Pendleton CEO Jennifer Ingraffea on Leading with Curiosity and Building High Integrity Teams

[00:00:00] Roy Notowitz: Hello and welcome to How I Hire, the podcast that taps directly into the best executive hiring advice and insights. I'm Roy Notowitz, founder and CEO of Noto Group. You can learn more about us at notogroup.com. As a go-to firm for purpose-driven companies, we've been lucky to work with some of the world's most inspiring leaders as they've tackled the challenge of building high-performance leadership teams. Now, I'm sitting down with some of these very people to spark a conversation about how to achieve success in hiring and create purposeful leadership for the next generation of companies. Just last month, Jennifer Ingraffea was named CEO of Pendleton Woolen Mills. The 162-year-old company has been led by the Bishop family for generations, and Jennifer is the first woman to serve as CEO. Before joining Pendleton, Jennifer was chief product and merchandising officer at The North Face, and she held a number of executive leadership roles at Nike over the course of nearly two decades. Jennifer joins me to discuss her new role, the importance of relentless curiosity, and pivotal leadership strategies that pave a clear path to success.

Jennifer, thanks for joining me. It's great to have you on the podcast.

[00:01:20] Jennifer Ingraffea: It's great to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

[00:01:22] Roy Notowitz: I've been looking forward to the conversation.

[00:01:24] Jennifer Ingraffea: You and me both.

[00:01:25] Roy Notowitz: So let's start with your career journey and a little bit about your leadership philosophy. Can you take us back to the beginning, and share what your first spark was as you were thinking about your career, and what prompted you to get into this industry and to do what you do?

[00:01:41] Jennifer Ingraffea: Yeah, I would love to. I always go back to the very beginning of my life. I grew up in a household where my father's a CPA, and my mother is an artist. And so I've always really flexed both sides of my brain -- the art and the science -- and that's followed me through my career. And, I would say, I grew up thinking I'd be a lawyer. I grew up on the east coast, I went to law school, and I ended up working in the financial industry in trading. When I was doing that, I always paid attention to the retail sector, and I always felt like the consumer dictated the health of the economy, and I was always really interested in that. And I moved to the west coast, and I decided it was no fun waking up at two in the morning and three in the morning to continue doing that. And so I went into the retail training program at Gap Inc. in the late nineties. I thought I was going to go into business development and strategy, and I met them, and they were like, you need to get over to the other side of the business, which is closer to product, and merchandising, and planning. And so I did that. I felt like I learned from the best there and kind of my career followed.

[00:02:53] Roy Notowitz: So, when you reflect on your leadership journey and the work that you've done developing leaders around you, what core beliefs, values, or guiding truths, or principles have become part of your playbook?

[00:03:05] Jennifer Ingraffea: For me, my leadership philosophy is around two key areas. One is stewardship. So, I believe the best leaders in the world -- the folks I've had the good fortune of working with -- either overtly have this belief or they demonstrate it: the belief that you always leave things in a better place than you found them. And I believe that on the tactical level, like, if we were to ever do another podcast again, I'd want to make it better than this one. Any meeting needs to be better than the last. Any assortment needs to be better than the last. And any team-- I just always believe in getting better every single day on the smallest and the largest scale. And then, the other side of my philosophy is curiosity. I don't know that there's an industry that moves as fast as this one, and I think that it is our responsibility as leaders to be curious, to ask good questions. I once had a leader who I reported to really spend time making sure her team asked great questions and for the sake of truly learning. And so, if you're relentlessly curious and you believe in stewardship, then those two things create an energy, and a forward momentum, and kind of a rhythm, and you're constantly staying in front. And so, I think those two things together are really the basis of not only my leadership, but what I look for in high performing teams.

[00:04:28] Roy Notowitz: So where did you pick those up or where were those things really pronounced the most in the different places that you've worked?

[00:04:35] Jennifer Ingraffea: I would say certainly back in the early days of Gap, Inc. When I was there, there was an expectation of curiosity. There was an expectation that you had to do better and be better, and some of it came out of internal competition, like, you wanted your business to be the business that was held up. And so I do think a little healthy internal competition breeds a behavior of wanting to do and be better. And then, you know, I grew up an athlete. I played, you know, sports all the way through college, and so, when I went to Nike, that spirit of the competitor's mindset. And athletes, inherently, are trying to get better and better. And so, when you're in an environment of really harnessing the athlete's mindset, everybody around you pushes each other to do and be better every single day. So, you know, I think that that mindset has just instilled, and then, when you do it enough, it just becomes part of who you are and it becomes part of who your team becomes.

