AI Disruption: A Strategic Framework For Corporate Directors

by Eva Glassman | Oct 3, 2023 | Blog, Featured

By Sophia Velastegui, Chief Product Officer of Aptiv, C200 Member since 2023.

New Member Blog – Ashley Black

by Eva Glassman | Sep 13, 2023 | Blog, Featured

Ashley Black is the Founder of Ashley Black, Inc. and the inventor and developer of a line of beauty and health products that aid in tissue regeneration all over the body. Most notably, Ashley is the inventor of the FasciaBlaster, a line of fascia care tools that are designed to treat and prevent a variety of issues from cellulite to chronic pain. Having dealt with chronic pain in her own life, Ashley believes her experience gave her the purpose to develop her products and share them with the public via her online following in the millions. Ashley describes herself as a “mermaid” with a love for surfing, free-diving, and everything to do with the ocean; she lives in Costa Rica with her partner, Jordi. Ashley has been a member of C200 since April 2023.

Eva Glassman: Hi, Ashley! So, tell me about yourself. What do you do?

Ashley Black: At the heart of what I do, I’m an inventor. I love pushing the boundaries in health and beauty and try to look at them from a different perspective. I see myself as a wacky, “should-be-locked-away-in-a-lab-somewhere-to-blow-things-up” kind of inventor. I ran my business as the CEO until a few years ago, but now I focus on just being the face and founder, and I’m hoping to sell the business and retire soon.

My most successful invention is a line of beauty and health devices called the FasciaBlaster tools. FasciaBlasters are remarkably simple and almost silly to look at, but my crowning achievement to date is conducting and publishing a peer-reviewed research project on the tools that proved they do remodel fascia tissue. We’ve sold over 2 million FasciaBlasters—there’s a lot of women and men out there that use them and constantly post pictures of their results. We don’t even have to say anything anymore—we let our users do the talking at this point!

EG: Talk me through your career journey. Where did you start? How did you end up where you are and what do you think are the biggest factors that led to your success?

AB: The core of my business is very personal and authentic to who I am. This was never a team of investors; one of the things I’m most proud of—and slightly annoyed by—is that I’ve never taken a dollar of funding. This is something that was a passion from my heart and what I think is a “true American success story.” It’s all based on my own need, solving a problem for myself, and extending that into helping millions of people.

The journey started young for me, when I was diagnosed with Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis (JRA) in the fourth grade. At that time, I was a competitive gymnast; JRA didn’t go well with my plans. [laughs] I went to the doctor often and took medications, but nothing was working. By the time I was 18, I discovered that I could manage the pain of my JRA if I was extremely fit all the time, but I knew there had to be a better way, that there was a bigger picture we weren’t looking at.

After giving birth to my daughter at 29, I had a huge arthritic flare-up. I was in horrible pain and couldn’t be a mother at all. After two weeks, I went back to the hospital to get my hip and lower back drained. That was how I dealt with my pain as a kid before gymnastic meets, so it was a semi-normal procedure for me. This time, however, there was a complication; a bacteria spread from my bone marrow to my entire nervous system, and I went from being in blinding pain to fighting for my life. My entire body was septic. I spent four months in the hospital and had a total near-death experience—you know, the tunnel, the visions, the connection with the universe. I received the message that I had to go back to my children and that there was something I needed to bring to the world, but I had to be patient for it to reveal itself.

That event made all my history make sense; I was in school for engineering at the time, but I was more interested in fitness, nutrition, and how to optimize the body. I decided to leave engineering school and met a Chinese medical doctor who taught me about meridians and the fascia. In Chinese medicine, the fascia is the chi—the energy source. I became fascinated with it, so I took a dissection course and started studying the fascia, getting papers shipped over from China to translate. By learning how to manipulate the fascia system on my own body, I got to a point of healing where I was and still am almost fully functional. I started applying the same methods I used for myself on my friends and family, and at one point my local chiropractor was like, “What’s that you’re doing?” That’s what set off my career.

I do believe I’m an amazing businesswoman, but none of this started from that belief. It came from a place of: “This was put on me by the universe, and I’m going to force it to happen one way or another.” I still feel that way, and it’s 22 years since that event.

