Shelley E. Kohan (00:39)
Carla, I’m so excited to have you on Lead Like Her. I can’t even tell you how much my students and young women everywhere are gonna love to hear from you. So welcome.

Carla Vernón (00:50)
Thank you so much. I love it. It wasn’t that long ago that I was in their shoes.

Shelley E. Kohan (00:57)
I know,

right? Well, first of all, I have to say that you are one of the first Afro Latina CEOs of a US publicly traded company. Of course, the CEO of Honest Company, which makes me so proud. And what I love about your background is it’s really quite diverse. So you’re a CEO of Honest Company, prior to that, Amazon, General Mills, two other big companies.

You also had a role as a supporting a ⁓ US Senator, which I find super fascinating. But then you have an academic background in ecology and evolutionary biology, which is like, can’t wait to hear this journey. And along, of course, you have a business MBA as well. So can you just start by telling us a little bit about your journey?

Carla Vernón (01:35)
Yes.

The journey of my…

career and my academic life has really always been one that was grounded in purpose. So ever since I was a little kid, thank you so much for sharing some of mine and my own family’s unique heritage and culture because coming from a father who was an immigrant and a mother who my mom is still alive today, who was raised in the South as a black person during segregation means that my parents raised us

and in our home, we’re always talking about what is it we’re here to do in the world. There’s so much that needs to be done to help others, to help our community, to help our planet. So you can find a way to use your one precious life to show up and do something in the world. And so.

went right away when I went to undergrad and I studied at Princeton and I studied ecology as you said, I knew I wanted to study something that was going to allow me to have a positive impact. So I wanted to learn about ecosystems and what the planet was going through. The planet is going through its own transformation and struggles and challenges. And then ever since then, I’ve been looking to bring my gifts to places, work, employers, where what they’re trying to do is use their

position in the industry or in the world to drive positive change and that’s been a common thread the whole time.

Shelley E. Kohan (03:17)
That’s amazing. And I have to ask you, early in your career, you graduate college, you jump into the industry, how as a young Afro Latina woman did you get that seat at the table? How did you do it?

Carla Vernón (03:33)
One of the things that’s been important for me is

to not stereotype or oversimplify what a career journey looks like if you also want to ascend. So I have never assumed that there is one single formula or that I have to model myself after a single person. Instead, I always try to take the opportunities brought in front of me and think about how will they build me, what will they give me access to, how will they act as a building block for

the next thing. That’s always been the case. So originally when I first chose after business school, well, no, actually, when I first was in business school and I’d come from the government and nonprofit sector, you mentioned that I used to work for US Senator Carol Moseley Braun, who is quite a history maker herself. She was the very first black woman ever in the history of the United States to be a US Senator. United States had been around a long time and there’d never been a black woman in the Senate.

Shelley E. Kohan (04:19)
Yeah.

What? That’s amazing!

Carla Vernón (04:36)
Barrier breaker for us was Carol Moseley Braun and I was such a privilege to be able to work with her at such a young age, newly out of undergrad, really seeing somebody break through the glass ceiling, you know? And so right then I took that job thinking, man, I wanna learn how the world works. If I wanna make a better change, then working in the government would maybe give me access to learning how the world works.

Then when I went to business school and said, I’ve learned that you can make an impact positively in the world by going to companies that have strong values and that lead through that purpose centered compass, ⁓ but how to find one. So then I took an internship with a company that was at the time long standing on those best hundred companies to work for best company for working moms, which was Wegmans, Wegmans Grocery Store.

Shelley E. Kohan (05:15)
Yeah.

Carla Vernón (05:27)
Shout out to my Wegmans

Shelley E. Kohan (05:28)
Love, WacMans.

Carla Vernón (05:28)
people out there because we love us and Wegmans when we love it, we love it. ⁓ And they were so purpose centered that gave me an opportunity to go to my first corporate job.

Shelley E. Kohan (05:33)
I love Wegmans.

Carla Vernón (05:39)
where purpose and ⁓ employee satisfaction was such a strong priority, that helped me recognize it when I was looking then for my full-time work out of business school. And at that time, General Mills stood out among all the other consumer products companies where I had the option to go. And I was so right. So many of the leaders who helped mentor and build me are people that I still consider in my corner to this day. So it’s been an exciting journey.