[00:05:38] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. So you've led through cycles of massive consumer and retail evolution. What are one or two things that you can share about navigating those market dynamics that are always changing, and shifting consumer behaviors, and just intense competition?

[00:05:56] Jennifer Ingraffea: Yeah. I think about this a lot, and one of the things that comes to mind, always, is when a business is under pressure, or a segment of the business, or product, or some area of what we do is under pressure, there's a tendency to try and get tricky, and there's a tendency to overcomplicate the problem. And, a lot of times when businesses or brands are coming up against that pressure, they forget to go back to the fundamentals, the thing that made them uniquely who they are. And I really try and have a beginner's mindset of: if I had to look at this in a very unbiased, almost separate way, what would I see? And whenever you do that, you always want to take it back down to your original foundation and understand, "Is there something broken that is preventing us from getting out of this vicious cycle or this pressure?" And sometimes, when you are able to be a leader who can bring people back to the foundation and their fundamentals, things get and become a little bit clearer. And so, between that and really trying to look at things with fresh eyes and keep it simple, you can quickly begin to create some momentum out of the problem. A good friend of mine once said in a meeting, "Simple does not mean easy." To me that really resonated. Simple means discipline. Simple means focus. Simple means clarity on your purpose, but it doesn't always mean easy. And I think that's the thing in line with the foundation that gets you where you need to go.

[00:07:34] Roy Notowitz: That's amazing. I'm thinking about finding time to really zoom out and then zoom back in and, like, wrap your head around what's actually happening and what are those areas of opportunity to bring more clarity or simplicity to that problem. How do you identify those opportunities that you need to dive into and work on?

[00:07:55] Jennifer Ingraffea: My process is pretty simple. I use it whether I am in a company, and I go to a new part of it, or I'm going to, you know, a brand new brand for myself. If I stay in the zone of curiosity and stewardship, I first want to set a baseline of, "What do I see? What's happening in the business from a financial standpoint?" From product health to how teams are working together, the clarity of an organization. Is there functional clarity on roles and responsibilities? A lot of that, which sounds very foundational, but takes a little bit of time to really wrap your arms around what is the state of the union? What's really happening today? And, in that, you typically find the pockets of the business that really need higher priority help than others. And that time period takes, depending on the size of the business, can take 30 days, 45 days, 60 days. I think the most important thing is you set a limit of that time for yourself because there's a tendency to just keep wanting to dig, and whenever there's large scale change or a need in the business, you have to create a little bit of movement or wins to clear some space to be able to do the longer term strategies that will make the change enduring. So, to me, it's a baseline of learning and a baseline of assessment of what's going on. And then, in that, ultimately, you find people in the business that have this huge passion to want to help and, you know, bring them into your cause and learn from them. I think it's really important for leaders to continue to be in a space of learning and understanding from everyone around them. You know, ideas can come from anywhere. My responsibility is making the assessment and saying, "Hey, these are the priorities that I see. Let's put time, energy, and resource behind that, and then stage everything else." Then you start to set a strategy of long term, this is how I want to impact the business, the team, the process, and begin to keep a really clear structure for what you can always expect from me is I will always look at business, team, and process inside of that. Creating priorities, and creating that clarity for people, and give them the tools to say "yes" or "no" to things. And there's nothing worse than being in a business that's either under pressure or has huge opportunity, like, momentum that you want to continue to fuel, and your team doesn't have the skills or the tools to say "yes" or "no." And a great strategy can arm them with, "You know what? I'd love to open up that account or add that product to the line. It just doesn't fit in with our strategy, so we're not going to do that right now," and that's just as important as what we are going to do.

[00:10:59] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. So how do you take those opportunities that you identify, and set the vision ,and communicate to help the team really align against that bigger vision, or the long-term vision, and find the signal through the noise or whatever, so that they can make their own decisions and help them prioritize as leaders within the organization? Because I imagine there's a lot of communication that must be happening ongoing.

