forward to the conversation.

Shelley E. Kohan (01:00)
You have such a fascinating background and I know our students and young female leaders everywhere will just learn so much from our conversation. So let’s get started. And I actually want to start, because I want you to talk about your early years, because you, I think, have a fascinating journey in those early years really kind of ⁓ developed the next decades of your entire life. You actually started in the film industry.

Cyndi Rhoades (01:26)
I did, I did. I think it’s safe to say that when I was younger, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I had no idea what my direction would be. Some people know they want to be a fireman when they’re 10 years old, firewoman. And ⁓ I just, took me many, years, but I started out in a very creative background where I…

got involved in, I did a short filmmaking course, ⁓ but then decided to dive straight into the industry. So I had moved from Columbus, Ohio.

to California, San Francisco, then Los Angeles, and was able to work my way up the ladder. Well, not much there. In LA, I started out kind of bottom of the heap there as a runner. Got a bit of experience, and then I moved to London and immediately got film work here, music videos, ⁓ commercials, and worked my way up the ladder. That was fun.

But as I was doing that type of work, which was very much fun, I realized kind of my personal interests had started to change. I got a lot more interested in things like kind of what made the world tick, global economics and social and environmental issues. And so as my personal interests changed, so did my…

interests or passion for what I wanted to do. And ⁓ that led me down a path of discovery where

Somehow I ended up learning about the topic of textiles and the challenge of textiles. I’ll give you a quick fact or two. ⁓ So today over 90 million tons of textile waste is generated every year around the world. ⁓ And we’re producing over 110 million tons of new raw materials to make new products every year. So essentially we’re throwing away almost as much as we’re making.

every year and for me that became a really big issue and a challenge and I realized that’s the thing I want to dedicate my life to. I want to find a solution or be part of a solution. I won’t be as bold as saying it’s the only solution by any means but it kind of that was the thing that got me out of bed every day and and led to me setting up a company called Worn Again in 2005 and

It was a very simple premise. ⁓

How can we find and develop solutions that could help to eradicate textile waste? And that was the premise of it. So we started out in upcycling, taking old textiles and making new products, selling them onto first consumers. And then that evolved into, how about we work with companies? Companies are producing large volumes of waste. So we worked with them to take their textile waste, make second life products that they could then buy back into the business.

But it wasn’t until 2015, sorry 2012, when the real light bulb moment came and…

I was introduced to a scientist who had been working in polymer recycling, which I won’t go into the detail, but essentially we brought my vision together with his ⁓ chemistry mind and we started the development of a solution that could take end of use textiles, break them down, separate polyester and cotton, the two highest use fibers, and put both of those materials through a process that could purify and extract

raw materials to go back into supply chains to become new textiles all over again. Essentially circular textiles and that’s what I’ve dedicating my life to for the last 20 years is moving to a world where new textiles are made out of existing textile raw materials.

Shelley E. Kohan (05:42)
I love that. And when you talk about your journey and you talk about this passion that sparked in you, what kind of age were you at in terms of when the light bulb went off and you said, my God, I have to do something to save the earth. Like, was that in your early years?

Cyndi Rhoades (05:59)
It was much, I mean, was well into, well, mid-twenties, kind of mid-twenties to thirties, and it was…

Shelley E. Kohan (06:07)
Okay.

Cyndi Rhoades (06:12)
It was, yes, I want to do something that makes a difference, but I also realized I wanted to use business as a platform for this change. I wanted to get into the heart of big business and say, business is causing the problem, or some of it. How can we work from within to actually come up with some of these solutions?

Shelley E. Kohan (06:33)
think that a lot of ⁓ young women, a lot of students, they think they have to know exactly what they’re going to do when they graduate. And you’re graduating, what, 20-something years old? No one knows. And so it’s great that you’re great evidence of, it’s not going to be there the second you walk out of college. It’s going to take a little bit of time. Or the second you start in the industry, you might go a different route. So I want to talk about, kind of in 2005,

You know, here you are, you’re a woman in the industry, and you made it sound kind of easy. I opened up a company and then I did this. But tell us a little bit about what was that like, you know, that journey? Were there difficult aspects of the journey? Were there some like positive highlights that just really helped you navigate through, you know, really starting your own company?

Cyndi Rhoades (07:23)
There are so many to mention and the journey has been such a roller coaster over the last 20 years. The highs are very exciting because you think we’re really on a roll, we’re gonna make it happen. And then the lows bring you down and make you think, why did I decide to go this route? But I think ultimately,

When you set up a business or focus your career on solving a global problem, you’re never gonna get bored. You’re always going to have something to do. ⁓ And so I think that ultimately that gives you the motivation to keep going even in those low times. ⁓ But there have been quite a few ⁓ positive highlights. I think when we first ⁓ developed in 2012,

Shelley E. Kohan (07:56)
True.

Cyndi Rhoades (08:18)
Adam and I had met and I told him the challenge that we were trying to overcome around textile recycling and polyester and cotton. And so we carried out a proof of concept in the lab where he went away, did all of his science stuff. It took about, I think it was about six months. ⁓ And…

At the end of it, we had some vials of polyester that were recaptured from textiles and we thought, wow, this is the bee’s knees. We thought, okay, great. How are we going to fund this now? Because it’s so early stage and… ⁓

We asked ourselves, right, whose problem are we solving? Well, this is the retailers. The retailers are the ones who are producing these products. They’re selling them to their customers. And then that’s it, end of story. And we knew it around in 2012 that…

sustainability had started taking traction. It was early days, but there were companies leading the way. And so at that point we said, okay, right. We hopped on a plane. We went to Sweden, to Stockholm, where H ⁓ are based and headquartered. And we spoke to the team there and said, look, we think we’ve got part of a solution here to textile recycling. They were super excited, very supportive. They came on board as an investor.

And that led us down the path. And from there, it’s been kind of bumpy and rocky. And at every stage, you always run out of money. You’ve got to find new investors. We started working with Caring from the industry in France, a luxury company. They came on board to support developments. And then in 2018, we attracted more investors, which we kind of, I think it was a bit of a fluke because we thought, oh great, there are a couple of brands wanting to put money in.

Shelley E. Kohan (09:57)
It’s so true.

yeah, yeah.

Cyndi Rhoades (10:18)
And

after that, we saw about every brand under the sun and never raised any more money from them. That was really tough. And so we then said, OK, right. We know the answer of strategic investors because venture capital ⁓ just does not invest at that stage. And so it’s too long. Exactly. The runway of tech.

Shelley E. Kohan (10:36)
Because it’s too long, right? The payback’s too long, right? Yeah, yeah, that’s a challenge.

Cyndi Rhoades (10:42)
Exactly. Developing a new product you can do in three to six months and you’ve got it on the shelf.

When it comes to a manufacturing process or a chemical process, I mean, it’s a good, it can take 10 to 15 years to go from lab to your first plant. And that’s where we’re at now. ⁓ I stepped outside of the business a couple of years ago because Warren again was moving into an industrial phase and that’s still getting closer to market and closer to a first plant. ⁓ And then I stupidly decided to set up another company to

Shelley E. Kohan (11:00)
Right.

Cyndi Rhoades (11:20)
to tackle the next big problem, is how are we going to feed all of these textile to textile recycling plants in a way that they need?

And at the moment we have plenty of end of use textiles, but they’re not being collected and sorted in the way that’s needed. Economically viable, they’re being exported to be sorted elsewhere. So I focused my next ⁓ couple of years, which we’re doing right now, on ⁓ automated sorting and pre-processing. So these are facilities that will take in end of use textiles, separate them by fiber composition, chop them up, get them into feedstock that can then go to recycle.

Shelley E. Kohan (11:39)
Yeah.

Cyndi Rhoades (12:02)
like worn again. And there are many, many more bubbling up around the planet now, which is great.

Shelley E. Kohan (12:05)
That’s amazing.

That’s

great. I want to go back to something you said. And I think, you know, when you look at leadership skills, I mean, you flew to Switzerland or Sweden, right, to meet with H And so like part of your big strategy is you have to get these investors and you have to get brand partners and you kind of have to get a lot of people in different.

Cyndi Rhoades (12:20)
Yep.

Shelley E. Kohan (12:32)
areas and functions to support what you’re doing. So what type of leadership skills did you have that you were able to use to make all this happen? And in what I think, I know it seems like a long time, but when I look back in a very short amount of time, you’ve got a lot of support.

Cyndi Rhoades (12:50)
I think it’s important, there are a few things in particular. think building a business that aims to drive an industry that doesn’t quite yet exist means you have to have vision and you have to…

kind of have the ability to look into the future and work backwards and say, what does it look like? Where is it we’re trying to get to? And then working backwards, what are the practical steps for getting there and who do we need to bring together to make that happen? And from our perspective, it’s always been an ecosystem approach. You have to…

connect with the brands because ultimately they’re selling the products. They need the supply chain to provide materials. You have to involve the end of use textile, post-consumer textile supply chain, the collectors and the sorters. You have to involve industry associations, like everyone’s needed. So kind of having a bird’s eye approach is very important. ⁓

I think raising investment for a startup in a nascent industry also

means that you need to look at strategic partners. Not just in the finance, but those strategic partners that can help you roll it out. And they’re going to benefit from it because maybe they play a role in it or they’re a key ⁓ partner in that. I think, you know, an investment approach that helps deliver the rollout phase is really important. ⁓ Maybe a cliched one, but really important is

making sure you have the right team.

And I would be the first to admit that I’ve made mistakes on that. ⁓ that’s okay. Making mistakes and having the right people on board ⁓ is part of it. ⁓ One of the key lessons I learned with team and people is if you have hired wrong, don’t wait. Pull the plug early because you need to have people who believe in the vision.

Shelley E. Kohan (15:00)
⁓

Cyndi Rhoades (15:06)
to go a different path or they’re not quite on board, it’ll mess up your entire strategy. So I think that was definitely, ⁓ it’s an important aspect of running a business that you want to get everyone on board with. ⁓

Shelley E. Kohan (15:24)
That’s great advice.

Cyndi Rhoades (15:27)
It is cliche because you hear it all the time and it’s really hard when you’ve hired people in and you think okay this isn’t working. Try to fix it but if it doesn’t work you have to pull the plug easily because it will distract and if you’re a small startup company it really throws you off kilter and it confuses everyone so that’s a big one. I think the other, ⁓ know, if you’re in a startup or a small company another key skill is to be able to

adapt to change when you’re observing what’s happening and learn to pivot when it’s needed. ⁓ think that that’s anything could change during the course of your company internally or externally and when you see the market change in a way that you don’t expect you need to

take a step back and say, okay, we’ve got to do things differently. I everyone experienced that during the time of COVID, but it could happen in so many different ways. So yes, being able to adapt to change was an important one.

Shelley E. Kohan (16:33)
And I like how you said while you were in the moment, because that’s key.

and we set these things in motion and then we feel like we’re very rigid, but you really can’t be, you have to be able to pivot along with what’s happening in front of you at the time. So that’s great. So you’ve accomplished a lot in our industry. So I’m gonna name a few things. mean, you were in 2023, you got an honorary doctorate from University of Arts in London for contributions of driving forward textile circularity. In 2021, you were selected as the global honoree for conscious fashion camp.

campaign from the Fashion Impact Fund. In 2020, you became Unreasonable Fellow and awarded the PCI-AW outstanding contribution to the textile industry. And in 2019, you were a finalist for the World Economic Forum Circular Leadership Award. And that’s just to name a few. But what are you most proud of?

Cyndi Rhoades (17:32)
Ooh.

That’s a funny question. think winning the awards have always been about bringing more attention to what we’re doing. I think it’s when people see awards, they think, yes, credibility. For me, it’s all about let’s bring more attention to this area. Let’s get more people involved in it. So it’s been a means to an end. I would say that the conscious fashion campaign

where ⁓ all of the 10 awardees, we got our videos and our companies up in Times Square, which was so much fun. I don’t know if anyone noticed it or took it in, but it was a fun thing to happen. And it kind of validates that you in terms of what you’re doing and that other people recognize it. think sometimes it’s just nice to say, well done, know, that’s great. ⁓

Shelley E. Kohan (18:17)
It’s so fun.

Cyndi Rhoades (18:35)
On the, I’m very proud of the honorary doctorate. had my family from Ohio come to London. I never graduated from university. So for me, that was a real ⁓ privilege to have that honor. And again, to say, to be recognized for what you’re doing and that it actually has meaning. But I think most of all, what am I proud of? It’s less about me and our companies. It’s more about the industry and how

Shelley E. Kohan (18:40)
You should be. Yep.

Cyndi Rhoades (19:05)
far the industry has come.

It’s not fast enough, but the fact that, you know, 10 years ago, none of this stuff was even being discussed. It was on the fringes and now it is in the mainstream. It’s a challenging time right now because company focus is on bottom line and sustainability and circularity for some has become back burner, but for the smart ones, they realize that the future of resources will affect their bottom line. So the smart ones.

Shelley E. Kohan (19:10)
Yeah.

Mm.

Cyndi Rhoades (19:38)
ones are still engaging and actually advancing ⁓ in this area.

Shelley E. Kohan (19:43)
Which

is great. So ⁓ tell me a little bit about some of the challenges you faced on your path to leadership and how did you overcome these? And do you think being a female leader in your field was a challenge?

Cyndi Rhoades (19:57)
⁓ Well, first of all, I would say that ⁓ I don’t look at my job as work. It’s definitely a challenge and you come across them every day. And I know that what we’re working on may not be solved in my lifetime. I think we’re going to make a lot of progress. ⁓ I do think that

Shelley E. Kohan (20:09)
Yeah

Cyndi Rhoades (20:26)
you know, when you’re doing something that’s a real struggle and it’s not an obvious, you’re not producing a widget or a product that people just buy, you’re actually trying to change the way an industry is producing and consuming. That you really have to… ⁓

You have to believe in your vision and your mission and the why. And that’s what keeps me going is the why. That’s what keeps me going. ⁓ I’m also very inspired by the people. So many of the people in our industry are… Well, it’s funny because circularity, if you look at pretty much everyone in this kind of sector of textiles, most of them are women. ⁓

And definitely in the early years when circularity was forming and you know there were startups, were entrepreneurs working within companies, you know, it started to blossom a good 10 years ago. Just so many of them are female and it’s funny because it makes you think what is it about circularity? It’s a better way of doing things. It’s a more intelligent use of resource use.