I would say when some jobs came, sometimes they might have even been a lateral move, not a promotion, but if I recognized that the lateral move was going to give me new skills or a new context, then I thought the payout might be in the future, but I bet it’s going to be there.

Shelley E. Kohan (06:28)
That’s amazing. love that. And of course, I’m a big Wegmans fan. I wish there was one closer to my house. I have to drive 35 minutes to get to the closest Wegmans, but yeah, I do love them. Yeah. So let me ask you a question. you stepped into the CEO role at Honest Company. And of course, Jessica Alba founded the company and she’s still on the board. So how do you prepare for that? What leadership skills do you need and what…

Carla Vernón (06:36)
We love wagons.

Shelley E. Kohan (06:56)
Did you learn in the past that has now helped you in your current amazing role?

Carla Vernón (07:02)
Running a small, emergent company is very entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial at the same time.

I had the good fortune when I was at General Mills, I ran the natural and organic food portfolio for General Mills, which was an amalgamation of a number of acquisitions. At the time, General Mills had been very early in that part of the food industry. It was all of the sort of ⁓ the organic, the natural, the regenerative food. They were at the leading edge starting in the late ⁓ 1900s, 1999.

young people. I’ve been in multiple Millennials. ⁓ So I really got a chance to learn at General Mills about founder-built companies.

I had the opportunity to run Lara Bar, which was founded by Lara Mirikin. I’d gotten to run Annie’s Organic, which was founded by Annie Withy. I mean, these businesses have real people who founded them. And I learned how to honor and uphold that the DNA that the founder, that inspired the founder to fill a need that the world had for a product.

⁓ that there’s something about that heartbeat that was important to protect. So by the time I came to The Honest Company, I now had that blend of knowing how to run big businesses at scale, knowing how to help small businesses get to scale.

and also how to truly respect and nurture that special precious heartbeat that lives inside of a founder built company. I believe that when I got a chance to meet Jessica and Jessica and I actually met when I worked at Amazon. So we did not first meet when I was coming to Honest. I met Jessica because she is such a engaged founder that she would attend the top to top meetings with retailers. Those are the where the executives from the brand and the executives from the retail side get to

Shelley E. Kohan (08:51)
Wow.

Carla Vernón (09:06)
to discuss strategy and growth visions together. And so she came to one of the top to tops and we talked about how to make the honest brand much bigger and even more effective on Amazon at the time. So then when I was coming back around for the interview, the good news was I had met the previous management team and Jessica. So the conversation was sort of like an ongoing conversation, but I think what was important was I was able to demonstrate to the board.

that I could both respect and protect the founder’s vision as well as bring that vision into a new chapter.

Shelley E. Kohan (09:45)
love that. So I have to say, like, I think you were really ahead of the industry in terms of organic products and regenerative agriculture efforts. I mean, where did this fashion come from? How did you fuel this passion that you had at a young age?

Carla Vernón (10:02)
When I was little, my mom was in graduate school. mom and dad were both in graduate school when I was growing up. First, my dad got his PhD while raising.

children. Then they did it sequentially. Then when he graduated, she went back and she went to get her PhD. So as children, my brother and I had to keep ourselves busy a lot because our parents were busy. They were working and in grad school. So I spent my fair share of time outside playing, occupying myself, being my own playmate sometimes. And I did that and I had a really

Shelley E. Kohan (10:21)
Ha.

Carla Vernón (10:36)
big backyard and I had a front yard. My mom used let me get out there and dig with her garden tools. I think she was just glad I was just out of the house. And in my time actually spending that time becoming a friend of nature.

in my own way, because he was suburban, I’m not like a big hiker, I’m not so super outdoorsy, but in my own way, getting in touch with nature gave me this empathy for caring for our ecosystem and our planet. So really that started me early wanting to learn about that. I learned about it academically. Then I got to come out and apply it professionally because my first job out of undergraduate school was actually working for the Nature Conservancy doing urban restoration work because there is important environmental work to be done.

in urban areas as well. And so I’ve always been looking for a way to know that if there’s one thing I can bring together, it’s maybe like business ideas meeting with ways in which we steward our natural resources in a way that’s thoughtful to the future generations. And so I think that all came together when I was at General Mills. There were some incredible thought leaders in the natural space that I would engage with that were out there even more

leading edge than General Mills. Sometimes the small companies like an Honest where Honest was created to really raise the standard of clean in personal care to say we can do something that maybe the legacy brands can’t to push the envelope and push the standards higher. That was the same then and that’s when I first learned about new