[00:11:25] Jennifer Ingraffea: Yeah, for sure. And I will say the world is so loud right now that I think about this question quite a bit on the daily, sometimes hourly. There's so much going on in your team's lives in the world, in business, in their jobs, in their team, and another email is not going to cut through. And not to say that email isn't important, but you have to meet people where they're at. So, for me, I do a lot of all of those things. So, in creating a strategy, I often bring together, you know, working groups from different parts of the company, all different levels, to help inform and set the strategy, for one, because unless people see themselves in it, they're not going to be a part of it. So I do like to have quick wins with smaller, faster teams to be ambassadors, if you will, with everybody around them.

[00:12:19] Roy Notowitz: It's infectious.

[00:12:20] Jennifer Ingraffea: Exactly. And it feels good to be a part of the solution.

[00:12:24] Roy Notowitz: Yeah.

[00:12:24] Jennifer Ingraffea: And so I always go with that. I think it's important to be transparent on what you're thinking of as a leader, as a teammate. It's the most respectful thing that you can do is be clear. So I do do that. I don't over-formalize it because I think that's really weird. You wouldn't talk to somebody on a normal day that way. And then I think that there is discipline that comes with communication of repeating yourself so that it's second nature. If I've worked in a team with you, oftentimes, you'll see me start a meeting and just say, "Hey, our five most important strategies are X, Y, and Z. This meeting will hit to strategy number two. Let's get at it, even if it feels funky at first.

[00:13:08] Roy Notowitz: Right, just to get people, like, "Okay, this is what page we're on right now."

[00:13:12] Jennifer Ingraffea: Exactly.

[00:13:13] Roy Notowitz: Yeah.

[00:13:13] Jennifer Ingraffea: And so, "Hey, if we're having a line review, remember we need to invest in this side of the business. It's one of our strategic priorities. Let's make sure we over-index on that in this meeting." Those kinds of things.

[00:13:26] Roy Notowitz: Clear is kind.

[00:13:27] Jennifer Ingraffea: Yes. Brené Brown. I use that line a lot. I think it came out of her Daring Greatly book. Clear is kind, unclear is unkind. And I had somebody I work with, she's a creative director, way back in my past would always say, you know, "Being honest with somebody and being clear with somebody is the most respectful thing that you can do." Maybe it was the way she said it, I just, I think about it so much.

[00:13:51] Roy Notowitz: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Yeah.

[00:13:53] Jennifer Ingraffea: Yeah.

[00:13:53] Roy Notowitz: And you create a culture where feedback is a gift, you know, it's something that people appreciate.

[00:13:59] Jennifer Ingraffea: You have to set that culture of feedback. You know, I think a lot of times people will ask me, "How do you give feedback?" And I said, "Well, feedback isn't an event. It's something that happens every day." Like, I remember working with somebody, and I was giving them feedback after meetings, and I was like, "Oh, we could have done this. We could have done that. Hey, great job doing this in the meeting," and then at the mid-year, they said to me, "Hey, you never give me feedback." And I said, "I literally give it to you every day, but if we want to formalize it, if that's what works for you, thank you for letting me know that." And so making sure people know when you're giving them the feedback is also important.

[00:14:37] Roy Notowitz: I imagine if you just did it once a quarter at a mid-year review or something, then when you're giving the feedback, it has so much more weight to it. Whereas, on a day-to-day basis, you can absorb a lot more over time.

[00:14:49] Jennifer Ingraffea: Yeah. Also, if it only happens twice a year, how do you expect your team to learn and develop?

[00:14:54] Roy Notowitz: And real time is always the best, I think.

[00:14:57] Jennifer Ingraffea: Yeah.

[00:14:57] Roy Notowitz: When you think about the growth and impact that you've driven across all these major brands, you know, what role has talent played? And what have you learned about hiring and building teams along the way?

[00:15:08] Jennifer Ingraffea: I learn every day on this. I think if you make hiring mistakes, if you make team dynamic mistakes, the most important thing to do is, "Let me sit down and figure out where I went wrong," or, "What happened? What did I learn?" Some of the highest performing teams I've both been a part of and created, we have fun in the work and people know their role. You know, if you hire folks with too many of the same skills and not complimentary skills, whether that's leadership complimentary skills, technical skills that are complimentary, different career journeys.

[00:15:45] Roy Notowitz: Yeah.