EG: That is an incredible story, and I think it’s so interesting that you were in school for engineering before switching gears to fitness and nutrition, because physical health has been so important in your life. Your passion and purpose for your business comes from a very personal and lived experience.

AB: I recently told my partner, Jordi, that I hardly feel injured anymore. However, on our recent trip to Europe, I’m walking around Barcelona, carrying bags up hills, eating gluten and whatnot, and I had a couple of arthritic flare-ups. I wouldn’t say it was nice, but it was a reminder of all the things I do to keep myself pain-free. Everybody has some kind of pain they deal with every day. My professional journey is getting my tools, techniques, and knowledge into the hands of as many people as possible, both consumers and health professionals.

EG: At C200, we’re all about Success Shared and women supporting women, so I’d love to know if you’ve had any female mentors over the course of your career, or if there are any women you’ve admired and taken inspiration from.

AB: It’s so funny you’re asking that because I really didn’t have any mentors! I wish I had been more open to that and sought it out sooner; I’ve always been the wacky person on their own little island.

Right now, I’m at a point in my business where I’ve done all that I can do for it, and we need to take it to the next level. If you talk to a lot of business mentors, they will tell you that the team—including yourself—that gets you from zero to $100 million is not the same team that will take you from $100 million to $1 billion. That’s where I stand financially with my business, and when I realized this, I also realized that being without mentors was the worst thing I could have possibly done; I didn’t have the network of those higher-level people who could help me. That’s where Alexandra Lebenthal comes in; she is the only business mentor I’ve had and has been key in helping me understand what it’s going to take to get my business to the next phase of its success.

Before this inflection point in my business, the influential people in my life were those who offered me spiritual guidance. I’ve been a yogi for 30 years and had a strong mentor in yoga who was a big help in strengthening me emotionally. I’ve had more mentors in my spiritual life than in my business life. Hopefully, because I’m a C200 Member now, I’ll have a better answer in a few years. I think that’s why Alexandra wanted to bring me into C200—I need mentorship and colleagues who are at my professional level.

EG: What does being a “woman in business” mean to you and how do you apply that thinking to your entrepreneurial work?

AB: I don’t feel like a “classic feminist.” I’ve never felt like being a woman was ever a disadvantage to me along my career journey; in fact, I felt like it was an advantage. For example, I would walk into the Yankees training room with confidence—despite all the mayhem happening around me—and still felt like the star, because I knew that what I had to bring was something they couldn’t get anywhere else.

However, once I started fundraising, I realized that my business has been growing since day one and growing fast every year—why weren’t people lining up to fund me? That’s when I started hearing statistics about less than 2% of professional capital going to women. I was honestly shocked. Now that I’ve been fundraising for three years, although no one has treated me as less-than because I’m a woman, I understand that it’s a real experience for most women in business—that’s the reality. The statistics don’t lie; they aren’t someone’s opinion.

I’ve become so much more of an advocate for women in business now. I’d love to start some kind of fund after I retire, because women are extraordinary, and we just don’t have access to the capital! When I exit my business, I won’t be giving any money to men! [laughs] Not because they aren’t worthy, but because they have so many other avenues!

EG: Outside of work, what do you like to do for fun?

AB: I am basically a mermaid. I can’t not live on the water—we live in Costa Rica on the water and any day that I get to surf is a good day for me. It has a combination of so many things that we need: it’s fun, a little scary, and gives you all those life lessons about riding the waves—there’s a reason why people use those sayings! I like to free-dive, spearfish, lay on the beach—anything that goes with beach. I understand why people drop out of society altogether and become beachbums!

I also love self-development and spiritual development. I watched Goop Lab on Netflix and thought, “I’ve already done all of that!” [laughs] People always ask me what I’m doing all the way out in Costa Rica, and I tell them, “I just get weird out in the jungle.” Life is about the connection to the planet and the universe, whether that’s done through ceremony, surfing, charity, meditation, sound baths—whatever it is. That’s the lane I live in.

EG: What is your advice to aspiring female entrepreneurs to advance their own careers?