Shelley E. Kohan (21:18)
That’s interesting.

Cyndi Rhoades (21:45)
it takes into consideration not just bottom line, but society, better jobs, better livelihoods, and the environment. And I don’t want to put…

any men down because this is, it’s a growing area and we need everyone working on this problem and being part of the solution. But I think it’s interesting to see that maybe it was born from women, but I think it’s up to all in society to be part of this solution.

Shelley E. Kohan (22:19)
That’s

so interesting because in our industry as a whole outside of just circularity, but the whole fashion industry, there’s not a lot of female leadership at the top. So there’s something that prevents us from.

you know, really making it to the top. So it’s great to hear that in this little sector, and it’s not really a little sector, but it’s a very impactful sector, that it’s, you know, there’s a lot more women leaders. So it’s good to hear that. So as you kind of went through your entire career, did you have any mentors or role models for you that influenced how you led or how you lead today?

Cyndi Rhoades (22:57)
interesting question and I thought long and hard about this one and I didn’t have one particular person. think if I had to go for…

An answer on that, maybe not the most conventional response, but I have always admired Lisa Simpson from The Simpsons. So she’s a cartoon character, but she leads with conviction, with empathy, and she’s not afraid to stand up for what she believes in. ⁓

I’m definitely louder than Lisa Simpson is and more energetic maybe, but that’s why she inspires me and she reminds me that good leadership also means slowing down, listening, leading with values and not just driving forward.

Shelley E. Kohan (23:48)
I love that. love that. So Cyndi, I have to ask you as a prominent leader in the industry, how do you prioritize your time? And more importantly, how are you like deciding which projects to work on? You must get a lot of different projects coming at you. How are you picking and choosing how to spend your time?

Cyndi Rhoades (24:05)
Well, the vision is very clear and how we get there.

isn’t as clear and it’s going to take lots of different approaches and solutions. So whenever I come up against a new potential relationship with a new company, if that company and that potential project fits into the vision, then 100 % I’m all go because we, to get to this end road, however long into the future it is, we need everyone participating.

So I stay on track, I stay on mission. If it creeps away from that, it’s not the right project ⁓ to be working on. So I think everything I do professionally is geared towards getting to this place and whatever that looks like, ⁓ that’s quite an easy specification for deciding what to work on.

Shelley E. Kohan (25:07)
That’s great, Cyndi. And I’ve met you a few times, and ⁓ you have this aura of like well-being and balance about you. Do you have any tips for future leaders? Like how are you able to maintain this very kind of calm, what seems to be a very well-balanced aura about yourself?

Cyndi Rhoades (25:28)
I’m giggling because I may give off a different impression than the reality, actually. I’d love to give some positive ideas on how to get good balance, but I wouldn’t say I’m a good example. I tend to live, eat, and breathe this passion, so I end up compromising and sacrificing other areas of my life, which I don’t recommend, but…

You know, it is super important.

to look after yourself, to eat well, to exercise, to be with friends and family, to be in nature and to laugh, maybe not all together at the same time. ⁓ So I do try and get that. And I am a big fan of scheduling, scheduling your time and blocking it out. And if you haven’t finished a task within a certain time period and you’ve got something scheduled for yourself just after,

go for yourself. You’ve got to focus on that because when you come back to your work, if you aren’t healthy, if you are not sound in your mind, your work is going to is going to pay for it. so not the best ⁓ example myself. ⁓ Time off and time in nature is the holy grail for sanity and for non burnout. So, yeah, I’m not the best. ⁓

magazine cover for that. But I think, you know, find your own way, find what works for you, and make sure you stick to it.

Shelley E. Kohan (27:07)
I love that and I love that going into nature. find that going into nature is very helpful. It kind of brings me back down. that’s great. So it does.

Cyndi Rhoades (27:14)
It clears your mind, it clears your mind,

it allows you to reconnect with yourself, with the world, and then when you come back to a problem, you see it totally different.

Shelley E. Kohan (27:27)
Certainly. Okay, so now we’re at the fun part of our broadcast where it’s called rapid fire questions. I’m just gonna throw these questions at you and I just want you to quick, quick, quick answer them. Okay, so tell me when you’re ready.

Cyndi Rhoades (27:41)
Okay, deep breath.

Shelley E. Kohan (27:45)
Okay, my first question is, what one piece of advice would you give to female leaders that are currently working?

Cyndi Rhoades (27:53)
Believe in what you’re building because conviction is magnetic. It will attract others.

Shelley E. Kohan (27:59)
Love it. What three tips would you give students, our emerging leaders?

Cyndi Rhoades (28:08)
Number one for me is don’t wait to feel ready. Jump in and figure it out as you go. That’s without a doubt. If you’re waiting to know the answers, you won’t do it. You’ll be too scared. So jump in. Secondly, do what lights you up. The best organizations and businesses come from passion and also a real need in the world.

And then thirdly, always have your sense of humor. Laughing will burn off any residual stress, ⁓ but it also makes achieving your mission so much more enjoyable. If you can’t laugh with your team, what’s the point?

Shelley E. Kohan (28:54)
Love it. So I’m going to ask you the next question, although I already know the answer to it, but I’m going to ask you anyway. And that is, what’s your legacy? What do you want to leave behind for the next generation?

Cyndi Rhoades (29:07)
I don’t know about legacy, but what I do know is I hope the baton, or how we say it in the UK, the baton is being passed on for me. That one day we’ll all look back and say,

Why did it take us so long to realize that we didn’t need virgin materials like oil and virgin cotton to make our clothes? We already have the resources around us. ⁓ All it takes is bit of ingenuity and companies, investors, innovators to make it happen. So I don’t know if that answered your question, but what was your answer for me on that?

Shelley E. Kohan (29:48)
I definitely think that you want to leave the world in a better place than you found it for our next generation. That’s very clear to me in your mission and everything you’re about. So for me, it’s very clear what your legacy will be. So, ⁓ last question. This can be fun too. Okay, ready? What is your secret power?

Cyndi Rhoades (30:04)
that’s very kind.

If I die and I do have a headstone, well, I will die. If I have a headstone, which I don’t know if I will, ⁓ the one thing I’d like written on it is determination. Because that is the one thing when you hear no time and time and time again, if you don’t have determination, you’re never gonna get there. So I think that’s for whatever reason in my DNA. ⁓

Shelley E. Kohan (30:45)
I love it. I love it. Thank you so much for being here with us and sharing your story. I’m sure our listeners will learn a lot from your story. So thank you.

Cyndi Rhoades (30:56)
Thank you.

Shelley E. Kohan (00:02.606)
Kat DePizzo, I am so excited to have you here with me today on Lead Like Her. Welcome.

Kat DePizzo (00:09.274)
Thank you so much. I’m so happy to be here. Appreciate it.

Shelley E. Kohan (00:12.984)
So you have a great story to tell and I know our listeners are gonna love hearing about where you work now, which is one of the coolest, hottest brands out there. But before we get there, what I want you to start talking to us about is let’s talk about those early years. How did your leadership journey, how was it shaped back when you were with Levi Strauss, great company there, Mac Studio, Abercrombie & Fitch.

Kat DePizzo (00:34.648)
Yeah. Yep. Yeah. How did it shape my leadership? Gosh. I have worked for a lot of different leaders, some infamous and, you know, and small and big. I’ve worked in retail since I was…

Officially got paid since I was 14, but I worked in it way longer than that. I used to do trade shows with my dad and do floor sets at night when I was like little, little. So, so fun. Yeah. So I got the bug really, really young, but I…

I love retail. Like I worked in like anything you could have me do, I would do it. So floor sets at night, back stock rooms, sales, mean sort of the gamut. But when I got into those early years of like my career and you know, I spent a lot of time working in some really amazing companies and brands, so fortunate, but like with really different styles. So I learned a lot of like,

what I wanted it to be like and also what I didn’t want to be like. And it was pretty cutthroat back then. So, you know, we’re talking decades ago and it was pretty cutthroat. And so there was a moment where I experienced sort of the moment of where I realized that everybody wasn’t in it together.

It was a little bit, there was a lot of competitiveness and I was so surprised by it and it really caught me off guard. I remember I sat and I was, maybe like, it was probably like 21, know, 22. And I made a vow to myself and at the time I was actually surprised because it was from other women and that really threw me.

Kat DePizzo (02:25.648)
And so I was like, I’m making a vow right now that one day I’m going to work really hard to build a company where women can support each other, lift each other up, not hold each other down, not compete in like, you know, they’re going to be better because they’re better together and they can take their kids to, you know, go to see their kids plays and whatever at school and not feel like they can’t be a mom and, you know, and career. And so, um,

Yeah, I’ve worked really hard to get there. So I work at it every day. But I remember that shaped me. It stuck with me.

Shelley E. Kohan (03:03.533)
That’s amazing and I love the fact that you’ve been working since you were like, you know, a child in our industry. I think all of us kind of have that background where we just you get hooked into it and it becomes part of your blood, right? So tell us a little bit about the experience you had at Abercrombie and Fitch. That was back during the time when it was the literally the hottest brand around. How did you navigate through that culture at that time?

Kat DePizzo (03:05.584)
You

Kat DePizzo (03:12.121)
Sure.

Yes, absolutely.

Kat DePizzo (03:30.348)
Yeah, it was intense. I think there were a lot of weeks I was working 120 hours a week, seven days a week. We were all so intensely immersed in the brand and living it. Because it was. It was creating history with this cultural movement.

And you know and listen I love what Fran has done with the brand today. I mean what a remarkable She has just crushed it. I couldn’t I could not be more thrilled. Honestly, I’ve been cheering For her and for everyone there, but obviously it went through it’s been through some you know It was it was a challenging culture back then So it was tough. There was a lot of tough things about it and but I also learned like the

obsession with brand DNA and like to 360, know, holistic view of how a brand is executed from, you know, very beginning design to, you know, like in thought all the way to that button in the store, to that store experience, to the smell, to the customer interaction. just, and so those that came, we came from that school, you know, and I…

I love to see what everybody is doing now today that I worked with back in those days, because everybody’s just doing such amazing things. We all came with this like hardcore retail boot camp experience that I’ve never sort of seen anywhere else. So I’m grateful that I learned everything that I did. And I’m grateful that I got to be a part of a brand that was so iconic. I was actually like the second employee for

Rule number 925 if you remember that Brian I was yeah, I was the peon in the in the group of it But like we were a very tiny little group of like five of us locked in what was actually a sample closet they turn it into a office room and in little yes, so no joke like we got locked in and So was under lock and key, but I got to be a part of watching these amazing

Shelley E. Kohan (05:16.821)
Nice, yeah.

Shelley E. Kohan (05:36.311)
you

Kat DePizzo (05:41.87)
visionaries that were above me at the time is two amazing women that like dreamt up this you know brand and like the DNA of what it was gonna be from the product to the store to the it was Unbelievable to see something like that and then I would like I moved over to women’s you know when it really started get getting going but that was a really cool experience to be a part of and just like learn from all these really cool people that had come in from around the world and

Yeah, it was a wild time. after I had my first daughter, it was hard to keep up with the stamina that it was back then. wasn’t conducive to that. But I learned a lot while I was there. And I met some really great people.

Shelley E. Kohan (06:21.461)
Of course, yeah.

Shelley E. Kohan (06:32.001)
You’re lucky because if you think about it, if you said, I want to get into branding eventually, people would have said, we’ll go work for Levi Strauss, go work for Abercrombie and Fitch. And you just kind of like fell into that. And you got like a PhD in branding.

Kat DePizzo (06:45.039)
I mean honestly so fortunate. I Levi’s, gosh, like I still to this day search and collect Levi’s like from a thrift store, from a vintage shop. I have stacks of them that I cannot fit in at all anymore. But I love them because I just think what an amazing like iconic brand that just really knows who they are and their DNA and they just keep.

doing like innovative, really incredible things and it’s unmistakable. Like you, you know Levi’s, you know? So I really, I loved the history of that brand. That taught me a lot about like DNA and like falling in love with the history of it, so.

Shelley E. Kohan (07:27.851)
Yeah, that’s great. And Michelle Goss is doing amazing things there. Another woman that’s leading a great brand.

Kat DePizzo (07:31.183)
Exactly, I know I’m like get it ladies like it’s so honestly is so amazing. I Betty Madden who was with me at ANF but she’s over at Lee and like it’s just it’s really cool. It’s really really cool to see I know

Shelley E. Kohan (07:47.114)
I love it. So now, fast forward to today. Now, you are president of one of the hottest tween brands in the US, Justice Design Lab. So how now are you able to inspire your team members to excel? Now, you’re the leader and you’re bringing on the talent. And how are you getting those folks to aspire for great things?

Kat DePizzo (08:12.537)
Yeah, listen, Justice is such a really special brand. I used to joke there was an era, actually my husband would joke about it, there was an era where I was like, corrupting the youth of America with mini skirts and blue, malicious camis, because I was. There’s a patent on that. I was there for it. And then I got to switch over, actually switch over and.

which then merged, we merged Lemon 2 and Justice shortly after, but my job every day, the most important thing is to empower twin girls to feel their best self every day. And like that is, like if you go every day with that in your heart and you’re like in your brain, I mean like everything else will be fine. Like that is so important and so much more important than so many other things. Like, you know, we used to say,

you know, when things get really stressful and if we’d be like, we’re just making t-shirts, you know, like we’re just making t-shirts. And that’s the reality of like, clothing is clothing, like, Justice is this magical brand that’s like every touch point of how we interact with our customer or their guardian is meant so that she can see herself no matter what she looks like in our marketing and our messaging and our fit and our everything like.