[00:15:45] Jennifer Ingraffea: You really need that to have a dynamic way of working and to keep that curiosity forward motion in. And I believe that people with good intent and high integrity are critical to have on your team, and whenever somebody who could be the smartest person in the room is not easy to work with, it actually brings down the effectiveness of the whole team. I went through an interview myself, you know, not too long ago, not for what I'm doing today, but in something different, and the most senior person in the company asked to meet with me before I started interviewing. And she said, "Hey, I wanted to meet you first because, if you and I don't get along, then we really shouldn't go much further than this, you know?" And, while interesting, the sentiment, to me, because I'm always trying to learn, is, yeah, you don't bring people in here who can't work together. At the highest level, at the most entry-- like, whatever it is, you know, you don't want a passive atmosphere, but you do want people who have good intent and want to be there. And that, I think, is the starting point of any great team. And then, of course, clarity of your role, all of that. But, when I'm hiring, I'm looking for high-integrity people who are solution-oriented, who can solve anything as long as they just have a chance.

[00:17:05] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. That's great. So, as you moved up through the ranks in these world-class companies, how did you develop your aptitude for hiring? Were there people that you saw that were really great at it or not great at it? And how did you sort of come up with your own hiring philosophy or process?

[00:17:23] Jennifer Ingraffea: I think part of attracting a talent, or keeping talent, or understanding how to form a team is through the idea of empathy. And I bring up empathy a lot because it's not a soft skill. It's actually a hard skill, in my opinion, or, at least, that's how I treat it. And the way I define it for myself is, you know, being able to see someone else's perspective and walk a mile in their shoes. And I don't think that you can be effective at what you do as part of a team if I don't understand what the person sitting across the table from me needs. Because, if I don't understand that, then I can't be a good partner. And so, when I hire, I look for people who seek to understand what their key stakeholders and partners need from them, and can they deliver what the person across from the table will need from them? And so, when you look through it with that filter, you will begin to find functional experts. Like, you can't be a functional expert if you don't understand what everyone and your partners need around the table. So, that's one of the key hiring capabilities that I look for.

[00:18:30] Roy Notowitz: And were there times where you've learned from hiring successes or failures? Like, are there any sort of rules or guidelines that you've created in your mind around what a great leader looks like in your organization? Aside from the curiosity and continuous improvement.

[00:18:48] Jennifer Ingraffea: One of my first roles in the retail and product world was at Gap Inc. And I remember Mickey Drexler standing on stage and saying, "Hey, we're all leaders in this room, and leaders create the weather. And what I mean by that is, if we tell our teams it's cold outside, they will believe it's cold. If we tell them it's warm and sunny outside, they will prepare for warmth and sun," and it's kind of stayed with me my whole career. Leaders do bring the weather, and there is a dependency on leadership to set the tone and to be in it with their team in a real and honest way. And people are looking to their leaders--

[00:19:36] Roy Notowitz: Yeah.

[00:19:36] Jennifer Ingraffea: --for honesty and guidance. And so, when the business is tough or when the business is great, there's a requirement of leadership to guide their teams through that. For me, the standard of leadership is creating a space for the team to be clear, to know what they're up against, and to create a path through that. And great leaders know how to do that.

[00:20:02] Roy Notowitz: That's great. And so you've led large teams of 300 plus people, and built functions from scratch, and moved around to different organizations. When you're coming into an organization, or when you're bringing people in from the outside for your organization, how do you evaluate someone's leadership capability or competencies? What's your approach to really getting to understand how they're going to fit in and what they bring to the table that's complimentary?

[00:20:30] Jennifer Ingraffea: You know, one of the first steps in hiring or forming a team is giving that person who you want to either move internally or bring in from the outside to be very honest with the lay of the land that you're going to give to them. I've talked to so many people in my career, and I've seen it myself, where the hiring manager or the leader might not really understand what it is you're trying to hire for. What skills are you trying to acquire? If it's a leadership position, and you're bringing somebody in from the outside, or you're bringing them in from another part of the organization, what does the culture of that team need in their leader? And hire for that. Also, be honest about what they're walking into. "Hey, you're walking into an incredibly high performing team who've had great success. They're looking to you to take them to the next level." So you need to hire somebody who has the aptitude and the expertise to bring a team like that to the next level. Or you're walking into something where this part of the business has been under pressure in a way that is really uncomfortable, so you need a leader who can come in, and restore culture, and restore team dynamic, and help them pave a path to the future. And so that person you're hiring for needs to not only have business expertise, but real leadership skills on how to bring a team together and trust each other. And so the trust comes in the hiring of how honest were you?

[00:22:07] Roy Notowitz: Yeah.

[00:22:08] Jennifer Ingraffea: And did you really know what you needed?