AB: I recently co-wrote the #1 bestselling book BE… From Passion and Purpose to Product and Prosperity with Korie Minkus and Lisa Vrancken, two of my girlfriends who are powerhouses in consumer goods products. When we started writing, we thought we could write a female business blueprint—don’t fall into these landmines, here’s how to deal with these kinds of difficult people, etc.—but then we realized: that’s not how we became successful. We found success by being authentic to ourselves as women and not confining ourselves to the “girlboss” stereotypes. You don’t need to assimilate to “business culture” (i.e., a typically masculine space) to be respected as a woman. In short, the book is about success being ultimately self-defined. It’s about being honest with yourself, not just accepting the societal ideas of what success looks like, and building your business from a place of—and I know this sounds hokey—authenticity, love, genuineness, and not stepping on people. You want to sleep well at night!

We place so much emphasis on women achieving financial milestones as success, but I think women should design their ideal lifestyles (i.e., what success is to them) and work their way backwards to determine how to achieve that. It’s important to have clarity around what you want, not just the dollar amount. Otherwise, you’re overworking yourself for things that don’t matter to you. You must be authentic, clear in what you want and what it’s going to take, and manifest that. Ten years ago, I didn’t realize I had a choice; it’s society and generational beliefs that tell us to be workhorses. The reality is that we must work in ways that build teams and support systems around you.

EG: It’s important to have people who you trust, who have your vision in their minds, and who will work with you to achieve it.

AB: No one ever loves your company as much as you, and no one is ever going to do it as best as you, but would you rather have a team of B- players that get you to the goal, or would you rather be the A+ person that does everything yourself? You have to be okay with trusting others for the greater good because that’s how amazing things get done, and those things are still amazing even if you didn’t do it by yourself.

When Korie, Lisa, and I first started drafting our book, I told them, “You’re never going to feel like this book is perfect. You’re going to have to be okay with ‘good enough.’” I will reread my own books and still think, “Why did I say that? That sounds terrible!” But other people don’t see it that way; they love and resonate with it, which is the goal at the end of the day. If you’re going to build a business and be super successful, you can’t carry that level of perfectionism with you—you’ll just get exhausted. Let’s not do that, ladies! Let’s find some happiness outside of work instead!

EG: What are you most excited about as a new C200 Member?

AB: Everything, is the short answer! I’m so excited to jump in; I’ll be at the Annual Conference this October!

I’m 51 years old and just now building a network of women. I’m so happy to be a part of C200 and align with other women who are at similar places in their careers as me. I’m looking forward, for the first time ever, to having a tribe of businesswomen in my corner. I have this so beautifully in my personal life; I can’t imagine how amazing it will be to have this in my professional life! If you build your business to a place where things become complicated, you need to have people you can go to with those complicated questions.

I also look forward to being a mentor. I love to work with young people, and I believe anyone can achieve their dreams, however impossible they seem. If we get more women into positions of global power, we may finally get some stuff done around here!

I hope that as the women in C200 get to know me, they get to know me—my authentic self. I recently attended an amazing C200 webinar and loved to see that a lot of these women have known each other for years and years. I’m so excited to be at the start of that.

Find C200 on LinkedIn and Instagram!

Navigating the Perfect Storm: Removing Chaos during the Talent Shortage Crisis

by Eva Glassman | Aug 29, 2023 | Blog, Featured

By Teresa Carroll, CEO of Magnit; C200 Member since 2019.

New Member Blog – Lynn Perenic

by Eva Glassman | Aug 28, 2023 | Blog, Featured

Lynn Perenic is the President and CEO of Argent Tape & Label, specializing in manufacturing and distributing custom printed adhesive media and industrial tape products, and Argent International, a full-service custom die cutter and fabricator. Emerging as an entrepreneur from a background of teaching special ed, Lynn harnessed her fierce, can-do attitude to bring both companies significant growth and success. Outside of work, Lynn enjoys scuba diving with her husband in Key Largo, Florida and visiting art museums with her daughter. Lynn has been a C200 member since May 2023.

Eva Glassman: Can you please introduce yourself and tell me what you do?

Lynn Perenic: I’m the President and CEO of two companies, Argent Tape & Label and Argent International. The easiest way to explain what we are is “pressure-sensitive, adhesive solution providers,” or “tapes and shapes,” and we deal primarily in the automotive industry. For example, if you find that your car has a taillight that leaks, our guys will help you find a material and shape that will allow the moisture to dissipate.

