Luxury Women to Watch 2016

I had a great honor of being listed among Luxury Women to Watch 2016. As part of my nomination, I gave a quick interview, which you can read below.

What do you like the most about your job?
I love having access to decision-makers and thought-leaders in the luxury, fashion and lifestyle landscape. It is fantastic to sit at the panel with persons like Gabrielle de Papp of FarFetch or Drew Elliot of Paper Magazine and just be exposed to their amazing thinking and amazing things they are doing.

It is also very professionally fulfilling to sit with CEOs and CMOs of the largest global luxury brands like LVMH or Sotheby’s or Estee Lauder and guide them in figuring out the modern luxury landscape.

This is a very, very exciting time to be working in this space and being able to have these conversations and do the work that makes immediate, tangible and measurable impact is invaluable.

What is the biggest challenge in your job?
It is always challenging to build something new from scratch.

There needs to be a strong vision, mission and point of view. At LuxHub USA, my business partner, managing director Rachel Conlan and I started out building our practice very thoughtfully, focusing on the offerings that no one else provides and building a rock-solid, strong point of view on modern luxury that we express, both in thought-leadership and in our client work.

It is a challenge to introduce a new practice into a global organization and prove one’s value as quickly as possible, both internally and externally. But I think that we have done a good job thus far.

What is your biggest priority for 2016?
Getting more decision-makers and thought-leaders from the industry to take notice, getting more brands to partner with us, and getting smarter and keep learning in our work and thought leadership. My priority is always to keep learning, keep growing and be positively challenged.

What will it take to attract more women to luxury marketing, retail, media and digital?
There needs to be commitment in the industry as a whole, and also across all its layers toward supporting, nurturing and rewarding women who currently work there and also those who want to work in this industry.

This isn’t just a matter of saying things like “we support women,” it is a matter of a careful strategy and tactics that go from enforcing diversity in hiring to making sure that we are part of diverse teams and that there is no gender discrimination when it comes to promotion and work rewards.

Diversity is a matter of organizational design. More diverse organizations are the more successful ones, as they are more resilient to change and more adaptable to it.

What is your proudest achievement in luxury?
Why, it is becoming one of the Luxury Women to Watch 2016. That, and consistently inspiring luxury CMOs to think differently.