[00:22:09] Roy Notowitz: Yeah.

[00:22:10] Jennifer Ingraffea: And I've hired people who-- "Shoot. I thought I was hiring for this, but really, the team needed something different. This is a bad fit," and whenever that happens, you have to call it as soon as possible because the damage it can do to that person who might just be in the wrong place at the wrong time, you don't want them to sit in it for too long, but you want to give them a chance. The impact of that is the team can fall apart or whatever, so you have to be honest, and that all comes through with transparency. Or, you know, when you make a great hire, celebrate with the team of why that was so great, you know, and talk about it. And I think talking about it also gives up and coming hiring managers ideas on how to hire for themselves when they-- when the time comes.

[00:22:54] Roy Notowitz: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So what traits or behaviors do you most value in your direct reports, and how do you identify those early in the hiring process?

[00:23:07] Jennifer Ingraffea: I think in one of my first roles, that was a sizable team that I had to lead. I came across a Harvard Business Review article, which was about authentic leadership before "authentic leadership" was something everybody said. It was kind of a new idea or concept in that world. And there was the idea that if your life is a house and every room of the house represented something different in your life, so one room is your friends, one room is your job, one room is your hobby. If the walls came down in that house, would every room see you the same?

[00:23:45] Roy Notowitz: Wow. Yeah.

[00:23:46] Jennifer Ingraffea: And it really had a profound impact on me because I had to ask myself, would they all see maybe a little bit more serious Jenn? Or fun Jenn? But at the core of it, they saw the same person, and that was really important to me as a human being. So the house idea, it gave me a tool for how to talk about it with my team.

So when I go back to the question, I look for people who are real, who are themselves, who want for the better of the whole. They know how to say when they're in trouble, they know how to ask for help. I think some of the best leaders that I've ever worked with. Know that they're not great at X, Y, and Z.

[00:24:29] Roy Notowitz: Right.

[00:24:29] Jennifer Ingraffea: And they seek out people who can help them with that and are not afraid at all to say it out loud, because that's a confident person. "I know what I don't know. I might not have the full answer, but I know the people who can help me find it." And those people are worth their weight in gold because I think it was Ed Stack who I first heard say -- who is the head of Dick's Sporting Goods -- "We can't fix a secret."

And so leaders have to know how to bring the secrets out on the table to make the business healthy, and that is what I look for in a leadership team or a direct report or any leader at any level really is that comfort in saying, "I don't know what I don't know, but I know who does."

And then the honesty and the trust, because that's a very vulnerable thing to do. The trust in me that I will help them find the answer too because I also might not know the answer and I am okay with saying that.

[00:25:20] Roy Notowitz: That's great. So at Nike and other companies you worked at, there's a shared sense of purpose that each company typically has, and I'm curious how you go about aligning people behind a common vision and a sense of purpose that's meaningful. I know it's no small feat.

[00:25:40] Jennifer Ingraffea: No, it's not easy either. Especially when it's missing or needs to be reinstated or whatever stage you're in. I think it goes back to one of our earlier conversations around communication. To me, if there's a missing purpose or a missing unification around the purpose, then it's the job of the leaders to bring the purpose back into the room, and so it might have fallen through back to curiosity and understanding where did it go?

Why didn't it stay in the culture? Was there something about it that didn't feel right or that it had the ability to grow? Some of the great brands that I've worked at and that you've worked at, the purpose is enduring. And it's strong enough to live through multiple life cycles. And so sometimes it might disappear because that's not true of a brand and it needs to be reinstated by the team and driven by leadership. And so to me it's understanding, dusting it off, understanding what you know, the original intent or position.

Do we all understand the consumer? Do we have a shared view of what the consumer is? Who they are or how we serve them? And then the idea of intent and purpose is it's something we all buy into and we can live in day in and day out decisions around it. And so, you know, it comes back to talking about it and keeping it front and center until it starts to seep into the culture.

And then everything kind of forms around that. So really understanding where it is, how to articulate it, how to bring it in regularly and having the teams talk about it and trade in it is really the way that purpose seeps into culture and it becomes bigger than itself. So that's how I think about it.

[00:27:31] Roy Notowitz: That's great. That's great. So speaking of Nike, you know, they're known for values. I remember that at least when I was there, there were five. It was performance, authenticity, commitment, innovation, and team. But now of course it's evolved over the years to all the maxims and all the different things. But in your experience, what were the top competencies that predicted success there and how'd you evaluate for them?