Are we perfect all the time? Absolutely not, but that’s what we come in the door with our focus on every single day. And so like, that’s such an honor. It is not lost on me how important that is to help empower the next generation of women in this world. And so if I’m a tiny little bit of piece of that, like I can rest my head on my pill better, and know, like feel like I, you know, it’s wonderful. But my team, they take that on like.

I’ve never seen anything quite like it. I have the most unbelievable, it’s like my hidden gem is this team. Some of us have been together for, some for almost 20 years, which is crazy in this industry. And we put that focus every single day. We lift each other up and we lift up our girl. And so it’s internal and external. I always say you have your internal customer.

Kat DePizzo (10:30.127)
at a company. That’s what I have. This is in my walls. I am like 99 % women. By chance it just happened. And we have amazing gentlemen that work here and growing. we have a lot of women here. we talk about how do we lift up our internal customer? How do I take care of my team and how do they, and each other? And then how do you take care of your external customer? And so that’s our…

you know, girl and her guardian, so those that love her. So we just kind of make that the forefront of everything that we do. And when you start your day like that and you think like that all the time, good things follow.

Shelley E. Kohan (11:10.497)
Those are some great guiding principles and I’m sure they shape your leadership decisions every single day. That’s amazing. So have you ever faced some significant challenges on your road to leadership? And can you tell us a little bit about when you hit these roadblocks or barriers, how you overcame them?

Kat DePizzo (11:17.231)
Sure. Yeah.

Kat DePizzo (11:31.969)
Yeah, I’ve had some amazing leaders in my life and I’ve had some tough ones. And navigating how to push through that and not let it get you down. I almost lost my way several times on it. Just freely speaking as a woman, it was really hard. It was really hard. And yourself.

doubt in insecurities and how people can play into that. It’s messed up. It’s not right. And that’s not as a leader how anyone should lead. You’re not going to get the best out of your people. so I overcame a lot of challenges within that. But I will tell you as a leader, the hardest thing that I ever did was, we in COVID, we were rolling into COVID years. Yeah, it was tough.

Our parent company was, long story short, they ended up selling us in COVID. And so I was sort of already in a, you know, a tough spot with the brand and we were really, it was just such a crazy time where nobody’s, you know, you’re not going near anyone, everybody’s apart. And here we have the number one teen brand in the world for girls with like no direct competitor.

And they’re like we’re gonna sell it and put it on the market and look in liquidate the stores and you’re all going and I’m like What is happening? This is not happening on my watch one because I have us amazing team who are like are the top tier and how many and I’m like in the business of like creating opportunity for people So how do I keep jobs and how do how do I keep them in Columbus, Ohio? Because that was really important. But to how does this brand that means so much? so much just so many I mean

You can ask grown men about it and they’re like, oh, I got my granddaughter, her backpack, you know, like I brought her there for her first sleepover to get her, her PJs. There are core memories that people of all the likes and ages and, and genders and it’s like, they all have like a really, a lot of really great memories. And, and so I was like, it’s can’t go away. Not on my watch. Anyway, long story short, was sold at auction. I was forced to shut all the.

Kat DePizzo (13:52.783)
It was heartbreaking. And we were purchased, it was a bidding war, and we were actually purchased by Blue Star Alliance, whose model is different than what I was coming from, specialty vertical retail. And it was a crazy leap. I went to them, they came to me, and I said, if you want to make this big, you want to do this right, do it with me and my team. And I was really fortunate.

Yeah, but they they took the bait and I said I promise I will turn this into a big win for you and So what people don’t know? Just crazy is we lost our building, you know, we have no office. We can’t go near each other We really don’t have barely any resources because no it’s not even like they could come here and help me Nobody’s going near anyone. You’re not going to your next door neighbors. You’re not seeing if your kids don’t live with you You weren’t seeing your kids. It was like this crazy time and

I had to relaunch this brand because what I didn’t, what I soon found out is they was relaunching it at Walmart. So I had in a crazy moment of chaos with probably like 15 people. That’s about what I had at the time. I had every sample that we were developing and sent out from every category, because we make everything from apparel and home and bedding and beauty and like bags, shoes.

I had it shipped from around the world to my front doorstep. And we cleaned out my garage. It’s not a big garage. We cleaned out my garage. I had boxes every day stacked up. People thought I was nuts. And we designed and developed in the height of COVID, 10 feet apart with a lot of Lysol masks and sometimes hazmat suits on my driveway when the days were not rainy when we had a window. We designed, developed, executed, marketed, and sold our

Shelley E. Kohan (15:30.061)
you

Kat DePizzo (15:50.125)
back to school launch at Walmart across like 4,400 doors across the North American continent. And that was the hardest thing I think I’ve done in my career. But it was amazing. And then we got to take this brand that was number one for tween girls, but it was expensive. It wasn’t accessible and affordable. And with our partnership with Walmart, like…

it became accessible and affordable to all. And the craziest part is, it’s the same designers, it’s the same manufacturers, like it’s actually better product than we had in our stores. The quality, it’s crazy. So like it’s a really cool thing. have, don’t worry though, we have a beautiful office now and more people, but it was, it was, you know, I’d been working in corporate for a couple decades and I had just rolled my sleeves up and I was like, let’s go. I got reported on Facebook.

Shelley E. Kohan (16:33.421)
Hmph.

Kat DePizzo (16:46.156)
more times than you can count because people thought I was having a garage sale in the height of COVID. So, yeah. So that.

Shelley E. Kohan (16:47.884)
Ha ha ha.

That’s funny.

So, know, Kat, you know what’s interesting about that story? I love that story, but if you think about it, that whole beginning early days of your career, that set you up for success when this very difficult time came. And the other thing I love about your story is that I just am so thrilled to hear the confidence level that you had to say, if you want it done right, you need me and my team. I mean, that is awesome. I love that. A lot of young women.

Kat DePizzo (17:04.175)
yeah.

Kat DePizzo (17:18.829)
Yeah.

No.

Shelley E. Kohan (17:23.023)
and students can learn about being very confident in your abilities and capabilities.

Kat DePizzo (17:28.492)
Yeah. You know what? If I could give myself advice, I would have believed in myself a lot earlier. You gotta go through things. You gotta learn things. And you gotta realize you’re not always right. there, it was an era of where I let the, from the top down sort of get bogged down and I lost, I wish I would have had that confidence earlier. Yeah. Yeah.

Shelley E. Kohan (17:55.79)
Yeah.

Kat DePizzo (17:56.577)
So you gotta be humble and you gotta learn and whatnot. You do not know everything, I do not at all. But yeah, that confidence is, yeah, it’s game changing.

Shelley E. Kohan (18:08.619)
Yeah. So how would you describe your leadership philosophy or leadership style?

Kat DePizzo (18:13.582)
It has changed so much throughout the seasons for sure. I’m sure there are eras where I was not great and I certainly dazed still today, but You’re only as good as your team. Like you are only as good as your team. I am nothing without them So that’s first and foremost. I am very real very authentic and I’m very transparent so you the idea of like

president or sitting in your ivory tower in the separation in silos, I’ll come out and change the garbage disposal if I have to out in my office. And I have, I have. Like, I’m in it to win it with everyone and everybody’s opinion counts. And when you create a culture like that, it’s amazing what, one, how invested your people will be and how much they grow and their, when their confidence grows. And then what you can

put out into the world because it really changes everything. I try to be like, you know what I said, I’d been in corporate retail for over two decades. I had been in non-corporate retail since I was like eight. I mean, I’ve been working in this for way too long. I’m giving way too close to my age away and all these numbers. if I really felt like I had hit this point in my career, was like kind of.

I also was a little bored. I was like, kind of feel like I know how to do all these things and I kind of feel like I know a lot about a lot of things in retail and I did. And then this deal happened and I was like, I don’t know anything. I gotta go figure it all out again. And so being humble, being honest and sometimes you gotta fake it till you make it. Let me just say, everyone out there fake it till you make it. But go learn then. Then go figure it out. And so I did, I was like,

Shelley E. Kohan (20:06.944)
Exactly.

Kat DePizzo (20:08.48)
I tell me more, give me information. so that comes through partners and experience, also internally as a team too. And so I’m all ears all the time, always open. And I also own my mistakes. You know? Yeah.

Shelley E. Kohan (20:23.105)
That’s great. So how do you make sure that you get diverse perspectives and that those diverse perspectives are valued and integrated into your decision making process?

Kat DePizzo (20:37.048)
So first internally with my team, you we’re a much, you’d be shocked how small we are compared to what we used to be. So I’d love it to be even bigger and more diverse, you know, but we, I think coming from a very corporate, like I said, siloed industry, there’s all this stay in your lane, this is your job in this box, layered, make a deck and present it in a room. Come on.

Get, it. That’s getting in the way for everyone. If I can run a company like before with, you know, a thousand stores and thousands of people and all the resources and then turn around and still relaunch it and that many more doors with 15 people at the time, successfully, like, that was like, duh, I’m an idiot. What have I been doing? So I think, you know, eliminating some of that, you know,

nonsense and really getting to the core of like, hey, trusting your people, but be asking their feedback and getting their like point of view and weighing in on decisions. Not just, not just because that’s your department and your title. I want everyone to weigh in. So when we have things to talk about and you know, we’re coming to the table and bringing people from, or you come over here from marketing or different ages, you know, different backgrounds.

I want to hear everything and like if we don’t have enough then I’m like let’s bring in some outside point of view on this decision, whatever it might be. And so we really try to do that and we’re always open, like always open. There’s not a bad idea. And my ideas, sometimes they’re nuts, nuts ideas lead to the next big thing because we start riffing off of each other. And so I know that’s not, you can’t do that for everything, but like.

Shelley E. Kohan (22:19.341)
Hmm.

Kat DePizzo (22:29.346)
I really encourage leaders to think about what can you really cut out? Like how much time have people spending time creating a big pretty deck for you could if they went out and they actually were working on your business? I can’t. It’s so true.

Shelley E. Kohan (22:38.084)
What?

Shelley E. Kohan (22:44.001)
That’s so true, and you know what? AI can do all the decks now, and you can have the brilliance of people working on the brand.

Kat DePizzo (22:50.71)
Yeah, I mean, if I hear one more friend of mine that stays up all night, so many people in the industry, they’re like leaders and they’re brilliant and do all kinds of different facets of the business. And they’re like, I am doing this deck. I got to recreate this deck. I’m like, my gosh. But have you actually looked at your business? Did you get, no, I got to get to that at tonight at 11. Well, that’s not good. But I would also say that then I think it’s super important also to do that with your customer. So when I say,

Shelley E. Kohan (22:56.365)
you

Shelley E. Kohan (23:03.871)
you

Kat DePizzo (23:20.738)
you know, understand we bring in focus groups all the time. So girls from all walks of life and come in and tell us everything you know. Like we’re like, tell us what you hate, tell us what you love, tell us why, tell us, tell us what YouTuber you’re watching, tell us what pizza you like. Like we want to know it all. And so we bring them in and we also bring in guardians. So that’s mom, that’s dad, that’s brother, that’s uncle, that’s grandma, that’s whoever’s the special guardian in their life.

Shelley E. Kohan (23:27.678)
it. Love it.

Kat DePizzo (23:50.371)
you know, that helps make those decisions. And they, we bring them in, we let them weigh in on product. Sometimes we bring them in just to hear them talk and to stay close to our customer. Everyone’s customers are changing every day. So we want to be, you know, current with them and make sure that it’s just not one type of girl. It’s all types of girls. So, yeah.

Shelley E. Kohan (24:10.953)
important. So you you mentioned this earlier and you kind of mentioned it now a little bit. So I believe women and young leaders have a really difficult time trying to climb the corporate ladder but also making sure they’re taking care of themselves, you know staying well. So how do you manage balancing professional leadership responsibilities with your personal life?

Kat DePizzo (24:33.336)
That is a great question. I have two daughters. One is 20 and one is 12. So they’re eight years apart and my husband and I were just two different miracle babies. And I say that because I was one mom with the first one and a different mom with the second. In the first years of my, in those years of my career, there was.

You didn’t leave to go to that play. You didn’t leave to go to that appointment. You didn’t. I worked tirelessly to the point that I crashed. I mean, I literally crashed. I just couldn’t do it anymore. And I and my daughter and I are very close, but I feel like I just I missed too much. And in that I was killing myself. And then the mental guilt that you get as like a woman and as a mom where you’re like, oh, I’m failing at all of this and then I’m

When mom’s not okay, nobody’s okay. when you’re not, whether you’re a mom, whether that’s of your dog, of your whatever, I don’t care. When you’re not okay, when internally, as a woman, the rest of your work will suffer. It takes time. Like you gotta work hard, you gotta grind. I wouldn’t be where I am today if I didn’t work like I did, but there’s a better balance. And today, I feel like the world is shaped differently.

to where there is starting to be more support and, you know, I am an advocate of like, to that event, go see your kid in the parade. I know that you’re gonna still get your stuff done because you care. And you care more because I support you in your life. So, you know, I really try to create that culture for people, women and men to feel like they can be, you know, whatever it could be, your dog’s parade, I don’t care, you know?

Shelley E. Kohan (26:12.173)
That’s right.

Kat DePizzo (26:28.385)
But I think you have to create space for yourself. And I would say I was really good at once I sort of got into this position, I was like, okay, I’ll create it for my team. Really bad at creating it for myself, but I’ve gotten so much better and I think you have to be crazy intentional about and be selfish. It feels selfish when you’re doing it. But like, I, you know, it’s like,

Shelley E. Kohan (26:28.577)
That’s right.

Shelley E. Kohan (26:44.822)
Kat DePizzo (26:57.293)
You know what, I just need an entire 24 hours off to myself. And I need to go shut it down, and that means I can’t talk to anyone for 24 hours, not even my kids and my husband, I love you so much. What do you need to take care of yourself? And slowly but surely, I started integrating things like, for me, I got into yoga because I was really bad at meditating, but if I did the practice, it helped calm my brain. And so I make time for that. And when I make time for that on my mat,

Shelley E. Kohan (27:22.957)
Yeah.