My husband bought Tape & Label, the smaller company, as an investment. I had retired from my career as a special education teacher and I thought, “I think I can run this company.” When I bought it from him for a dollar in 2011, it was on the brink of disaster—the sales were a disaster, but if you flash-forward to today, we’re closing in the millions.

My husband started Argent International, the larger company, in 1979. He’s a classic entrepreneur—lots of ideas. If he tells you to do something, he expects you’ll do it. Meanwhile, for me, because of my teaching background, if I tell you to do something, it’s because I don’t think you’re going to do it! [laughs] I’m someone who circles back to things to make sure they get done.

When COVID hit, my husband didn’t want to run Argent International anymore, so he sold me 51% of the company. That’s where we are today; we’re growing the business and making it a healthy, strong, and sustainable one. I’m also proud to say that we have all female leadership at the top. Our COO, Quality Manager, and Controller are all strong and exceptional women. I feel that we’re going to new heights with this team because no one is a quitter here.

EG: I’m curious to know more about how you think your teaching background has informed your career as a businesswoman. What about teaching specifically do you think has helped your success, and what are some other things you believe have affected it?

LP: Teachers need a plan; at Argent International, while they were very successful, they never had a plan. I compared the attitude to the Chevy Chase movie National Lampoon’s Vacation—they were going to Walley World and didn’t have a map. When I first started at the company and brought all the managers in for an initial meeting, I actually played them the clip from that film when they finally get to Walley World and it’s closed. I told them, “I don’t want to get to Walley World and find out it’s closed! We need to have a plan.” I wanted to solidify some long- and short-term objectives. As a special ed teacher, you have to write individual plans for each kid because each one has different needs. That experience helped me understand what I needed to do for Argent International. I took classes, read books, and went to seminars to get me up to speed about running a business. Every May, I take a week to establish next year’s plans and to reflect on where we currently are. I was thrilled that each old manager—I call them the “OGs”—were able to adapt to my new expectations and come up with plans. All those things—having actual processes in place—helped make the company stronger.

EG: It’s remarkable that you were able to come in and change the ways of these older managers so effectively!

LP: I’m not the girl who waits by the car for help, and they know that. Now, they’ve seen the success of the smaller company, which I run with an open book management approach—the idea that business is run like a game. Everyone likes to play a game and win. There are three basic rules: you must know and teach the rules—i.e., business planning—and then you keep score. You keep score via your various metrics—KPIs, income statements—and then you share a stake in the outcome. I do that through gain sharing quarterly. Since 2012, when it became profitable, Tape & Label has not missed a gain share. Again, I had to beat this company on the chest to bring it back to life. The OGs all see that success and want a share in it.

EG: Did you have any female mentors or inspirations going up in your career? Who are they and what about them do you admire?

LP: There aren’t a lot of women in the automotive space, so I had to look outside for guidance. I’m a member of the Great Lakes Women’s Business Council, so there are a lot of very strong and successful women in that group that I look to. I have a good friend named Stormi Greener who’s an award-winning photojournalist. She’s gone on assignments in Iran, Pakistan, and many other countries, and seeing how she navigates a lot of the stereotypes about women in her profession is inspiring to me.

EG: It’s interesting that you’ve found inspiration in someone who has a totally different career path than you and took those lessons over into your own life and situation.

LP: One of my first experiences in this primarily male-dominated business, I walked into the office with a ponytail and heard a man down the sales aisle say, “So who’s the blonde ponytail coming in here?” When I turned around, it looked like a game of Whack-A-Mole; all the heads shot down into their cubicles. I later went out and bought a Barbie with a big blonde ponytail and stuck her on my desk. By the end of the year, one of the guys in the office made an acrylic ceiling for me to stick her fist into. That’s the kind of person I am!

EG: That’s so awesome. Perhaps related to that point, what does being a “woman in business” mean to you, and how do you apply that thinking to your work and life?

LP: My husband started the company from scratch; he was a one-man show, selling during the day and running parts at night. I feel pressure just to keep it successful; I don’t want to drop the baby, if that makes sense.

