Can you tell me about a pivotal time in your career?

One of the most pivotal times in my career was when I worked in France. I had always wanted to live there, I’m a huge francophile. I created a role that didn’t exist for myself by networking and putting myself out there. In the process, I learned that sometimes you have to make your own destiny and create opportunities. 

The experience of living and working in another country as an expat gives you a lot of empathy and understanding for people who come and live here and how hard it must be to navigate in a different culture and different language. I was 25 and this was before smartphones so I was really out there on my own. I think it’s amazing to pursue diverse experiences, so it was definitely a transformative moment for me.

What other lessons have you learned that have defined your approach to work?

In my childhood years, I was a competitive ice skater and a lot of my life lessons come from going through that. The first one is doing your personal best, knowing that you are unable to control the competition. 

Another is around resilience. When you’re skating, if you fall, you literally have to get up. So when I think about that, in life and at work,  you’re going to fall and you have to get right back up and keep going and build that resilience. 

The final one is teamwork. I skated on a synchronized team. We were in unison and we needed to understand what everyone else was doing at the same time. You need to do the same at work. As a leader, you have to make sure people have a shared vision and also understand where other people are going. You need to really build trust across the team so that you can achieve something great collectively.

Are there any mistakes you have made along the way that have served as learning opportunities?

When I worked at Walmart, I made my first hiring mistake. I hired someone and knew immediately that she wasn’t the right fit for the role and wasn’t going to be successful. I had a manager at Walmart who said “You need to surround yourself with the right folks who are going to create a high performing team.” And that’s something that has really stuck with me, both in terms of how I build and manage my team and how I think about creating an environment of collaboration, teamwork, and accountability. I also use that filter as I coach managers on my team to make important and sometimes difficult decisions around talent. 

You talked about making tough decisions, is there more you want to add to that?

You want to make sure that the decisions that you’re making align with the long-term brand or business goals. I use a sounding board, whether it’s my peers on the leadership team or my network of friends who are also CMOs. I think it’s really helpful, especially when a decision feels hard, to be able to bounce it off your group of strategic advisers or colleagues to get their support. It’s also important that once you make the decision, you act quickly and you do it in a way that’s as transparent as possible. 

When you’re hiring, is there a particular quality you look for or even within the colleagues that you have, is there a quality that you admire and always look for in people?

I think an important one is curiosity – a willingness to learn and try new things. Great communication skills and a desire for collaboration are also important for successful teams. One of the questions I ask people when I’m hiring them is “what do you want to be when you grow up?” It breaks the ice a little because it’s so silly and makes people think of their childhood. But then it also gives people a chance to share what their long-term vision is for themselves and whether I would be able to support that path at the company. So, it feels like a good mutual understanding, but also gives people a chance to show their personality, too.

Have you gotten any interesting responses that you remember?

I did recently get a response where the long-term path was not a typical business path at all. It was to spend time with her pets and her plants. And I said, ” that’s not necessarily something I can help with here.” But it definitely showed her personality and she ended up getting the role anyway. So, there really truly is no right or wrong way to answer that!

So now that you’ve mentioned ice skating, what do you do for fun? Do you still skate?

I did get my kids to take ice skating lessons, and after their lessons, we would free skate together. I like to be outside as much as I can. I go for a lot of bike rides with my kids, and every summer we challenge ourselves to see how much farther we can ride. I also love hiking. I recently took a trip to Moab on my way to a work trip in Utah and it was so beautiful there. It feels like you’re walking on the moon.