Kat DePizzo (27:26.763)
I have the best ideas for my business. It’s so true and it was so hard to see that. Honestly, I think it’s only been the past five years that I’ve gotten really good at it. Take the vacation. Take the vacation. Everybody else is gonna take a vacation. Why are you not taking the vacation? You’re always gonna get your stuff done. Don’t leave it all on a bank. It’s like…

Shelley E. Kohan (27:29.101)
It’s so true.

Kat DePizzo (27:53.358)
I think you gotta carve out time and be selfish and, cause when you’re whole, you’re better. You’re better at your job. You’re a better partner. You’re a better leader. You’re a better mom, dad, whatever you may be. you’re, and I learned that I could ride myself into the ground for a while, but it catches up with you. It really does. Yeah. So I make, ahead. I was just saying I make time now.

Shelley E. Kohan (28:12.479)
It does. And then when you give you… Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, you go ahead.

Kat DePizzo (28:20.055)
to go to things and so my younger daughter, sees me at more things than my oldest daughter ever did. so, least I was fortunate enough to get a second trial around, you know, cause you’re not all, you know, so.

Shelley E. Kohan (28:33.078)
Yeah.

Shelley E. Kohan (28:36.789)
I think your brain and your mind need space to be creative. So if you fill it up all day long with all these things to do, then you don’t have the space to be creative. I also know, yeah, go ahead.

Kat DePizzo (28:47.125)
Yeah, I was gonna say, you know what, you wanna hear a fun fact about me? Well, you know what I do, and I really need to create space in my brain? This is, guys, this is like my favorite thing. I like power tools. My number one favorite thing to do is power washing. I put my earbuds in, I love it if it’s a sunny day, I get my power washer out.

Shelley E. Kohan (28:51.991)
Sure.

Shelley E. Kohan (28:56.769)
Tell us.

Shelley E. Kohan (29:07.149)
fun!

Kat DePizzo (29:13.953)
You know, you might get a cocktail and just get out there all day. And I will go for eight hours straight, no joke, they have to like bring me in. I am covered head to toe. But in that time, it’s the most satisfying. Like I don’t have to really make any decisions except for where this is going. And then I see the results and I just blast music in my ears. yeah, it’s my favorite, favorite thing to do. Yeah. So.

Shelley E. Kohan (29:32.235)
yeah.

Shelley E. Kohan (29:36.12)
That’s awesome.

I love that. I also know you’re very passionate about helping others and you’re very committed to mentorship, inclusion, community impact. You actively volunteer with schools, youth organizations. I think you’re serving on boards like Columbus Fashion Alliance and Fashion Retail Studies Industry Advisory Board at The Ohio State University. So you’re really now giving it back. So tell us about your passion for helping others find their purpose.

Kat DePizzo (30:09.109)
Yeah, one, I am a big buck guy. So I love Ohio State. It was a small program when I went there. So amazing professors.

would not be here without experience, but it was really small. My resources were kind of tight. And I remember being like, I work in this city that’s like number three in fashion and retail, but I don’t have like, was like struggling to get an internship at the time. It was, you know, it’s challenging. And I’m like, were they not looking in their backyard? Like, you know, were other companies looking and they were, I mean, they were flying people in from around the world for back then, you know, and they still do, but, you know, it’s just a different time. And so,

I remember being like…

It was something that I was, it kind of clicked in me a little later into my career. was like, how do I create, help create that gap, connect that gap? That was first was just like schools to like the businesses, cause that’s where I was at. And so I started serving on the board for Ohio State and gosh, they’re, they’ve done just amazing things. The team that does that over there is just that. that now that program has skyrocketed as like the second largest growth or the

first largest growth at 4 OSU and it is massive and they’re building this new building. It’s beautiful and I’m like so excited for them because it’s coming like they’re creating this you know thing that like and I dreamed of this so I wanted to help people that were like me that were like hey I’m ready but I you know help me connect and get in my foot in the door.

Kat DePizzo (31:47.413)
That was part of it. And then the other part is what if they weren’t like me and they weren’t at Ohio State University and they didn’t have all the resources that I did? What if they never even got that chance? So the Columbus Fashion Alliance really does that and we’re able to create opportunities, whether it’s high school, it’s college or older to, you know,

create opportunity for those who want to be in the business and the industry, but they may not have, you know, the access to a university, you know, or.

a lot of different things that have kept them out. And so it is a remarkable program. I’m so honored to be a part of it. And the programs that they do, I hire students out of it. In fact, it’s changed my requirements. I do not require a four-year degree. In fact, I could care less if you have the degree, if you come out with the right experience and talent and the right, like I always say, chutzpah, you know, like, and yeah.

Shelley E. Kohan (32:49.687)
but…

Kat DePizzo (32:54.671)
For me, it’s, and they’re using, their program is really, preparing kids. I’m blown away by what the high school programs that they do do. So it’s important and I care about, you know, I mean, I was really fortunate to get here. Like, and there were a lot of amazing people that helped me along my way. And so I am.

Shelley E. Kohan (33:02.977)
Yeah.

Kat DePizzo (33:17.513)
I need to give back in my position that I’m in today. That is absolutely my responsibility to pay that forward. It’s circular. Everything’s circular. have to, and if I can help create some opportunity in this world and for others, then I feel like I’ve checked a box on my bucket list.

Shelley E. Kohan (33:38.848)
I love that. All right, so now I can’t believe our time goes so fast. I’ve learned so much about you and your leadership skills and your journey, but now is time for what I call rapid fire questions. okay, so I’m just gonna like whip these questions out and you’re gonna give me a quick answer, okay? Are you ready? All right, the first one is what one piece of advice would you give to female leaders that are currently working?

Kat DePizzo (33:50.238)
boy. Okay.

Kat DePizzo (33:55.519)
Okay, okay, I’m

Kat DePizzo (34:05.888)
Believe in yourself. Unapologetically believe in yourself. And choose you. Choose yourself.

Shelley E. Kohan (34:11.084)
Love it.

Excellent. What three tips would you give students, our emerging leaders?

Kat DePizzo (34:20.748)
It’s going to be hard, so be ready. It’s not an easy walk. Get thick skin and learn to put your shield up. And you don’t have to internalize it, but put your shield up and get thick skin because if you don’t let it get in your head and get in your way of moving you forward, others will try. Don’t let them. And again, be unapologetically yourself. Don’t try to be someone else or.

create a different persona that you think you need to be, be yourself. Authenticity always wins.

Shelley E. Kohan (34:57.483)
Love it. So what’s your legacy? What do you want to leave behind for the next generation?

Kat DePizzo (35:04.556)
I really hope in some small way I have helped to shift the narrative as a leader and especially for women. Certainly I hope in my industry and if I keep going where I want to go, I hope more than just my industry because we’re here to lift each other up. We’re not here to hold each other down.

And like together we’re so much stronger and I want the more that we do that and surround ourselves with people who support and love us but also each other, the better this world’s gonna be. So I hope I’m a small part of that change, yeah.

Shelley E. Kohan (35:59.819)
Me too. I do too. Okay, the last one. All right, so this is the last question I have for you. It could be anything. And it should be fun. Doesn’t have to be. It cannot be power washing though. I’m taking power washing off the table on this one. So you can’t use that one. But tell me, what is your secret power?

Kat DePizzo (36:10.732)
Okay, dang it. Okay. Okay.

Kat DePizzo (36:18.73)
Ooh, I’m, so I might say I’m a little witchy, but I’m very intuitive. I don’t know how to describe it, but I can read and sense and feel people’s mood, energy, or their vibe, which works really well in a lot of settings. yeah, so we joke about it. I’m a little witchy. I don’t know.

Yeah, yeah, so…

Shelley E. Kohan (36:48.429)
That’s a great superpower to have. I love it. Well, thank you so much Kat. It’s been a pleasure having you here. I’m sure our students and young leaders and women will learn lots from what you shared today. So thank you for giving back and donating your time to do this broadcast with us.

Kat DePizzo (36:53.119)
Yeah.

Kat DePizzo (37:07.405)
Of course, was such an honor. really appreciate it. I love and admire all the work that you do and I’m really grateful that I got to be a part of it. Yeah. Awesome.

Shelley E. Kohan (37:15.288)
Thank you.

Shelley E. Kohan (00:02.232)
Haley, I am so excited to have you here with me today on Lead Like Her. And what’s interesting is you have a very dynamic background, writer, speaker, advisor, coach. So I’d like to jump right in and first ask you, I wanna go back to your early years in your leadership journey. And I know you worked for L Brands for 16 years. And so when I look at those 16 years,

Haley Boehning / Storyforge (00:03.489)
you

Shelley E. Kohan (00:31.96)
can’t even imagine what you experienced in shifts in leadership and consumer behavior. So tell us a little bit about those, that journey at the beginning of your career.

Haley Boehning / Storyforge (00:42.667)
Thanks. was such an amazing time to be at L Brands or Limited Brands. can’t, looking back, I can’t imagine other than those early days in kind of the sixties and the seventies, I can’t imagine a more interesting time to be at that enterprise. So I was very, very fortunate. I do not have a retail background. I do not have a business background. I had a communications background and a background in storytelling, great books and theater.

So how I ended up at All Brands is anyone’s guess. I can make it make sense in hindsight, but really it was just incredible stroke of luck that I ended up there. And that was back in 1997. So I was a young person. I’d never worked in a corporate environment before. And I was completely and totally unprepared for the job that I was there to do. So that meant, I think, that I entered the job with a lot of curiosity.

And a beginner’s mindset because I was a beginner and and in way that served me really well. Over the time I was there. So.

Shelley E. Kohan (01:49.176)
That’s amazing. back during that time in the late 90s, That was like limited brands was the company to be working at. That was back in their like tremendous heyday, right?

Haley Boehning / Storyforge (02:00.833)
Yeah, it was. Yeah, when I joined the company in 1997, they were just coming off of a period that I’ll refer to as the growth through growth period. So, you know, for probably 10 to 15 years before I arrived, it was opening more stores, opening more stores, thousands and thousands and thousands of stores. I think at the height of the time that I was at L Brands, I want to say we were writing something into the tune of, and I might get this wrong, but

let’s say like 400,000 to 500,000 W2s a year. Just because of the incredible number of employees that were in the stores, that were in the distribution centers for holiday. It was just this unbelievably large retail machine. But growth was coming through growth. So when I started at Elbrans, I was actually on the public relations side doing media relations. And it was so long ago, we were using fax machines to do this. So that just gives you a sense of,

Shelley E. Kohan (02:56.823)
Hahaha.

Haley Boehning / Storyforge (02:59.009)
of time frame here. But around that time, the business was beginning to shift and the board and Les, the founder, were beginning to move into what we all think of referred to as the family of brands era of the business. So this recognition that growth wasn’t necessarily going to come through growth, but it was going to come through brand and through branding. And that campaign

of creating a family of mega brands was really the era that I grew up in inside L Brands. And what coincided with that was a recognition that while you were building large mega brands, that there was a home office support team that could be established to serve all of those brands. So up until that point, every single brand operated as its own business.

with its own finance team, its own HR team, its own communications team, really running very, very independently under this holding company of the limited or the limited ink. So limited brands that move into mega brands was a major organizational shift as much as it was an externally facing brand shift for the organization.

Shelley E. Kohan (04:15.917)
That’s amazing, Haley. And just tell me, I’m just very curious, and a lot of our listeners are young executives or students that are wanting to pursue in the industry these leadership. So here’s this young executive, you come in, you say you have no experience and you just kind of got learned by fire, but what leadership skills did you learn and take away from that experience at Limited Brands?

Haley Boehning / Storyforge (04:40.865)
That’s a question. Some of them I think were lessons that I learned and understood to be insights in the moment. And then some of them I only really in hindsight were able to see the lessons that I was learning. one of them I was thinking, was remembering this very early moment, one of my first roles on the external communications team before I moved into the internal and strategic team was to help write the monthly sales press release.

So this is a very important thing. It went out every month. It was reporting to the street and to all of our shareholders and to the public what the business was doing. So I mentioned earlier my caveat that I had no background in retail and no background in business. A thing I’ve also recently learned about myself is I’m a little neuro spicy and I’m a little neuro spicy in that I have dyscalculia, which is almost dyslexia, but for numbers.

So there I was responsible for writing the helping to draft the press release on the numbers of the business. And I’m going to admit to you and admit to all of your listeners that for the first six months of my employment at L Brands, I thought comps and likes were two different numbers. It took me a few months to realize that they were the same number each month. Isn’t that funny that the comps number and the likes number seem to be the same? So that just gives you an idea of the baseline that I was working with for knowledge. So I think what

Shelley E. Kohan (05:53.613)
I

Haley Boehning / Storyforge (06:07.829)
What served me well unintentionally was that I had to be curious because I knew absolutely nothing. So when I was courageous, I asked really stupid questions. Sometimes I asked them in the room and sometimes I asked them outside of the room, but I had to ask. Otherwise I would think Thompson likes were the same thing. So that curiosity, I think served me well. The other thing that served me well, but frankly, I’m not sure I would have been able to do in any other environment.

was because I was wholly unprepared for the jobs that I was being asked to do, I think I went into them with an entrepreneurial mindset. And the business, even though it had the longest serving founder, chairman, CEO in the Fortune 500 at that time, even though it was a Fortune 500 company, there was an entrepreneurial mindset in that business that appreciated other entrepreneurial mindsets.

Shelley E. Kohan (06:45.036)
Interesting.

Haley Boehning / Storyforge (07:03.595)
there really wasn’t a rule book for how you could advance as a leader and what you could do. So I was very fortunate. I got to make up my jobs and see opportunities and create jobs around them. So I think in the 16 years I was there, none of the jobs that I had actually existed before I was in.

Shelley E. Kohan (07:24.557)
That’s crazy. Well, that’s a great inspiration for our listeners. So you have this great experience at this well-established company. You’re kind of being very successful. You were there for 16 years, and then you decide, I’m going to open up my own business. So tell us a little bit about what prepared you to open your business, and what does the leadership skills look like going from limited brands, very established, structured business, to what I would say a very unstructured business model.