My ideas must work. I need to be able to see the entire playing field. As Wayne Gretzky once said, “Skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been.” This is how I have to think to win!

EG: What’s your idea of fun outside of work?

LP: We have a place in Key Largo that we go to in the winter where I love to fish and scuba dive. It’s a great escape from Michigan when we’re able to get down there. Since COVID brought in remote working, it’s been great to attend meetings and escape the winter all at once!

I also love to go to museums. My daughter was an art history major, so it’s always fun to go with her. She and I would go together as far back as when I pushed her in a stroller.

EG: What’s your advice to aspiring female entrepreneurs and corporate leaders as they advance their own careers?

LP: Don’t give up. Set goals for yourself. Sometimes it looks like you’re going to fail, but keep pushing forward. I have a sign outside my office that says, “If your dreams don’t scare you, they’re not big enough.”

In my early days of running the company, I became interested in the scarab. A scarab is a dung beetle, and what do dung beetles do? They push dung uphill. Backwards. That’s what I told my team members: just keep pushing.

EG: That’s a very strong image.

LP: Why was the dung beetle an important animal for the Egyptians? Inside the ball of dung is the larvae. To the Egyptians, that meant it was a renewal of life, so I was really interested in the image because, in a strange way, it’s so positive and forward-thinking.

EG: What are you most looking forward to as a new C200 member?

LP: I’m excited about meeting other women who are driven, who see something out there and want to go for it, who have ideas they’re willing to pursue, even if it scares them. I always love to hear new ideas because ideas from others sometimes spark something in you. I’m really looking forward to meeting all these women in San Diego for the Annual Conference in October!

Women In Balance: An Exhibit and Tribute to Wanda Ferragamo

by Eva Glassman | Aug 23, 2023 | Blog, Featured

Pictured: C200 Members Wanda Ferragamo and Nancy Peterson Hearn

By Tracy Guarino, CEO and Founder of Guarino Advisors, LLC; C200

Member since 2014

C200 Member Wanda Ferragamo was the heart and mind behind the Salvatore Ferragamo company and succeeded in turning the company into one of the most famous Italian fashion brands.

Wanda was one of the first female entrepreneurs of Italy. When her husband, Salvatore Ferragamo, passed away in 1960, Wanda found herself in a position of running the company with no prior experience and during a decade when the work environment in Italy was dominated by men.

As a tribute to Wanda and her lifetime of accomplishments and success, the “Women in Balance” exhibit at the Museo Salvatore Ferragamo is currently on display in Florence, Italy.

The first room of the exhibit is dedicated to her office in Piazza Santa Trinita, the square outside of the Florence museum. You will see portraits of Salvatore and Wanda and their six children, along with Wanda’s iconic “W” bag.

The main installation is a prototype of Palazzo Spini Feroni, the palace that houses the museum, headquarters, and the Ferragamo flagship store. It also features shoe prototypes from 1961 to 1963 created by Fiamma Ferragamo, Wanda and Salvatore’s eldest daughter, who took her father’s place after his passing as shoe designer at the age of 17.

This exhibit is on display in Florence until September 10th, 2023. If you are unable to view the exhibit in person, there is an option to reserve a private virtual tour with the museum curator.

View more information about the museum and tour here: https://museo.ferragamo.com/en.

New Member Blog – Jill Campbell

by Eva Glassman | Aug 14, 2023 | Blog, Featured

Jill Campbell is the former President and Chief People & Operations Officer of Cox Enterprises, a private, family-owned company leading in the communications and automotive industries. She was one of the first female trailblazers on the operations side of the cable industry and is passionate about women’s rights both in and out of the workplace. Now retired, she sits on the board of the Art Farm of Serenbe, bringing the arts to the Serenbe community, and plans to do a lot of travelling into next year. She has been a member of C200 since March 2023.

EG: Could you please introduce yourself and describe what you do?

JC: I’m recently retired from a 40-year career at Cox Enterprises, which owns TelComm companies across the United States from California all the way to New England. We also owned the largest auto-auction company in the world called Manheim, as well as Autotrader and Kelley Blue Book, and Clean Tech—think leafy vegetables and solar panels—companies that will change the world and make our environment better.

