Real Talk with The Honest Co. CEO Carla Vernón
I celebrate women in leadership every day. I am proud to be a part of a sisterhood—a girlfriends group of accomplished, smart, funny, talented women.
While I call them “sisters,” you may know them by titles such as Mom, Wife, CEO, CHRO, CMO, and executive director. Each of them has taken a unique path to get where they are today, and they continue to rise.
Recently, we had the chance to celebrate one of our sisters, Carla Vernón, as she became the CEO of The Honest Co., the natural baby- and beauty-products company founded by actress Jessica Alba. (It went public in 2021 at a $1.4 billion valuation.) Carla and I worked together at General Mills for more than 15 years before she joined Amazon.com as vice president of consumables, so I knew her journey to get to this special place as the first Afro-Latina CEO of a publicly traded company.
She started in January and is still commuting between her family’s home in the Twin Cities and the company’s Los Angeles headquarters. I caught up with her by phone as she was headed to meetings in New York.
Stephanie Pierce: How’s our friend Jessica Alba? You know the girlfriends have decided we are now all friends of Jessica’s, since she is your friend.
Carla Vernón: [Laughs.] That’s amazing. When you meet Jessica, she will soon be your friend, and then I will be jealous, as she may pick a new favorite!
SP: Well, I doubt that, but I look forward to meeting her! One of the best things about our girlfriends group is that we get to share in each other’s successes and pains, both personal and professional. What does becoming a CEO mean to you?
CV: It’s so hard, because I don’t want to make more importance out of myself than others who have gone before me and those who will come after me. Right now, I am having my moment, and I do honestly hope that my presence as CEO of a publicly traded company might be cracking open a new door. You know how the Kool-Aid guy used to bust through the wall [in the TV ads]? I hope this moment breaks open a new chapter that says the next set of CEOs and C-suite leaders are ready to take their seat and bring meaningful change. When I look around at the peer set I am part of now, sometimes I’m still nervous about skating the line between showing up as true authentic Carla and making sure that I look like I’m fitting of the context I’m joining. I think that is an indication that we are at an inflection point.
SP: Such an important point. How do you stay true to yourself in a corporate world that may not always be ready for the authentic you?
CV: I don’t know about male executives, but I don’t think female CEOs could survive without their cheering section on some type of text string. I have that with our girlfriends’ group. When I’m trying to pick the suits I’m going to wear to the upcoming series of Wall Street meetings, it’s game-changing to be encouraged by my girlfriends who say, “You love color, Carla. Get the colored jacket, not the gray jacket!” That’s part of this transition moment, where I hope that if I color outside of the lines, even just a little, it will invite more people to do the same.
SP: Well, your girlfriends are going to have your back always—we will never send you off looking crazy! Is there a secret sauce you can package and put an Honest label on that helps people to stay true to who they are? It can be tough!
CV: I wish! Certainly part of that secret sauce is having a great support network that you nurture and build with people who love you unquestionably and are on your team no matter what. Sometimes as women we do not take the time to invest in those relationships – could be your college roommate or the girlfriends you meet at school drop off.
There is also a book that was recommended to me during a more difficult time in my career. It’s a classic: Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. It’s a thin, paperback book that asks you to imagine the worst thing that can happen, and if it happens, can you handle it? So often, when we play it out, the worst possible outcome you can imagine becomes survivable because you know you have options. Fear is replaced by bravery. You may as well go for it. This book gave me a mantra I could apply in so many situations.
SP: I imagine working for someone who supports you helps, too. When you think about the standout leaders you’ve worked with, what did they have in common?
CV: Their bottom-line message was, “Do not change a thing. You are at your best when you are yourself.” Those leaders don’t expect me to look or lead like them even though I have learned a ton from them.
So often, corporate America is like a pyramid. When you are junior or mid-level, you are likely pretty replaceable as there are many options at the base of the pyramid. It can be a suffocating echo chamber of voices that are normalizing towards something more traditional if you happen to be untraditional, and that was often me. It can be difficult to remain confident in your unique differences in the early stages of your career because there is a lot of feedback encouraging you to do what is mainstream and expected.
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“It feels great to break barriers by being the first Afro-Latina to be CEO in a publicly traded company.”
SP: I feel like whenever I have seen you or worked with you, you were always authentic, Carla.
CV: I appreciate you saying that, Steph, but I have drifted. I have sometimes tried to fit into the more mainstream style. But, like the bird pecking at the egg shell, eventually it breaks and your true self has to come back out.
SP: We are never that great when we try to be someone we are not.
CV: I know! It’s a heavy armor to wear…like a scratchy sweater that does not fit.
SP: Let’s talk about Honest. Why this company, at this time?
CV: Honest was one of my customer partners when I worked at Amazon. The first thing that made me fall in love with Honest was the products, and Steph, you know I love a good product! Their skincare and beauty products were off-the-charts. Match that with their philosophy to be purpose-driven, and that was it for me. The opportunity to come in as CEO is something I’ve been in training for. There are not a lot of companies giving an Afro-Latina this chance. I was so delighted that The Honest Co. saw this as a plus for a brand that wants to relate to a cross-section of people. I also loved that the founders were from diverse backgrounds. This was the trifecta of all trifectas. I can put my training to the test as the final and accountable leader. And it feels great to break barriers by being the first Afro-Latina to be CEO in a publicly traded company.
SP: It feels great to us as well! It’s interesting, Carla: Your career milestones all seemed destined for you to be where you are today. Before Honest, there was Amazon as you mentioned, where you served as vice president of consumables categories, which included everything from household essentials to wellness to beauty and baby products. And, of course, before that there was the more than two decades of amazing work as a marketer and general manager at General Mills. That’s where you got the founder experience leading the Natural and Organic Division which included Annie’s, a business General Mills had acquired that was run by its founders. I know it was not planned, but it seems like a perfect fit.
CV: I was not intentional at all on the assembling of these very disparate experiences in my career. To know that they would come together in a culmination that was a perfect mosaic—NO WAY! I am not that good. All the pieces clicked into the right column like a Connect Four game and luckily, I could hear it.
“Believe in yourself more than the people who say, ‘Not now’ or ‘You are not ready.’”
SP: What advice would you give to those women that are trying to get all the pieces in the right column as well?
CV: There are two versions of a quote I’d like to share: one from Oprah and one from Beyoncé. I mean, if we are going to quote people, it has to be these two!
Oprah says, “When the time comes to bet on yourself, I hope you double down!”
Beyoncé says “I don’t like to gamble but if there’s one thing I’m willing to bet on, it’s myself.” Look where it got them!
Those are the quotes I used when I left my 23-year career at General Mills to leap into the wild blue yonder, truly not knowing what was next, with only a sketch of a plan: write a book and start a podcast. Neither of those things happened, but I still knew to lean in, overcome fear with courage and bet on myself when some real cool opportunities came my way. So my lesson to everyone is to believe in yourself even more than whatever you hear around you. Believe in yourself more than your greatest cheerleader and definitely believe in yourself more than the people who say, “Not now” or “You are not ready.”
Life should give you joy. If what you are doing is not giving you joy or allowing you to recognize the joyful part of yourself, I encourage you to keep looking and keep trying.
SP: So true! Do What you Love. Love what you do.
CV: Absolutely. I think it is important for people to recognize that reading someone’s bio makes everything look like a straight, diagonal line from A to wherever you are. Success is not a straight line. It’s some kind of Candyland maze game board. Resilience is called for along the way. Our difficult times really are still gifts for something later that we do not know.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. A version of this column appeared in the April/May 2023 issue of Twin Cities Business with the headline “Girlfriends’ Guide to CEOs”