Haley Boehning / Storyforge (07:54.635)
Yeah, it’s a great question. When I left L Brands, I had an opportunity to continue to do exactly what I’ve been doing at L Brands in another business. So there were two or three other businesses that were remaining and retail businesses that were recruiting for similar communications leadership roles as to the one I had. So I went on those interviews and I’m glad that I did because it helped me realize

that that’s not what I wanted to do. And I can tell stories about that later, but that recognition that there was something after L Brands that maybe I could take these 16 years of experience scaling, doing things that are very, very large scale. And perhaps there were some things that I learned to do that I could share with others. That was kind of the first insight for me. And then the second was, I think I took from

that experience in corporate America that, and this was one of the big insights I had was that the shareholder primacy model, which existed at L Brands and within a lot of businesses at that time, didn’t feel completely congruent with my values. I knew there was something bigger than that.

And I was fortunate to find it around the time that I left L Brands in this model of more conscious business and a stakeholder oriented business that recognizes that shareholders are one stakeholder in the business and that all of those stakeholders need to be need to be concerned. The leaders need to be concerned with all those stakeholders and find win win win opportunities for all of them. That was another big insight and now I’ve forgotten what the initial question was.

Can you repeat it?

Shelley E. Kohan (09:46.492)
No, just what so first of all, let me just comment on the stakeholders So you were had you were thinking about the stakeholder approach before it became very I don’t want to say trendy but very important for companies to look at a stakeholder You were above you were ahead of everybody else in that regard So I applaud you for that thinking about you know a bigger consciousness of And we’re gonna get into some of the other work that you’re doing that exemplifies that but the question was so the leadership skills required

your first 16 years in a structured company versus owning your own business, which is, in my opinion, very unstructured, at least at the beginning as a startup.

Haley Boehning / Storyforge (10:24.543)
Yeah, that’s great. So thank you. Thank you for that for getting me back on track. So I think that I mentioned before that, you L Brands had this entrepreneurial spirit, somewhere at the heart of it. And I was very fortunate that because of the role that I played, not because I was the smartest person in room, not because I was a leader in the business in any of the retail businesses, I just got to be in the room a lot because I was the person holding the notebook and the pen. So as a result of that, I got to

really unintentionally absorbed 16 years of amazing business lessons and insights from some of the smartest people I’ve ever worked with. So from less down to all of the different leaders of the retail brands and just listen and absorb. it was a little bit entrepreneurial spirit by Osmosis. So recognizing customer intimacy, the importance of really knowing your customer.

like you would know a best friend. That is certainly something that I’ve taken into the business. The insight that inclusion makes us stronger, that if we include more voices and more people and more thinking styles, the results that we produce will be better than if we are narrow in our thinking. So those things I think served me really well. What didn’t serve me well was a corporate environment.

So to be honest, I had to unlearn a lot of things, just from the very simple, which is, there’s an IT department who takes care of that, or we can send that to finance to realizing that I was the IT department and I was finance. So just from the simple practical aspects of it, but also unlearning a lot of the not necessarily healthy ways of thinking about work and thinking about leadership.

Shelley E. Kohan (11:44.736)
Wow.

Shelley E. Kohan (12:01.087)
you

Haley Boehning / Storyforge (12:13.118)
that I just needed to strip away as I was building my own business.

Shelley E. Kohan (12:16.976)
that’s amazing and you’re right. You become everybody and that’s such a different skill set. So I want to ask you, can you give us an example of a very difficult decision you had to make and maybe the thought process behind that?

Haley Boehning / Storyforge (12:31.393)
That’s a good question. It’s funny that the decision that I think of immediately is the decision to leave the corporate retail world. And I’m thinking back to one of those interviews. So was on an interview for another VP role within another large retailer based in New York. was going to be everything I’d always said I wanted, being in New York and doing this job that I’d done.

And in one of the final interviews, the HR leader said, I want to ask you a question. How do you feel about checking your phone first thing in the morning as soon as you wake up to see if there’s anything that needs to be addressed and checking it the last thing before you go to bed? How do you feel about that? And I was struck by the honesty of the question and I appreciate the transparency. And my first thought was, well,

Shelley E. Kohan (13:20.022)
Wow.

Haley Boehning / Storyforge (13:29.929)
I’ve been doing that for 16 years as soon as I got a mobile phone. And I don’t want to do that anymore because I don’t think it’s healthy. I don’t think I’m my best self under those conditions. And that decision, I think it was walking away from that interview, know, walking through the streets of New York, the city that I wanted to return to and I hadn’t been in for 16 years and realizing that I needed to decide to take myself out of that process because it wasn’t

right for me. wasn’t congruent with my values and it wasn’t where I wanted to go. It was a hard decision.

Shelley E. Kohan (14:05.772)
Haley, that’s an amazing, first of all, Haley, I’ve never heard of an interview question like that. So that’s a real game changer. Good for you for being honest about, you know, being self-reflective at that moment.

Haley Boehning / Storyforge (14:19.061)
Well, and frankly, good for them. We need more businesses to be more honest about the culture. There’s a lot of lip service paid to culture. And the more honest we are about who we are and what our culture and behaviors are that we’re expecting, the more we get a right fit from the people that we’re hiring. So it’s better for everybody.

Shelley E. Kohan (14:21.44)
Hahaha.

Shelley E. Kohan (14:25.249)
It’s

Shelley E. Kohan (14:40.864)
Yeah, totally. OK, so tell me about your mentors, role models, anyone who you really kind of reflect back on and think they really influenced your leadership journey.

Haley Boehning / Storyforge (14:52.964)
Well, the obvious choice are the people that I reported to along the way. So, know, Bruce, Jane and Sandy and giving shout outs to all of them for being such great mentors for me. But, you know, one of the first people that I reported to within that structure, actually there are two. One was an anti-role model and one was a role model. And I think they’re both important.

So when you are a young person in business, it’s almost as important to have the boss that shows you how you do not want to lead.

Shelley E. Kohan (15:28.52)
Absolutely.

Haley Boehning / Storyforge (15:29.961)
So I won’t say any more about that, only to say I hope that I demonstrate a different kind of leadership than what I experienced in my early years of being an employee. And then the second thing I’ll say is there was a gentleman by the name of Kurt Mudd who led the team when I was leading the internal communications team, he was our mentor. And he taught me the power of and.

He used to say, don’t give into the tyranny of or, know, look for the power of the and in that situation. And that, the insight, it took me a while to really learn it, but that unlocked so much for me. And later, I think was connected to these insights around conscious capitalism and stakeholder orientation. This idea that in every situation, whether it’s a really big business decision or it’s a small decision on your team,

that if you can find the win, win, win, win situation where everyone benefits from the decision, that’s where you’ve really unlocked something powerful. So I thank Kurt for that insight.

Shelley E. Kohan (16:39.87)
that’s excellent, Haley, I love that. So the other thing that has been really important and it’s grown more and more important over the years is making sure that you have diverse perspectives and that those diverse perspectives are valued and really integrated into the decisions you’re making. So how do you make sure that happens?

Haley Boehning / Storyforge (17:02.529)
It’s really, really important and increasingly more important, think, especially in this world where we are physically disconnected from each other more than we ever have been. So I think the first step is to ask, who are we serving in this particular situation? Who are our stakeholders? And are they in the room? How are they in the room? So the best thing is to actually have them in the room.

Do you have people representing all the different perspectives that you need? Do you have people who have the, excuse me, do you have people who have the different experiences that you’re looking for, the different, have played the different roles that you need to be weighing in on the decision that you’re making? So first, create the map and then figure out how to bring them in. And sometimes that’s physically bringing them into the room. And sometimes it’s going out and collecting those insights that you need.

before you come together to make a decision, to make sure that you have that in your framework for thinking.

Shelley E. Kohan (18:03.986)
love that. is there like do you have like a motto or quote or a mantra or something that kind of guides you through your leadership journey?

Haley Boehning / Storyforge (18:12.811)
Yes, I do. I’ve had a few. would say the first one, and this is timely because my friend Linus O’Brien is just coming out with a documentary about his dad and the film that his dad put out many, years ago that you might’ve heard of called The Rocky Horror Picture Show. one of the, it was a guiding light for me as a kid who felt like she didn’t belong. And one of the,

Shelley E. Kohan (18:31.34)
I love the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Haley Boehning / Storyforge (18:41.353)
One of the songs in that is don’t dream it, be it. And that as a young person, that was one of my mantras. Don’t just sit around dreaming it, actually be it. Do what you need to do to be the thing that you want to be. But the mantra that comes to mind that’s more recent is a few years ago I was asked to teach a class at Jewish Family Services in Columbus, Ohio where Storyforge is based.

And after I taught the class, I got a card, a thank you card. And on the front of the thank you card, and I still have it here on my wall. So thank you, Malka, for that card. It is a quote from Rabbi Hillel, who was a Jewish scholar. And the quote is, if I am not for me, who will be? If I am only for me, what am I? And if not now, when?

So three very simple reminders, one, that I have to take care of myself. I have to consider myself, take care of myself first. But if I am only concerned with myself, what am I?

Shelley E. Kohan (19:50.125)
Unbelievable, I love that. Thank you for sharing that. That’s amazing. Something, a mantra we all could live by. What do you think are some of the barriers specifically that hold young women back from rising to the top of their fields?

Haley Boehning / Storyforge (20:08.609)
The barriers are both obvious and hidden. I think of them in the three circles of control. There are things that young women in business right now can’t control. There’s systemic racism and systemic sexism. We have to recognize that that exists in our structures and do everything we can to dismantle that.

And then I think about the two other circles, our circle of influence, the things that we have in our control to influence, and then the actual things that we can control. So when I, especially when I’m talking with young women in business who are struggling, I ask them to think about those circles. What are the things that they completely control? And one of those things is how they show up in the moment, how they react in situations, especially difficult and challenging ones.

how they are as a peer and as a leader of themselves and a leader of other people. And then what their influence is, how can they influence the cultures that they’re in? I think about the incredible effort and changes that we’ve made over the last couple of decades in making the workplace both a safer and a more supportive place for women. So I think my initial instinct is to look for the positive.

while recognizing that the negative is there and we need to find ways to dismantle.

Shelley E. Kohan (21:37.751)
Yes, we do. by the way, so you know, our mission for the podcast is really to provide inspiration for future female leaders, but also to help any existing leaders in our industry to succeed. But you have been very supportive of uplifting women, both in our industry, but also you’re the founding member of Matriots. Am I saying that correctly? Matriots. Matriots.

Haley Boehning / Storyforge (22:00.501)
The matriots, yes. Like the patriots, but the matriots, yes.

Shelley E. Kohan (22:05.228)
which is Ohio’s first multi-partisan PAC dedicated to electing more women to public office. So I have to know, because I think it aligns with our Lead Like Her series, what was your inspiration for the Matriots and what motivates you to continue to help others?

Haley Boehning / Storyforge (22:27.051)
Thank you. Yeah, the Matrease is an organization that’s very, very close to my heart. So I was incredibly honored to be asked to be one of the founding members of the organization. I think there are 500 men and women who during that period actually became founders and bring that organization to life. But it was really, it was founded by seven women who after the March on Washington in 2017 said,

Okay, we have to do something. And this may be an interesting correlation to your earlier question about women in the workplace. Because here was a group of women who were looking at the national and the international stage and saying, this is broken and it’s wrong. And what can we do to fix it? And it would be very easy to throw up your hands and say, well, there’s nothing I can do. And the women got together and they said, well, somebody should run for office. Well, I’m not gonna run for office. Are you gonna run for office?

I said, well, no, the national stage seems too big. So then they looked a little bit smaller and they said, well, what about the state of Ohio? This is where we live. And we know we have terrible representation of women in state government. If we can make a difference in Ohio, it can make a difference in the world. And so they really thought long and hard about how they could make a difference. Who was already making a difference and in what ways and where was that white space in the market?

where they could make a significant difference and they realized it was funding women running for office. So raising money in a pack to be able to support those women who were running for, you know, seemingly insignificant, sometimes local offices and local positions, which we know they’re not insignificant. They’re very significant. I was on board from the moment I heard about it.

and was very pleased to whenever I can kind of drop in and help them with their work. I think the way they go about their work is actually a wonderful lesson for other women in business who are looking to support women who are rising up in their organizations. One of their missions is to demystify the political arena so that women understand and can actually activate the power that they have.

Haley Boehning / Storyforge (24:46.721)
So that’s great advice. If you’re a woman and you are in leadership, how can you demystify the culture, the organization, the politics, so that the younger women who report to you understand how it all works? The second thing they do is they celebrate, they support, and they endorse women who are willing to throw their hat into the ring to run for office. And that’s important. It’s hard to do. So look around in your organization. Who are the women who are?

who are ambitious and active and really want to throw their hat in the ring for higher leadership positions, support them, encourage them, give them what they need to help them grow and develop into that leadership.

Shelley E. Kohan (25:26.505)
Hailey, that’s amazing and I applaud you for the work that you are doing and helping to uplift more women in all, matriots. I think that’s great and I think you’re right. I think sometimes we think, you know, how can we get to the CEO level when we should be thinking a little smaller and just go step by step, right? That’s a great way that you looked at it from the political field.

Haley Boehning / Storyforge (25:45.899)
Absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, think about, you know, when I think back on L Brands, the number of leaders who started in the stores, you know, you’re thinking, well, this person is just working the cash wrap. That person working the cash wrap might be the head of stores later. So how can you help them grow into the kind of leader that you’d want to work for? So I was very fortunate at L Brands when I became vice president of the internal communications team, I was promoted from a group of peers.

Shelley E. Kohan (26:03.477)
That’s right.

Haley Boehning / Storyforge (26:18.853)
Any of my peers could have had that role and I would have been happy to work for any of them. So if you if you look at you know everybody on your team as a volunteer and if you look at everybody on your team is your potential boss you know how do you want the team to operate what kind of culture do you want to create that can be humbling.

Shelley E. Kohan (26:42.207)
So here’s one of my favorite parts of our Lead Like Her series and it’s called the rapid fire questions. So I’m gonna ask you question really quick, bang, bang, bang, and you’re just gonna give us your quick answer. Are you ready?