I want to call it new forms of farming, although regenerative just really means bringing back the old ways, about those new ways and the role that large food has in driving what the agricultural systems will do at scale. And if large food puts pressure on the systems to be more thoughtful and sustainable, then that will change what farmers are able to do and are able to make money from and make money from good farming practices. So we sort of pushed that

bold objective. ⁓

I was a little tricky because I knew if I could get the corporation to commit to a public objective, then we’d have to stick with it. So I worked on a lot of discussions internally to say, I think this is something that could make shareholders really believe in us for the long term and really demonstrate that value. That’s a lot of what I draw upon from honest as well. Making sure when we talk to our shareholders, we talk about protecting all of the things that make our business model special and unique.

Shelley E. Kohan (12:50)
I love it.

Carla Vernón (13:12)
One of which is that we hold our products to this thing we call the honest standard ⁓ and that’s 3,500 ingredients we choose not to use in our products very aggressive high standard which put us out front for clean and I will tell you sometimes what we’re seeing is the industry has to follow and raise its game and in that way It’s the consumers. It’s the people that win

Shelley E. Kohan (13:38)
No, it’s definitely true. But I will say that I know that you’re a big advocate of this, but seriously, you were like 10 years ahead of the industry. Now the industry is talking all the talk that is out there about, you know, clean and good ingredients all, but you were there, you know, way before anybody else was. a lot of kudos.

Carla Vernón (13:55)
Now we can get regenerative

eggs and regenerative beef and yeah, it’s pretty cool.

Shelley E. Kohan (14:01)
Yeah, it’s awesome.

I also picked up on something. I’m going to take a wild guess here, but we talk a lot about leadership skills and I’m thinking that as a young child, you were very curious. so curiosity seems to have led you on this path.

Carla Vernón (14:17)
I still abide by that thing that you could learn in elementary school if you had the right teacher, which is that there are no stupid questions.

⁓ I also am very comfortable being wrong and making mistakes. I always tell my team, it’s okay to make mistakes. Let’s just try to not make the same mistake over again. So when you allow yourself the humility and the freedom to say, I have a lot to learn. I don’t know all the answers and I’m gonna feel free to get all the wisdom that…

my champions, that the universe, that the internet, you name it, the answers are out there, but I’m going to be willing to be humble enough to say learning more will make me better. ⁓ listen, I mean, I am in all kinds of rooms where I’m willing to say, I don’t really know about that. So could you teach me that? ⁓ And I hope people never feel like they have to fake. If you’re in an environment where you feel like you have to fake knowing things,

Shelley E. Kohan (15:12)
I love it.

Carla Vernón (15:21)
that’s just an extra burden that prevents you from actually getting all the input that will make you better.

Shelley E. Kohan (15:30)
I love that. love that. one of the things you’re really good at is you lead business transformations. kind of very early in your career, you’re talking about shareholders, which most people don’t even think about till they’re high up in their career, but you were thinking about a young age. how do you go about, what are the skills it takes to lead business transformation and how do you kind of ⁓ adapt to all these industry changes in the market? I feel like they’re coming very fast and furious these days.

Carla Vernón (16:00)
The first thing that you need to do in order to lead transformation is to believe. That’s the first thing. You can’t transform anything if you’re caught up in questioning, ⁓ not yet certain, not yet ⁓ willing to take that leap forward into change. Transformation inherently means change. So I have always thought,

this motto that I carry in my head is believing is the first thing. Sometimes you have to believe more strongly than your audience or that your stakeholders because something might seem impossible or ⁓ what do I want to say, like unexpected. And it’s only unexpected until you’ve started doing it and then people realize, ⁓ well, that can be done.

So belief is the first thing. Then I think it takes ⁓ a broad assessment, an analysis and an auditing of the circumstances you’re in, diagnosing what is really actually going wrong or.

has started going in the wrong direction and getting very clear on it. And then the last thing I think that’s important is mapping out the order at which you will address the problems or the opportunities at hand. Hoping to do everything all at once or expecting that you’ll do it all very quickly is not usually the case for true complex problems. ⁓ And…

in sort of sequencing things, sometimes that also means you sequence how you will bring the stakeholders along in the sequence because no one can transform something complicated by themselves. So I have to be bringing employees along in my job. I have to bring my board members along. I have to bring my investors along and they have to be part of the sequence.