I worked in the same company my whole life. It was cool to promote up and do so many different things for one company. I moved six times in ten years managing cable systems throughout the country and had different jobs at corporate offices over the years. And then I ended up running HR, which isn’t something I had ever thought about doing. It felt like I was working for a lot of different companies.

EG: What was your day-to-day like before you retired?

JC: I was in the HR world during the height of COVID, and so our jobs changed dramatically. Everything we thought we knew didn’t exist anymore. The first order of business was keeping people safe; we still had technicians out in the fields helping our customers, so it wasn’t like we could simply shut things down and have people not working. We had to decide what our protocol would be for our techs: Do we let them go in a home? Do we let them go outside? It was just a complete overhaul of how we did business.

Those who could work remotely didn’t come back for two-and-a-half years! Imagine managing a remote workforce where your culture is all relationship-based; ours was very much family-oriented. Having to look at new ways to do business was very difficult. Nevertheless, it was exciting for me because it was very operational. We had to come up with lots of processes and plans to put in place.

Other day-to-day that isn’t specific to the pandemic: As President of Cox Enterprises, I met often with the SVPs and VPs on what they were producing every day. It’s a lot of strategy, thinking about what’s going to happen in the next five years and putting together plans for that including mergers and acquisitions. We were buying a lot of sustainability companies, which prompts the decision of whether to integrate them into the company and how. It was really a varied job, and when there was an emergency in the middle of your day, you’d have to pivot your plans and deal with that. That’s what I loved most about my career. I could come in and something could totally derail my plans for that day.

EG: What do you believe was the biggest factor in your success?

JC: I entered the cable industry when there were no women on the operations side. Zero. I started in public affairs where I had a boss who saw something in me, told me to get an MBA and that I should get into operations because that’s how I would be successful. At the time, I was thinking, “That sounds horrid!” He kept pushing, and it was a gamechanger when I finally did go into operations. I really like managing people, and I think I was a good leader because they knew I had their best interest at heart, was honest, and wanted them to do well. Operations is about managing a lot of people, so that skillset was super important.

Another thing beneficial to me was being able to stay in a company which was family-run and privately held, so there were more opportunities for me there than at a publicly held company. The people there raised me through the company, so they were willing to take risks on me that another company wouldn’t have. That, combined with good hard work, doing things other people didn’t want to do, and showing my commitment to the company—I think all those things led me continuing to be promoted.

EG: What’s it like now?

JC: I’m trying to do a lot more me time. I’ll go for a walk with a friend in the mornings, then I might workout, go to the pool, or read a book. I sit on a public board, Georgia Power, which keeps the business wheels turning. I’m also on a nonprofit board called The Art Farm at Serenbe, which is the little, funky wellness community I live in. We bring the arts into the community, everything from theater to dance to music. That’s been fun to be involved with and helps me get to know more of my neighbors.

I also love to travel! We’re going all over the place: Rwanda in September, a couple of wine countries in October and November—because you must throw those in—Egypt in December with the whole family, Finland in March, and Tahiti in June. I’m making up for some lost time! I have fewer years ahead of me than I do behind me, so I’m going to do what I want to do, make the most of them, and just enjoy myself.

EG: Who were your women mentors going up in your career? Who are the women who inspired you?

JC: In the business, all my mentors were men because when you looked up the corporate ladder, that’s all there was. I had a lot of great peer mentors who would tell me if they thought I was messing up, but again, when I looked up, I didn’t see anyone who looked like me. However, I was super lucky to have men who championed me, gave me really good feedback, and took chances on me.

Because of my experience going up the ranks, when I got into positions of power, I wanted to be a huge champion of women. I was very involved with Women in Cable, which is an organization that supports women and their advancement in the cable industry. I looked at equality in pay and positions, and I’m proud of the work that we did when I was on the board there. When I started to get up in my career, there were women that ran programming channels or at the EVP level who I could look up to.