Haley Boehning / Storyforge (26:54.273)
Yes, I’m ready.

Shelley E. Kohan (26:55.923)
Okay, here we go. What one piece of advice would you give female leaders that are currently working?

Haley Boehning / Storyforge (27:04.307)
you have more agency than you think. You are the author of your story. You may not control all the plot points, but you get to control how the story is written. So whenever you find yourself in a moment thinking, is happening to me, change your mindset and think, this has happened. Now, how am I gonna write this next chapter?

Shelley E. Kohan (27:27.005)
Love it. Okay, what three tips would you give students? So these are our emerging leaders.

Haley Boehning / Storyforge (27:35.073)
Good. So emerging leaders, I would say the first is to appreciate compound interest. So the first time you get, and this is like a mom thing, right? The first time you get promoted, you’re gonna get a little bit of money, is great. Go take yourself on a trip and then invest in yourself. Put that money away. Understand that the power of compound interest means that when you wanna go off and start your own business in a few years,

you might actually be able to invest in yourself. So that’s the first thing, super practical, sorry for the mom stuff. The second one is just be curious. Be as curious as you possibly can. So get out of your job, get out of your industry, get out of the day-to-day of your work and try to connect with as many people as you can outside of the office. Build those connections now, especially in a time when we’re doing most of our work.

on a video screen, we need more human connections. So the more that you can accumulate and the more curiosity with which you can take yourself into those conversations, the better return you will get later on those connections and on that network that you’re building. And there was one more thing. I would say the third thing for you to invest in is to invest in your own development as a communicator. So learning to speak.

without fear, learning to write and learning to think. Those are three legs of a stool that are absolutely essential for leadership. Leadership is communication. And so if you have a desire to be in a leadership position at some point, you can focus on nothing more important than becoming a better communicator.

Shelley E. Kohan (29:21.713)
Excellent advice. Love it. So what’s your legacy? What do you want to leave behind for the next generation?

Haley Boehning / Storyforge (29:28.853)
Yes, I think I hope that I just leave behind a world that’s better than I found it. You the world needs to be repaired. The world is constantly fraying. And if the good people of the world are not constantly stitching it up, then life in the future will not be as good as it could be. So I hope that the legacy I leave is just one of love and compassion.

And our first value at Storyforge is that we’re humans first, before we’re employees or customers or clients or business owners. So I hope the legacy I leave is that I was a good human.

Shelley E. Kohan (30:07.663)
awesome. Okay this is my last question and it could be work, it could be fun, it could be whatever you want, okay? But what is your secret power?

Haley Boehning / Storyforge (30:17.857)
I can make a meal from whatever is in the fridge. I can repurpose leftovers onto crackers and call them an hors d’oeuvre. I am like, I am a master at make it up from whatever you have in the cupboards. So if you’re, if you’re ever at home and you’re stuck and you have like a can of beans and maybe some anchovies and you don’t know what to do, just call me.

Shelley E. Kohan (30:38.059)
I love it, Hailey. Thank you. my gosh, thank you so much. We learned so much from you. And I know the students and young female leaders will be very inspired by your story. So thank you for being here and thank you for sharing your story.

Haley Boehning / Storyforge (30:50.613)
Thank you, Shelly. This was a ton of fun. It’s always a joy to talk with you.

Shelley E. Kohan (00:01.992)
Very excited to welcome Kimberly Minor. I’m so excited to have you on Lead Like Her. So welcome.

Kimberly Lee Minor (00:08.631)
Thank you. Thank you. It’s always good to talk to you, Shelly. I was sharing this morning that I was going to do this podcast with some people and they were like, that’s awesome. Did we introduce you to Shelly? I was like, I don’t think so. She’s just fabulous. I love our conversations.

Shelley E. Kohan (00:11.68)
And

Shelley E. Kohan (00:26.144)
I love it. remember when I met you and you’ll find this funny. One of the first things when I met you, I was like, my God, she’s so fashionable. Like you are like the epitome of a fashion plate out there. So, and then you’re just so smart and I’m looking at all this stuff you’re doing. And I think you have an important story to share for the future leaders of our industry. So I’m excited to jump in and start talking about how you did it.

Kimberly Lee Minor (00:40.611)
my goodness.

Kimberly Lee Minor (00:50.475)
I hope so.

Kimberly Lee Minor (00:55.213)
Okay, I’m here for you.

Shelley E. Kohan (00:58.016)
So let’s start with maybe talking about what are some of the significant challenges you have faced on your path to leadership and how did you overcome some of those challenges?

Kimberly Lee Minor (01:09.645)
Well, you know, I would say my first challenge honestly was not knowing exactly what I wanted to do. you know, that was a huge challenge because how I had envisioned my career and my future was just was not coming to be to be when I was about to graduate from college. And, you know, I went to get my MBA because I didn’t know what else to do, honestly. And then while I was

I had just gotten accepted. I got into Macy’s executive training program. So I was doing both at the same time. And so then the challenge became time, right? You want to be successful in what you’re doing, but then you have to figure out how am I going to do all of this? And so as you you go along and those challenges become different. you know, from time it became, okay, I’ve done this now and

what else can I do? Now the best part about my experience with Macy’s training program was the expansive training, but really having a leader who had not come from retail either. And so, yeah, I mean, we were very similar in that she had done something before that and I hadn’t done something for that had gone to school, but.

just the idea of, you know, we had never had retail merchandising classes, had never thought that this was going to be our path. And so she really, reinforced the idea of curiosity as a skill. And, I thought, wow, this is great. I get to ask all the questions and learn so much. And then from there, the challenges became,

Okay, now you are in these like new environment because from there I went to Express and Express was just like baptism by fire because you know, they recruited the best of the best from everywhere. So, you know, you’re in there and you’re like, okay, I must be good. However, right. I don’t know. It’s just like, it’s a tough environment. You know, the challenge is how do you keep your head up because you’re working 80 hours a week and

Shelley E. Kohan (03:10.537)
Yes.

Kimberly Lee Minor (03:30.462)
you know, people are coming at you fearsome, my goodness, what is this environment is very different than, and so then the challenge became, I flexible enough? Am I adaptable to be able to grow in this space? Because I knew what I knew, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. And so that challenge, I learned new skills. And then the biggest challenge I would say once I got past there, because

What wasn’t a challenge is that I picked up quickly and I was only, I guess, judged on what I delivered. I never felt like I was judged because of who I was. I never felt that that got in my way. But as I got further along in my career, it started to. And there were opportunities that

I was not considered for. And when I thought about it, or even talked to certain people about it, the thing that had gotten in my way was I was being judged, obviously, because we’re always judged, but judged and evaluated based more on my gender and my race than what I was delivering. And it was like a snowball.

that just got bigger and bigger the further up in my job I got. I started with Macy’s as a sales manager, right? Because you’re in the executive training program. But once you become a real executive and you’re a vice president, senior vice president, those stakes change. And I would say that those were the biggest challenges. I also thought that

as a woman, women would be more supportive of other women. And I was shocked by that. as I, so, know, other people, maybe other people’s insecurities and then the biases that I had to deal with the further up I got in my career.

Shelley E. Kohan (05:46.762)
So, but how did you overcome that? I mean, that’s pretty significant. How did you overcome that? How did you beat those odds and those perceptions?

Kimberly Lee Minor (05:55.733)
Well, I will tell you, know, when you I’ve done a lot of things, but I learned to hit the ground running. Always looking for and I think like this is one of my well, one of my secret sauces, but understanding. OK, you have to make an immediate impact.

And I remember when I was at David’s Bridal and it was more intuitive to make, because coming from Express, such a fast paced environment, you did that, but it wasn’t to prove who you were. It really was to improve the business. And when I went to David’s Bridal, I thought that’s what would be expected of me. And the CEO of the time, Bob Huth, he was like, no, I need you to slow down.

Like you’re in a new industry, no one needs you to hit the ground running. They just need you to be really good at what you do. And so I did that. And then, you know, I took a little piece, a little piece, a little piece. But then once I got to the place where I realized that I needed to, I needed people to know who I was. And I kind of had to prove myself. The minute I got there, I started.

I started really building that skill.

Kimberly Lee Minor (07:31.722)
it did? Okay. Okay. Sorry about that. This is new iPad. It just keeps doing stuff. but what I was saying is that, I, I, I developed the skill of being able to walk in and immediately assess where’s the white space, where, where’s the, proverbial low hanging fruit. How am I going to make an impression immediately? So they know what I bring with me.

Shelley E. Kohan (07:39.836)
it.

Kimberly Lee Minor (08:00.955)
And that usually that worked. However, I will say at one of the later jobs, largest responsibility, biggest impact really had a lot of impact built a business, delivered a multi-billion dollar results as well as improved time to market and all of those things. Because I saw here’s, okay, let me get in there. It really did feel like

I had to do that because I was fighting for my life, fighting for validity. And at that time, I, instead of getting promotions because of those contributions, I got additional projects and additional divisions and didn’t get the support I needed because I think it was, wow, if she can do this, she should be able to do this. If she can do this, she should be able to do that. And it really led to a glass cliff scenario, which

You know, when I think about overcoming it, the way I overcame that was to,

stop and go back to school, open my consulting firm and from there kind of use all my experience to create a new path for myself. And there were times where I was so frustrated, Shelly, because I thought, wow, I see my friends now the CEO of this company. I could be the CEO of that company.

But then I also thought, do you want to go through those challenges again? And those were conversations that I would have with my friends who most of them were women who were moving into these roles and they were in them for a very short amount of time because, you know, we know women don’t get the same runway as men. I just thought, I’m going to overcome this because I’m going to do it differently and I can still use my experience and my skills.

Kimberly Lee Minor (10:00.413)
but I’m going to apply them differently. And that’s also, you know, was the catalyst for the group of us who came together to create WACRA. Like we wanted to be different.

Shelley E. Kohan (10:10.9)
Yeah, which is a great. Yeah, that’s a great way to look at things. You know, that immediate impact I think is so relevant, especially when you’re younger in your career. But I love how you just kind of pivoted and really went a different path to kind of show leadership skill in a different way and really help the end. Like I think your impact on the industry is huge now. Whereas if you’re at another company and you’re another VP or CEO or whatever, your impact is just kind of limited to the company and

Now we get to have more of you, which I think is much more powerful, actually.

Kimberly Lee Minor (10:44.754)
You know, it’s funny you say that because when the opportunity, like being a group of people who found an organization is different than being tasked to lead that organization as a CEO. And when I was asked to do that, I really, I didn’t know that I could do it because it was a nonprofit is very different. And I, I wasn’t sure. And I remember having several conversations with Sandra Campos and she, yeah. And she,

Shelley E. Kohan (10:57.748)
Yeah.

Shelley E. Kohan (11:06.356)
Yeah.

Shelley E. Kohan (11:11.957)
yes, I love her.

Kimberly Lee Minor (11:14.884)
She’s fabulous because she said to me the final conversation about this she was like, you know, we’ve talked about this a lot She said if you work for one for-profit company, you’re going to influence their bottom line If you take this role as CEO of Wakra, you’re going to influence a whole industry She’s like think about that. She’s gonna have a glass of wine and come back to me

Shelley E. Kohan (11:37.522)
I love it.

Shelley E. Kohan (11:42.984)
And just so our viewers understand, WOCRA is Women of Color Retail Alliance.

Kimberly Lee Minor (11:51.911)
Yes. No, no, it’s just it’s a nonprofit focused on closing the gaps that exist for women of color in this incredible industry.

Shelley E. Kohan (11:53.992)
Okay, yeah, go ahead.

Shelley E. Kohan (12:05.278)
That’s great. So you’ve received a ton of awards in the industry. Recently, you got the Women’s Wear Daily 50 Women of Power. You were recognized as the N.R.F. Top Retail Voices. You also achieved some other awards, which I think are even more special than the industry one, and that’s the service award. So you received the Whitney Young Junior Service Award from the Boy Scouts of America.

And my favorite award name was Unstoppable 100 Trailblazer Award from the Ford Foundation and Role Model Magazine. So those are just a few that you’ve won, but when you reflect back on your career, and we’re talking over 30 years, what awards or recognition are you most proud of?

Kimberly Lee Minor (12:49.607)
Yeah.

Kimberly Lee Minor (12:55.599)
Yeah, that question is so hard, you know.

Kimberly Lee Minor (13:03.951)
A, I never expect to win an award. You know, I did pageants, got scholarships, got to college from pageants. And I never, like my award was the scholarship. But then when I would like win a talent or something, I was like, I just did my best. And I mean that. And I know it sounds, but it’s true. And so when I get these recognitions,

it really kind of blows me away. Like I have to sit back and sit in it for a while because it takes my breath away. not, you know, I’m not a person who is a pay to play person. You know, we get those, I’m sure you get them all the time where they’re reaching out to you and say, we can give you this or you can be in this publication if you pay, you know, what amount. And so when I think about what’s really, what’s stood out,

hard, but I would say,

Kimberly Lee Minor (14:09.957)
The Trailblazer Award with four foundation. That was really special because Role Model Magazine is a magazine, it’s a global magazine that’s focused on young women, 18 and younger. And with the sweet spot being between 12 and 16. And to be able to influence the next generation just by

Being myself and doing what I think is important, that means so much, that it really means a lot. And then recently, like last week I think it was, I was named one of Columbus Business First Women of Influence. And what made that really special is just like these others, I had no idea.

no one came to me and said, you’re being nominated. They just said, hey, this is happening. And what made that extra, extra special is that it was for nonprofit leadership specifically. So that meant that making that change, doing something very different is impacting people differently. And then on top of that, both my boys were able to be there and to, you know, say that’s my mom, you know, and that, that does.

Shelley E. Kohan (15:31.755)
Shelley E. Kohan (15:36.34)
That’s.

Kimberly Lee Minor (15:37.957)
I’m still smiling.

Shelley E. Kohan (15:40.67)
I love that. old are your boys?

Kimberly Lee Minor (15:42.821)
23 and 20.