[00:27:54] Jennifer Ingraffea: It has evolved quite a bit. There's a couple things that really stand out. You won't be surprised. My first one is learning agility. The industry is changing at such a fast rate. You have to be relentlessly curious on how to be better and do better, and so learning agility is critical. I once sat in an interview where there were two of us interviewing a single candidate, and there was just this level of knowing everything in the interview, and the other person I was interviewing with said, "Hey, I'm curious. What do you think you can learn?" And they were really stumped. They didn't have a lot to say, and at the most senior levels, you know, of the brand, there is a humbleness and a willingness to be students, and so learning agility is key.

I think that idea of functional excellence is easy. What does that really mean? A passion and purpose for what you do. If you are a product expert, it shines through with how you talk about the industry, how you talk about craft craftsmanship. If you're curious, that's great. If you have learning agility, that's great. If you're hiring for a highly technical role, you have to be skilled at what you do, you don't have to be perfect. So that, that, that command, that language of command and understanding of what you do is critical. And so the word command comes up a lot when I interview of like a real handle on your function.

And then I would say there's always how you think about the foundation of the company and the purpose. So of course at Nike, it's sport and what traits do you have from a culture standpoint? A culture grower, if you will, culture shaper. That goes back to when you sign up and when you want to be a part of something like that. Do you embody the original purpose of the company and what they're trying to get across to the next generation? So to me, I look for all those things.

[00:29:58] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. So how do you shape culture? What are some ways to do that?

[00:30:02] Jennifer Ingraffea: You know, there's the, the really simple ways I think that hopefully we all know, and that is showing up--

[00:30:09] Roy Notowitz: Leading by example.

[00:30:10] Jennifer Ingraffea: Exactly. A lot of the teams that I've been a part of will hear me talk about service to each other, customer service to each other. If I can do something to make your job easier, I will do it. If there's something you can do to make my job easier, I will ask for it. But I look for people who create that care for each other and their teams. And that goes a little bit back to empathy.

[00:30:34] Roy Notowitz: Empathy, I was just going to say.

[00:30:35] Jennifer Ingraffea: Right. And you know, it's customer service. And at the end of the day, you know, at least in the last almost 30 years, I've been in businesses where we are at the end of the day exchanging product that you put somewhere on your body for money and you can't treat it like a transaction. You really have to think about what was that emotional connection that got you there.

And so if you think about we're serving consumers and we're trading our brand and they're buying into it. Then we're serving them. And so you have to think about that with your team, with your partners, your stakeholders. You have to be in a service oriented mindset and show up and lead that way, and be willing to sit in an all week meeting and be an active participant because you can't be on a Zoom call and be so distracted that you're not fully present and fully there.

And in today's world being fully present and being willing to have good customer service with your team is half the battle. And so I do think that contributes to culture. Really trying to seek to understand. I always have to tell teams, especially if I'm new to them, "I will be asking a lot of questions. There are no loaded questions. I'm not going to ask you something I know the answer to, but I will ask a lot of questions and I want everybody else to do the same."

[00:32:03] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. You're creating an environment that helps people embody the brand, basically.

[00:32:09] Jennifer Ingraffea: Exactly.

[00:32:09] Roy Notowitz: Yeah.

[00:32:10] Jennifer Ingraffea: Exactly.

[00:32:10] Roy Notowitz: And live it.

[00:32:11] Jennifer Ingraffea: That's the hope.

[00:32:12] Roy Notowitz: Yeah, that's good. That's good. So how do you think about legacy, not in a grandiose way, but in terms of the impact you want to leave on teams and people and organizations at this stage in your career?

[00:32:23] Jennifer Ingraffea: I think about that more than I thought I would probably at the beginning of my career. For me, it is very genuine. I want to leave things in a better place than I found them. If I can help somebody with their career and help support them or brainstorm with them on how to go towards their passion or, I'm sure you've been in a spot where somebody wants to move from one function to the other because they just love it, but they weren't trained in it or whatever. How do you give people the tools to follow their passion?

And for me, it's the community that I've been a part of. You know what I would think to be my legacy of just like, who have I helped? Have I built high performing teams? How can those people make the next team high performing team? And if you give folks that skill and it seeps its way out, like if I help you and you help somebody else. To me, that's small scale, but when it adds up, it becomes your legacy. And so I, I really believe in that and I think that shows up in any brand I would be a part of. And so that gift is long-term viability of a brand because you keep passing that legacy of success, support, and achievement. And so that's what I see as what I leave behind.