I would get a lot of feedback on how to be a woman in the cable industry. Cable people cuss a lot, so I was doing a lot of that, but I was told that it was “not becoming of a young woman.” I was like, “Are you kidding me?” Men would say, “People are watching you,” and I would ask, “Well, aren’t they watching you?” Their answer was: “It’s just different.” I don’t disagree with that reality, but it’s how you handle those situations and how you give feedback that matters. It would have had a much different impact on me had it been approached differently; instead, I thought: “You’re just saying that to me because I’m a female.” I got a lot of those messages along the way, and now that I am mentoring and leading other women, I don’t treat them that way. The cable industry was a very interesting place to be at the time I started. It was rough.

EG: You’ve clearly been reflecting on your career journey and how you’ve risen in the ranks of your company. So, what does being a “woman in business” mean to you and how did you apply that thinking to your work as a corporate leader?

JC: They always say women work twice as hard to be where they are as men, and I think that’s true. In my experience, I was determined to show that I could do my job just like the guys. I didn’t want anyone to be able to say, “See, women can’t do it because they have kids” or something like that. When one of my kids had a baseball game or something like that, I was afraid to leave work for that. What was important to me as I got higher in the organization was that it’s okay to be a full person. You don’t have to hide the fact that you have a kid who has a baseball game. We trust you; we know you’re doing your job—go to the baseball game! I wanted to show that women are still women; they don’t have to act like men to be respected in the workplace. That took a long time for me to understand myself and emphasize to others.

A colleague once told me, “When I first met you, you were wearing such a cute dress and stilettos, and in the business meeting, you were so smart and dynamic.” I’m so happy that I was at a company like Cox because I could be me and still be respected and treated like an equal. I had never thought about people looking up and saying, “Look, she’s President now and she’s still herself, a woman, and representing femininity at the same time that she’s running this business.” That was the coolest thing that I’ve ever heard, and I’m proud that I could do that for myself and for others, because I wanted anyone—not just women—to come into the workplace, feel safe, and feel like they can be themselves. It’s the little things that you say and do that makes the difference down in the ranks. You must walk the talk, and if you don’t, people see through that. You must be strong in your convictions about creating and maintaining a culture where people feel like they can be themselves in the company.

EG: I think that is so important. For women, it’s more than just wanting to be a part of a space that men dominate. It’s about wanting to be respected in that space as who you are, because if you’re just assimilating to the status quo, what’s tolerable, what trails are you really blazing? What’s the point?

JC: It saddens me that there are still companies that discourage inclusivity. When I hear women talk about how they’re treated in their businesses, I think, “Why is this still happening?” A lot of women still say, “I really do feel like there’s a different standard for us.” Another thing women say to me is, “How did you balance it all? I’m not even sure I’m going to have kids because I don’t want that to hold me back.” Don’t make that decision! Find the right company, be an entrepreneur, or most importantly, find a supportive life partner who truly sees you as an equal. A partner that doesn’t want to be equal with you or for you to be more successful than them is another way that women’s careers are stifled.

EG: What’s your advice to aspiring female entrepreneurs and corporate leaders to advance their own careers?

JC: Don’t be afraid. Don’t fill your head with all the negatives; lots of people are doing that for you already. You’ve got to be super positive and surround yourself with good people who will also support your vision. I got great advice early on to get a “personal board of directors.” First, find people in your personal life—a friend, a mother—for moral support. Then, find some high-powered executives—it could be a friend of your parents—and an entrepreneur who’s made it and is willing to mentor you. Surrounding yourself with other like-minded women who you can learn from is important. Don’t be isolated. I believe feedback is a huge gift, so it’s good to hear it from a supportive place and not just when you’re messing up. Get all the feedback and information that you can from anyone who’s willing to talk to you. That’s really it; listening and being open is so important.

EG: What are you most excited about as a new C200 member?

JC: The thing that attracted me to C200 is all the amazing women. I get very energized being around powerful, successful, kind, and philanthropic women. When I went to the conference in Atlanta, I was starstruck being among all these women—presidents of corporations, senators, written 29 books—whereas I felt like, “Well, I’ve just been working at the same company for 40 years.” It was very humbling—and inspiring! All of them were so willing to help with anything that I was interested in, sharing their stories, wanting to connect. That’s what I’m excited about: all the different women in different industries. I spent a lot of time in the same industry, so meeting people who are entrepreneurs in different kinds of companies is really cool, and I look forward to doing much more connecting!