Cabi Clothing

A Career Built Around Understanding the Consumer

I actually began my career in research—at Nielsen, on iconic consumer brands like Coca-Cola and L’Oréal—before moving into marketing. From there I worked with some of the biggest names in global beauty: Avon, Coty and the Wella Company portfolio, including OPI, Clairol, and Wella, before moving into fashion at cabi. That early grounding in research is why I put the consumer at the center of everything I do.

Great marketing and leadership aren’t categoryspecific; what travels is a deep read on the consumer: where she shops, what she buys and what tips her into choosing your product over the one next to it. Working across global markets early forced me to build teams that could adapt fast, communicate across cultures, and stay close to the customer even when the strategy got complicated.

That’s the muscle I lean on now, leading marketing for a brand built on personal relationships and community. I hire for curiosity, drive, and adaptability before pedigree. The best teams I’ve built were never rooms full of specialists defending their lanes—they were connectors who liked working as a team.

Building Culture with Intention

The workplace has changed, and so have the expectations people bring to it. They want to know the why behind the work, not just the what. The leaders who succeed now are transparent, collaborative and genuinely empathetic, and they treat culture as something they build on purpose, not something that happens on its own.

At cabi, our purpose is simple to say and hard to live: we build the kind of community that changes what women believe they’re capable of. Fashion is what gets us in the door; the connection is what lasts. Internally we call the heart of that work Fashion with Heart.

That means connecting the daily work back to the impact, handing people ownership instead of tasks and being honest when something isn’t working—even when it was my own idea in the first place. Purpose-driven culture isn’t a line on a wall. It’s what a leader is willing to do about it, day after day.

Balancing Insight with Instinct

This is hard to get right, and I don’t think anyone fully cracks it. Coming from research, my own bias is to lean too hard on data—I’ve fallen into that hole, where the numbers start making every call. What pulls me back is the kind of brands I’ve built my career in: community-driven businesses centered on hair stylists, nail techs, and now our cabi Stylists.

“The leaders who succeed now are transparent, collaborative and genuinely empathetic, and they treat culture as something they build on purpose, not something that happens on its own.”

Staying close to those relationships reminds me that data should guide the work, not lead it. My approach is to give teams real room to experiment, then use insight to sharpen and scale what’s working rather than dictate the answer up front. Creativity dies when the people making the work feel like they report to a spreadsheet.

So I build small, cross-functional groups where creative, data, and technology are chasing the same goal from day one, with the customer’s actual experience as the tiebreaker whenever we disagree. Technology should take friction out—for our teams and our customers— not replace the judgment, empathy, and emotion that make a brand feel human and make someone actually click buy.

Relationships as a Competitive Advantage

Fashion and retail are being reshaped by creator- and human-driven commerce, and the lines between marketing, sales and relationship-building keep blurring. The marketers who win next will be truly hybrid: fluent in data and platforms, but just as strong at storytelling and managing relationships.

I also think authenticity and human connection are turning back into real competitive advantages, precisely because so much of shopping is becoming automated. Brands built on genuine relationships—like cabi’s Stylist model—are well positioned for that shift, but only if their teams have the structure and the trust to move quickly and stay close to the customer.

Leading Beyond the Title

Don’t over-optimize for a straight line. Some of the best lessons in my career came from moving across categories and taking work that sat just outside my comfort zone. Invest in your people relentlessly—their growth, not your title, is the clearest measure of your leadership.

Build your reputation on trust: do what you say, give credit generously, and admit it when you don’t have the answer yet. Impact compounds slowly. The leaders I admire most never chased visibility; they built teams and cultures that outlasted them.