[00:33:44] Roy Notowitz: That's fantastic. It's very similar to how I think about it as well, like, I always say, "this is a place where people come to do their best work," and I love to see people do their best work and they can stay here and thrive, and we can invest in their success but it's even more cool when I see them go to another place and build their career even further.

[00:34:03] Jennifer Ingraffea: Isn't that awesome?

[00:34:04] Roy Notowitz: And it's the best thing ever. Yeah.

[00:34:06] Jennifer Ingraffea: Yeah. When people call and be like, "Hey, we haven't talked in a while, but you would never believe where I am today." And I'm like, yes, I would believe it. That's awesome. You know, and I think that's...

[00:34:15] Roy Notowitz: I love that.

[00:34:15] Jennifer Ingraffea: That's the best.

[00:34:16] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. You have a new role now. Very exciting.

[00:34:19] Jennifer Ingraffea: Yes.

[00:34:19] Roy Notowitz: CEO of Pendleton Woolen Mills. What are you most excited about as you ponder the future and what's next for you in this new role?

[00:34:26] Jennifer Ingraffea: Thank you for asking. I'm in week two. I'm learning a lot. I'm in my listening phase of trying to really understand. And I can't even talk about Pendleton Wool and Mills without talking about the Bishop family. I am so looking forward to learning about six generations of craftsmanship and care, and I mean, speaking of authenticity, stewardship, it is alive and well.

[00:34:52] Roy Notowitz: Epitome of that. Yeah.

[00:34:54] Jennifer Ingraffea: Exactly.

[00:34:54] Roy Notowitz: They're great humans.

[00:34:55] Jennifer Ingraffea: Yeah, they are. The epitome of that is the perfect, you know, way to encapsulate it. And so, you know, I appreciate and am excited about being invited into that legacy and I take it really seriously. I want to honor the brand by being the best at what I can bring and do in this brand. So, you know, I'm trying to learn, but learn quickly and bring the story of Pendleton to a broader consumer base, to the world through this incredible storytelling of this incredible brand that was started here in the Pacific Northwest. And I do think that the world is interested in the Pacific Northwest. There seems to be a fascination with this in lots of different countries within this country. And I mean, when you come to the Pacific Northwest, there are so many cool brands and businesses, natural beauty, way of life, and everything can get better, bigger, stronger, you know, all of those things.

But I do think that there's a story to be told from Pendleton to the world and what I am really excited about is it's really rare to be a part of a brand that people are excited about and cheering you on. You know, when my announcement went out, I can't tell you how many people reached out and wanted to just tell me their story of their favorite Pendleton product, their connection with the brand, a story about the Bishop family.

I think you can probably feel how excited I am, and I'm excited to get started. I'm excited to share my learnings. I'm excited for this new role, for me personally, being in this type of role brings me a little bit back to my beginnings of portfolio management. You know, having my hands in a lot of different functions, but bringing my learned skill of strategy, consumer obsession.

I also rely heavily on my network and my mentors and getting their advice. And it is humbling for how much has been offered to me, and I want to bring that to the brand. So I'm super excited and I feel really lucky to be here.

[00:37:05] Roy Notowitz: That's fantastic. And you're going to do so great.

[00:37:08] Jennifer Ingraffea: Thank you.

[00:37:08] Roy Notowitz: And you know, and I know they went through a very thorough process in talking to a lot of really talented leaders and I think that they made a great choice in hiring you, so...

[00:37:17] Jennifer Ingraffea: Thank you.

[00:37:17] Roy Notowitz: I'm excited to see this next chapter for you as well as for them, and we'll have to have you back on the podcast. And I certainly appreciate you too on your second week coming in to take some time to have this conversation with us. Thank you so much. It's been great.

[00:37:33] Jennifer Ingraffea: Yeah, it's really fun. Thanks for having me.

[00:37:37] Roy Notowitz: Thanks for tuning in to How I Hire. Visit howihire.com for more details about the show. How I Hire is created by Noto Group Executive Search. To find out more about us, visit notogroup.com. You can also sign up for our monthly email job alert newsletter there, and find additional job search strategy resources, as well as more content on hiring.

This podcast was produced by Anna McClain. To learn more about her and her team's work, visit aomcclain.com.