Shelley E. Kohan (15:45.372)
Awesome, my gosh, that’s great. So let’s talk a little bit about employee culture for a second. you you are very, very good at getting a diverse perspective. So when you look back on your career, what steps did you take to make sure that you heard all the voices and how did you integrate these diverse perspectives into your decision-making processes?

Kimberly Lee Minor (16:09.519)
Yeah, so, you know, as a person of color, I have always, I’ve always been the first or the only one. So just a little background, the neighborhood I grew up in, my family’s first black family in that neighborhood for 12 years. When I went to school, because of whatever reason, test scores, I was the only black person.

in my classes. I come from an interracial family. have white cousins, Puerto Rican, like we’re just, we’re that family. And so I’ve been in that situation my whole life. And so I’ve always had to be the person to understand the other people.

because it’s not like I’ve had a bunch of people who look like me or shared experiences or anything like that. And so from the beginning, mean, you know, and diversity in so many different ways, Shelley, when I was injured when I was in second grade, but my mom and dad were always about, have to have extracurricular activities. And I had danced and I was very active, but I had injured myself and I couldn’t dance that year. And so I was able to,

try out, I guess is the word or apply to go to art school because I was interested in painting. But you had to be 12 years old. I was in second grade and my mom talked to them and she said, look, if she can take the test and do as well as the 12th grade, can she get in the 12 year olds? And they were like, well, I guess we can’t stop that if she can do it. And so I did it. So now I’m dealing with age.

Shelley E. Kohan (17:42.336)
Kimberly Lee Minor (18:03.973)
You know, they’re 12 to 18 and I’m seven, right? Like, so I understood how to deal with like different ages. It’s just, that has been my path. And I think because it’s so innately who I am, because it’s who I had to be. I didn’t have a choice. It was nothing I thought about. Like I’m the only one. I need to figure out how everybody else works and listen.

Shelley E. Kohan (18:05.241)
Kimberly Lee Minor (18:31.3)
and still be who I am. And that was really important to my mother. Like you don’t have to be like the people in the room. You have to be who you are. Be comfortable all the time with who you are. It became very important to understand who else was in the room, to hear them because I wanted to be heard. And I feel like in these business settings or other scenarios where people are just

echo chambers or they just don’t know how to deal with different people, I want to be able to help people understand the world is very different in so many different ways that we need to be able to be vessels to hear the difference, feel the difference, understand the difference and appreciate the difference because the difference is not a bad thing. It’s really a good

I’ve had a very full life as a result of being who I am in those different scenarios. One of the things I did before I’m doing this, I was teaching a leveraging diversity class at the graduate school of Fisher. we did one, I said, okay, class, today we’re gonna talk about diversity. And there was a student who was like,

the whole class, it’s a two hour class. said, yeah, the whole class. And I bet, I bet we don’t finish. And they were like, what? And we just, and they were fascinated because we did, we talked about diversity for two hours and they just kept the more you, you gave them prompts. They were like, well that’s diversity too. Write that on the board professor, write that on the board. And I said, that’s exactly it. We, we, we’ve let these

words of inclusion and equity and diversity become weaponized when they’re great words. And if you understand what they really mean, they’re amazing, right? I said, we just spent two hours with you defining diversity. Anybody thought that was possible? No, that’s right. It’s great. It’s great.

Shelley E. Kohan (20:35.54)
They are.

Shelley E. Kohan (20:46.784)
That’s funny. So you’ll be happy to hear this, but every in my leadership class, which I teach at Fashion Institute of Technology, we have a three hour module on diversity, equity and inclusion. we definitely, I see this same thing you see in the classroom. The students, know, they think it’s one thing, but when you start those rich conversations, I think by the time, by the end of the class, they get that. So how do you build and maintain an organizational culture?

Kimberly Lee Minor (21:03.991)
Yeah.

Shelley E. Kohan (21:15.614)
that fosters inclusivity and engagement.

Kimberly Lee Minor (21:18.935)
Yeah, it’s really, it’s by example. You know, if you are a person who is just giving lip service because you really don’t understand the value of an inclusive culture, people will, they’ll know it, they’ll know it. And it won’t live there. But if you are someone who is authentically, it’s not something you have to,

do because it’s who you are, what you bring to the table. You treat people with value, no matter who they are. And it’s a culture of belonging and you understand innately, and I just can’t say it’s your value that we want to be the best. And in order to be the best, we have to have the best at the table. And I’m not going to establish what those limitations are based on the person.

I want certain skill sets and I want to see the accomplishments these people have made while they were doing those things to develop those skills. And it doesn’t matter who they are, it matters what they’ve done and how they think and what they can bring to the table. And as long as people see that consistently, then you’ve got the culture that’s going to win. I believe that, full stop.

Shelley E. Kohan (22:44.19)
Yeah. So what’s the most valuable lesson that you’ve learned as a leader that you’d like to share with aspiring female leaders and even women of color?

Kimberly Lee Minor (22:54.465)
Yeah, I, uh, so there are a few. One is…

know who you are, right? You have to know who you are. So many times, especially young women, they’re like, well, how can I be authentic if, you know, I’m showing up here, I have imposter syndrome, I don’t know if I should be in the room. Know who you are. And then you’ll know what role you have in that space. I was speaking not too long ago and someone asked about imposter syndrome and I said, this is going to sound really crazy.

but I had never heard of imposter syndrome until about a year ago. And someone asked me what it was or asked me how I had overcome it, but I didn’t know what it was. So I had to look it up. said, because as young women, especially we, we judge ourselves against things that look shinier because we don’t know who we are. And so that’s number one. Number two is that you have to be strategic.

Shelley E. Kohan (23:38.9)
Me too.

Shelley E. Kohan (23:42.41)
you

Kimberly Lee Minor (24:02.537)
And you can be authentically strategic, but you have to be strategic about how you’re thinking of something. We also tend to be emotional, right? And so there’s a place for emotion. I’m not saying there isn’t. We are human. You if you want to laugh, laugh, you want to cry, you can cry, but maybe don’t do it in the meeting. But be strategic about…

If this job isn’t working out for you, know where you could go next. Plant those seeds, constantly water those seeds as you’re building your relationships so that it’s not a curtains up, curtains down. When you are ready to make that next move, you strategically planted the seed so that it’s a forward movement on your journey. And then,

The last I will leave you with this is that politics lives everywhere. you know, I hear young people say to me all the time, well, I didn’t want to take that role because I heard it was very political. Politics is everywhere. And if you ever want to really lead a brand, a function, and you really want to be a leader, you have to know how the, you know, where the bacon comes from. You have to know how.

the things work, you have to know how to run the finances. Now I’m not saying you have to be the CFO, but you should definitely know what a P and L looks like, how to manage it, right? And so that’s part of your strategy, but it’s also part of politics because no matter where you are, there’s to be some level of politics. So don’t be afraid to take that opportunity that’s going to get you next because someone has said it’s political.

or you have to be overly strategic. Strategic is really just having a framework, right? And so start working towards that as soon as possible. So that’s the advice or the lessons that I learned along the way that I would then send forward to people to, for young people to understand.

Shelley E. Kohan (26:18.844)
I love that. So what changes would you like to see in the retail landscape in terms of female leadership in the years to come?

Kimberly Lee Minor (26:26.527)
I want an even playing field. just like, why we can’t, how do we have these conversations about meritocracy and it has to be merit based when it’s a different field, right? So if our field is over here and then the playing field’s over here, then how are we being judged against this playing field? Also, once the…

Shelley E. Kohan (26:31.764)
Yeah.

Kimberly Lee Minor (26:53.984)
Once the rules are established, keep the rules. I I think about, I just think about some of the men, and this seems to be a playbook, but there’s a certain gentleman I’m thinking about right now who was the CEO of Big Lots, what, since 2018. What was it? 16 negative quarters, one six.

before the company went bankrupt and then was sold. So the board said, I’ll just keep giving him chances, keep giving him chances. I remember as a vice president,

I had a whole division, right? So five areas. I had turned four around and one was kind of flat and then they had a little dip and there were leadership that was like, well, maybe you might, I don’t know, we should keep you because you didn’t catch that soon enough. Right? And that was a matter of three months. And so, you know, and then you look at the data and women

They’re losing CEO roles faster than they’re gaining them. And on average boards give women two, maybe two, two and a half years to turn a situation around. And they give men eight, eight years. And so that’s not, you can’t talk to me about merit, right? And then that’s the game. So bottom line, even playing field for everyone.

We should all be able to be out there and win or fail on our own, not because someone’s established something that’s, you know, it’s inequitable.

Shelley E. Kohan (28:45.524)
Yeah, I agree with you on that for sure. Has there been like a motto or a quote or a mantra that kind of has guided you throughout your leadership journey?

Kimberly Lee Minor (28:57.439)
Yeah, are two. One is yet. Three easy letters, yet. I might not know it yet. I might not, right? Yet. Yet. I might not know it yet. I might not have achieved it yet. I might not, whatever, yet. But as long as I’m and I have my brain,

Shelley E. Kohan (29:03.08)
Yet?

Kimberly Lee Minor (29:27.07)
and my health. I can get it. I can get there. I can learn. I can do it. So yet, I want everybody to put that up on their wall like yet. The day is not over, right? Like as long as we’re waking up the next day, it might not have happened today, but it can. So yet. That’s a big one.

Shelley E. Kohan (29:48.18)
Love it. I love it. Okay, now we’re gonna do what I call my rapid fire questions. So it’s like boom, boom, boom, super quick. I’m just gonna fire questions at you and you can just answer them quickly. Are you ready? All right. What one piece of advice would you give female leaders that are currently working?

Kimberly Lee Minor (30:00.126)
Okay, yeah.

Kimberly Lee Minor (30:08.847)
Make room for others.

Fill your team. Yeah.

Shelley E. Kohan (30:12.148)
love that.

Number two, what three tips would you give students or emerging leaders?

Kimberly Lee Minor (30:21.823)
Okay, be curious, number one, ask a lot of questions. Number two, be flexible. You don’t know what you don’t know. Be open to new opportunities and things that you didn’t know about, right? And for the most important skills for leaders are to be lifelong learners, which means you don’t know everything.

Shelley E. Kohan (30:48.649)
That’s awesome. And what is your legacy? So when you what what do you want to be remembered for in the industry for the next generation?

Kimberly Lee Minor (30:59.944)
So I wanna be remembered as a person who…

Put the work in.

and then use that experience to change the industry so other people could put the work in and thrive.

Shelley E. Kohan (31:18.602)
love it. Okay, this is the last question. And the last question can be fun. It could be anything. It doesn’t have to be work related. It could just be anything. What is your secret power?

Kimberly Lee Minor (31:31.326)
I think my superpower is that I have intuitive grit and I don’t know I think I have a special

level of magic that has allowed me to have some crazy life situations and come out like, you know, I have a scratch. Right. So I think that that’s my thing. You know, I, my intuition is really strong and I feel so confident in it that, yeah, and it’s, it provides me the tools to have a grit.

that has fortified me to be in situations that sometimes they are tough, tough, tough, whether they be medical or professional or personal. And I really, I don’t know, I feel like, I forget the name of the character, it’s a new Marvel, what is it, heart of something. But yeah, like I can read a room, I can read people, can.

Right. And that gives me the fortitude to like, I can do this or if I can’t, this is how I’m going to get there. So intuitive grid and magic.

Shelley E. Kohan (32:51.794)
love it. Awesome. Well, Kimberly, it has been a pleasure sitting down to talk with you. I know our students and future leaders will learn so much from hearing your story.

Kimberly Lee Minor (33:00.838)
Well, thank you so much and you take care. It’s always great to see you, Shelly.

Shelley E. Kohan (33:05.14)
Always a pleasure.

Kimberly Lee Minor (33:06.406)
Take care.

 I’m so excited to welcome Tina Bhojwani on Lead Like her.

Tina Bhojwani is the CEO and founder of AERA, which is a luxury vegan shoe brand. So welcome Tina. Thank you so much for having me, Shelley. It’s an honor to be here and um, and to share the story of our company. Absolutely. And I’m so excited to have you on our lead like her, because when I think of leadership today.

I think of you and I think of how you kind of really wanted to make a difference in the industry, and I know that there’s a lot of young leaders that can learn from your success. So we’ll jump right into the questions if that’s okay. Perfect. So you actually have a very impressive background. Before you founded your own company era, you were a substantial global brand.

Leader, leader, you work for Donna Caron, you work for theory, Dolce and Gaana. So when you think about all these massive roles at these high designers, um, what inspired you to kind of take your leadership and go into a new direction by launching your own company? You know, it’s a great question. I, um, spent 20 years working in the industry and feel really fortunate to have had the opportunities I had to have, had the, the, the experiences, um, the bosses, the teams, everyone around me and I felt, felt like I learned a lot.

You know, what’s great about the industry and quite honestly, like what needed to change about the industry. And I just got to a point in my career that I felt like giving back and doing something with purpose and mission and wanted to move, um, the industry forward by starting a company that, um, combined sustainability with luxury fashion.

Um, and so the idea of ERA was born. Um, and our company launched five years ago and we wanted to show that sustainability and luxury should and, and can go hand in hand. And so sort of take what’s good from luxury, which is artisanal craftsmanship, um, and, and quality and longevity, and, and marry that with, um, innovation and next generation materials and, um, transparent supply chains.

And so that, that was. Really, um, what the mission was when we started the company. That’s great. And some of the people that are watching this may not be familiar with era, so maybe you can tell us what the brand is and what the intention of the brand is. Absolutely. So the brand is a luxury footwear brand.

But completely vegan. Um, we’re B Corp certified. We’re carbon neutral. So we’ve done a lot of work around sustainability. And I always say that I don’t think our industry needs another brand per se, but AIR is a platform to show a new way of thinking about how business can be done, um, with uh, an emphasis on the planet, on people, and on animal welfare.

That’s outstanding. And so when I think about launching a company, you were very. You really wanted to be a certified B Corp and you really wanted to take on becoming carbon neutral and just saying both those, trying to accomplish both those goals and start a company seems almost unfathomable. Tell us.

How did you get other people to follow on this journey? Interesting. Um, you know, as I said, we started the company because the core was sustainability and I wanted to have the certification, um, to show that the work was legitimate and, and really I. Um, make it easy for the customer to understand, you know, what this company was about, but we didn’t lead with that at all.

So we decided that the way to bring the customer, um, into the journey and, and stay on the journey was to lead with really beautiful, um, comfortable, luxurious shoes that were as good as any other shoes that were in the market. Um, and it’s almost like the bonuses that the company’s carbon neutral and the company is B Corp certified.

Um, and I think that. You know, that that sort of maybe keeps people with us. You know, people got involved because they like the product. And then I think understanding the mission, like, you know, keeps, keeps clients loyal. So, so we, we sort of, um, made that the bonus rather than what we led with. That’s so interesting and it, it’s interesting because you’re right, it all goes back.

You have to have a quality, great product, right? And then once you have that quality great product, you give the consumers a reason to stay with you. Yes. I don’t think anyone’s gonna buy your product just. Because it’s sustainable, or it’s B Corp or it’s carbon neutral, but you’re gonna buy something, especially, you know, with what we’re doing, luxury footwear because you know it’s comfortable and you like it and, and there’s like almost a, an emotional, you know, uh, an emotional attraction to it in a way

And your footwear is beautiful and it is so comfortable. You’ve actually won a lot of awards, uh, for your design work in the footwear industry. We, we’ve won some awards and innovation and we recently, um, just actually patented our quilted insole, which is our signature. So that’s something that’s unique to us and something we developed and um, and that’s become, you know, sort of our identifier as a brand.

I think it’s also interesting ’cause you and I have had conversations about this before. We have these young leaders in our industry or students. They look at people like you, Tina, who are so successful, and you have this great brand and you know, you’ve done so many wonderful things and you’re giving back to the environment and the community.

And so a lot of, uh, young leaders think, oh, it’s a perfect little road. Right? But one of the things you always have said is that you actually, failure is part of the journey. You know, actually failing helps you foster growth. So you can, can you tell us a little bit? What you mean by that and maybe perhaps share one of your failures that help you grow.

Gosh, I mean, I’ve had so many, I wouldn’t say failures, but setbacks or you, you know, times where I. Um, things didn’t go as expected or I, I took a wrong decision, let’s say, and, and one time it was, um, sort of not trusting my gut and going with, um, going the, going in the opposite direction. It was something I regretted and it was human resource related.

And, you know, it was a really powerful lesson that what a, you should trust your gut and you know, I, you learn so much from those types of experiences and. Quite honestly, I think if you’re not willing to fail as a human being, you’re not willing to take a risk. And then, you know, if you’re not willing to take a risk, then you’re sort of just maintaining what exists.

So I think failure helps you, um, you know, take a different path and I. And, and understand that it’s a part of, um, it’s a part of the journey. And, um, and I, I’m sure there aren’t very many successful leaders who haven’t failed, um, and haven’t learned a lot. You learn a lot more from, from failing, I think, than, than, you know, coasting along a path that’s smooth.

Um, you know, we also launched during the pandemic, so we had to pivot our company so many times just to stay alive. And, um, and so I think. You know, I think you have to embrace failure and you have to learn to pivot and be flexible as a leader. And you know what, what looks one way has a lot of, a lot of complications behind it, I think, especially when, when it’s entrepreneurial.

So, yeah. I’ve heard someone describe leadership as doing something really well when others can’t. And so you talk about this time of when you launched your company. During the pandemic, and that must have been such a difficult time yet you were able to pivot and you were able to kind of understand the priorities changed very quickly

So I’m impressed that you led through a very difficult time at the beginning of your company. Thank you. It was, it was really challenging and I mean, I think it was a challenging time for, for everyone, you know, not just our whole industry, but starting a company and launching. Um, we really had to make some tough decisions and, and, um, and stay calm and collected and, and, you know, just figure out a way to, to continue and, um, and navigate that.

And, you know, thankfully we did and, and we’re here today and you know, now on the other side of it. So thank you for that. I think the other thing that’s really interesting, Tina, about your company and uh, I love this aspect of your company. It’s one of my favorite things. And when we first met, I didn’t even know this about the company, but I knew the day I met you that I had to be around you.You just have such a positive energy, but you actually built a community around women and you did this in what you call your era family. So can you talk a little bit about what motivated you to kind of create this community around women and why was this important to you? Absolutely. So when the time came for us to fundraise, um, you know, still a little company, still early on, um, you know, I wanted to raise money, but, you know, not just money for the sake of money, but to bring people into this.

Company, um, who believed in, in era the mission, who appreciated the prod the product, but also, you know, got the vision and, and knew that it was gonna take time. And so I started to present it to women. Um, you know, actually to be honest, someone approached me to see if they could invest and then someone else did.

And little by little, I said if I could gather a group of women, then. You know, this can be a different path to fundraising. Um, and today we have 18 women, um, who are part of the ERA family all over the world. From Milan to Dubai to London, to, you know, here in America and beyond. And, you know, they serve as investors first, but also, um.

Ambassadors and advisors and, um, and what’s remarkable is, is the community, uh, amongst the women, you know, so it’s, it, it goes beyond the brand because we, you know, they formed individual friendships and so on and so forth. And, and I knew that it was a tough journey. We were doing something different. I’m, you know

Humble enough to know that nothing good happens alone. So this seemed like an interesting idea and, um, and, and so we’re, we’re at that stage today and, and, and literally I seek help and advice all the time from these women. So, um, it’s a great community and it’s, it’s just a different way of doing things.

Like our company’s trying to do something different. So even the fundraising, you know, we took a different approach there too. I think it’s great, and quite honestly, it’s very difficult for female led companies to get investor funding. So I love your approach and I think that every single woman who’s a part of, um, the ERA family believes in the power of uplifting other women.

So it’s, it’s, it’s a really amazing thing. And, um, literally. The, some of the ladies will fly to Milan for fashion week to come and support our events and, and to connect with each other and, you know, have unofficial board meetings and so on and so forth. So it’s, it’s been really, really helpful. I feel really blessed that we have this family.

It’s awesome. I love it. Um, the other thing that you do is when you talk about, you know, how to ri how do women rise up, what skills do they need? Your advice that you give to them is, um, to cultivate a broad range of skills. So what, what do you mean by that? I mean, I think we can go through life staying in a lane and doing what we’re meant to do and uh, and doing that well.

But I think to really be successful and to become a a leader, you need to be very aware of what’s going on around you. I. Not just in your organization, but, but apart from that, so say in fashion, you know, I, I would say to to, to young leaders, like be be aware of what’s going on and how things are changing in the world and how consumer trends are changing and what impact is AI gonna have on our businesses, and so on and so forth.

So I think you’ve just gotta be curious and, and, and see beyond, um, what it is you do. The other thing that, um, you and I have talked about is mentorship and the importance of not just being a mentor, but being, you know, a mentee. And so you talk a lot about your influences over your long established career.

So can you tell me a little bit about, have you had any like specific mentors that come to mind that influenced your leadership journey? I’ve had several actually, and, and from the very beginning, um, you know, my first boss and someone who gave me, um, the ability to. Do more than was just my job and, and take on more responsibility.

And, you know, and, and I’ve also had, um, learned from leaders and CEOs that, that do think, you know, that, that know that you need both the art and the science to, to run a company and fashion. It’s not just about the numbers, but it’s also not just about beautiful product. And how do you balance those two things I’ve learned about culture

Through mentors and how, how important corporate culture is and how you bring people along a journey. Um, so yes, I, I have had a lot of great experiences with, with leaders and peers and, you know, what I want to do is give back because I think it’s, it’s critically important and, um, and I know that I wouldn’t be where I was today without that mentorship.

One of our missions in doing the lead micro series is to provide inspiration for future female leaders, but also to help existing leaders in our industry to succeed. So you mentioned that you like to pay it forward, so how are you actively mentoring or supporting the development of our future leaders?

I, I like to think that, you know, it’s a part of our culture at Era to mentor. Um, we’ve always had students. Since we started the company that are both here and in Milan that are a part of the company, interning learning, doing projects with us. Um, I’ve done, I’ve hosted students also classes in both the New York and Milan studios.

We do panels, we take interviews, um, and actually right now we’re working on a really special project with, um, with Meni, which is the main fashion school in Italy. Um, and the students there. So, um, I think it’s really a part of, um, of, of being an entrepreneur is having that ability to decide, you know, that you can, you can mentor in, in different ways and, and, and that, as I said before, was really important to me.

It’s great that you have access to students on both sides of the globe. Like you can get such a great perspective. So I know that you spoke to our students at Fashion Institute of Technology. During our collegiate deca leadership event that we had, um, the students just loved you. They thought you were amazing, and then you also came to visit and you saw firsthand our students working in our shoe and accessory design program with Professor Sarah Mullins.

So. How else do you incorporate this mentorship in your everyday life? You’re out there, you’re with students, you do this in Milan, you do it in New York, you are, you have your company culture. Are there other things, um, that you’re doing to kind of incorporate mentorship in your everyday life? I think having a student, um, with us, um, you know, right now I have a graduate student who’s helping us.

Um, is always, you know, I think that’s sort of day to day and I, I learn as much as I think I give back because I’m seeing what’s going on, you know, with the young people today and what they’re interested in. And, and so it’s actually a really interesting exchange. Um, and like I said, I always take. Calls or interviews or join panels.

And, you know, I stay very connected to my university and the fashion schools both here in New York and in Milan. So it’s an ongoing thing and um, you know, and, and I think that it is important and, and like I said, it’s mutually beneficial. It’s not just a one way street. So, you know, I’m fully aware of that too.

It’s great. I learned so much from my students. Like it’s amazing. Like I’m going in to teach the students, but I walk away learning an awful lot from them. So it’s great to have that two-way mentorship, right? Absolutely. I. So, um, if you look back on your career, what do you think the most valuable lesson is that you have learned as a leader that you’d like to share with aspiring female leaders?

And there are a couple, I think, um, I think a really valuable one is, is for female leaders, um, is to know their worth or for a female leader to know her worth and to be able to claim it. Um, I. A lot of talented women who, who, um, who don’t do that, myself included at times, um, in my career. So I think it’s important to, to know what you bring to the table.

Um, and then, you know, going back to something I said earlier, I think it’s important to take risks, um, because, you know, the greater the risk, the greater the reward. And, and, and we all need to be taking more risks as, as the world is changing today. So those would be two things. And what’s interesting about taking risk is women traditionally are more conservative and they’re not as good as male leaders about taking risks.

So is if we could just follow up on that, is there any advice that you could give women to kind of get them thinking about how to become a risk taker? You know, it’s totally, um, I, I would say I would go back to the, the, the, the topic we spoke about earlier. It’s, don’t be so afraid of failure. And if you’re less afraid of failure, I think you’re more apt to take a risk.

And I agree with you, women are, are less likely to be risk takers and, and they’re less likely to know their worth. So I think, you know, those two things are really, really important. Those are great. And, um. I’m very conservative with everything I do, so, um, I have to rethink about that, you know, taking more risks.

Um, so now we’re gonna get into what I like to call the rapid fire questions. And these are questions I’m just gonna ask boom, boom, boom. And then we just answer, um, are you ready? I’m ready. Okay, here we go. What’s one piece of advice that you would give to female leaders that are currently working? That’s different from what I said before.

Well, it doesn’t have to be different, but if you had to call it down to one piece of advice to women that are currently working, what would that be? I would saybe a good listener. I. I think sometimes we don’t listen enough and, and you learn so much when you, you know, when you get a group conversation going. Um, you know, so apart from knowing your worth and taking risks, I think it’s important to, to lead with some, some level of humility and compassion and to be able to listen.

’cause we learn so much, you know. You know, and, and in my former roles at big companies, the amount I learned from the people working in the shop floor or in the cutting room or in the design studio, I think you, you’ve gotta talk to people and you’ve gotta listen to what they have to say because you’re able to make better decisions that way.

Yeah, that’s great. And what three tips would you give students? That these are our emerging leaders of our industry. Um, there’s no shortcuts, so work hard and I think it definitely pays off. Um, I think that always remember to be kind and compassionate. Uh. And then one that I think is really important and, and I, I see less of that happening today.

So I think it’s important to, to say this to students is like, always get back to people. So re reply to the email, take the phone call, get back to people. Be professional. Excellent. My last rapid fire question is, what is your legacy? What do you want to leave behind for the next generation? I would like to leave behind a more sustainable industry in fashion.

I’d like to do my part there and you know, I think that. Why we’re doing this is also to show that, you know, business can be a force of good and why can’t that be more of the normal than the exception? So that’s the, that, that would be, um, what I would wanna leave. And that’s why I left, you know, corporate, the corporate industry behind to pioneer something different.

Um, because I really believe we’ve gotta change and, and we can change, um. In a very interesting way, if we take a 360 degree approach to what that change is, and you know, we’re lucky we work in an industry that’s so creative, you know, there’s all this innovation going on so we, we, we can do better. I love that.

Okay. This is the last question, and this question is a fun one. It can be anything. It doesn’t have to be work related. Okay. But what is your secret power?

You know, I think that one, one thing I can say about myself is that I am a fairly calm person. So even under crisis or difficult situations, and I think that helps me sort of navigate life in general. You know, I, I don’t overreact or, or, you know, sort of get crazy. So I think the fact that I can maintain, like, focus and calm even in, in, in tough situations, um, is, is, uh, very helpful to me.

I love that secret power. That’s a great one to have. Is there any closing thoughts that you’d like to share? I appreciate being a part of this podcast very much Shelly, our friendship, um, the work we’ve done together at FIT and I think I’d like to just remind everyone that, you know, as you grow and develop and, and move further on the corporate ladder to remember that people.

Around you helped you get there. And to do the same for those who follow and who and for peers, you know, I think we’ve gotta lift each other up as we go and we’ve gotta remember how important that is. Um, so everyone go, moves forward together and, and, and we help each other. I think that we need a lot more of that.

Well, thank you Tina. Those are excellent parting words, so thank you so much. Thank you for your time and your generosity and you always.