Shelley E. Kohan (18:06)
think the other thing that a lot of students and young people see is they see all the positives of leadership. So they see, they’re in a CEO role. ⁓ they’re CMO of marketing, ⁓ I feel like success is not a series of wins. It’s a series of ups and downs. It’s not the Instagramable career that we.

put out there. So can you really talk about how leadership is not a trail of successes?

Carla Vernón (18:37)
Well, first of all, I was the last person in my associate marketing manager class promoted. I watched everybody get promoted, promoted, promoted, and my ego started going like this.

That was one example of, ⁓ boy, I was clearly not perfect from the start. I was not seen as the highest potential leader from the start. I had a lot of learning and growing. And I allowed myself to go sit at the desk sides of many, many mentors to ask, what could I do better? What am I not getting right? Where am I going off path? And then I…

gave myself the challenge of applying the feedback and the coaching that I get so that I’m always like sort of my own workout inspiring partner on my self-improvement journey. That’s one example. But listen, I’ll give you an example. We’ve had quite a run on the transformation of The Honest Company. It’s been awesome. We’ve grown gross margins by a thousand basis points since I’ve gotten here. We have restored cash

balance from a low of about $9 million to where we are now, last reported $90 million in the bank, all in three years, very quick order.

I had a quarter where I missed the target, the team and I, missed. And Wall Street was very disappointed. So even now today in my job, I have to understand how do you rebound from a disappointing quarter where what you projected isn’t what comes to pass? How do you restore trust and credibility? Because there’s a great future ahead for the Honest Company. And I’m so thankful to say we actually were able to deliver expectations in our last quarter.

It’s a constant a continuing life journey of resilience getting yourself together picking yourself up dusting yourself off and sometimes looking to the people in your corner Who are maybe able to have a better day when you’re not having a good day that could kind of fuel your fuel tank when you might be running low so it’s it’s a continuing journey of

Shelley E. Kohan (20:51)
Mm.

Carla Vernón (20:58)
Wins and losses. My two kids are athletes and I have learned a lot from sitting on the sidelines and not expecting that every game is a win. You know, I want them to win every game, but you don’t win every game or you don’t get your personal best every outing on the track. that stick-to-it-iveness that I’ve seen in my own children as athletes, it actually inspires me sometimes to get my own act together.

Shelley E. Kohan (21:29)
That’s great. you know, we are corporate athletes. So we are athletes, but we’re corporate athletes the same way we have to train, have to take, you know, balance our lives and all of that stuff. But how do you build these high value teams? Like, what do you think our future leaders should know about getting that vision on board with the team? And how do you instill values in your team?

Carla Vernón (21:53)
One of the ways that ⁓ we make sure we’re constantly growing as a team is by putting our team growth into our KPIs for the year. So if you want to have a…

more efficiently operating organization, assign a KPI, assign an owner, check in on it. If you want to build some particular management skills, AI practice, whatever you want to build, ⁓ we measure matters, right? And so we have learned to incorporate whatever it is we want into our organizational objectives.

Shelley E. Kohan (22:23)
Yes.

Carla Vernón (22:30)
We’ve incorporated staying a purpose-driven company into our objectives, and we have certain things that we do. But for my own management team, as an example, I have a KPI that says four times a year, my management team will meet with an executive coach to step outside of the work we do and have personal development and leadership development. That’s both personal development and leadership development. We also have some KPIs that talk about some very specific ways of opting

Operating that I’ve learned I learned some really great skills when I was at Amazon and at Amazon they call the mechanisms Some really great mechanisms. I’ll give you one example one is something that Amazonians are very renowned for which is this mindset of working backwards so you think about the end goal that’s in mind and then you trace the steps back to where you are now all the milestones all the checkpoints all the work that has to be done and If I want to improve my team’s ability to hit

Shelley E. Kohan (23:25)
interesting.

Carla Vernón (23:30)
deadlines efficiently and get them in a habit of working backwards, then I need to make working backwards a KPI. So we’ve done that. And that’s one way we build. The other thing, Shelley, that I’ve really learned, I’ve learned it from supply chain leaders over the years. I have a supply chain leader who’s come to Honest and brought so much great knowledge to us. And he’s the SVP of our supply chain. But I also learned it when I was at General Mills. And it is one of these things that in supply chain, often they’re trying to improve

Shelley E. Kohan (23:46)
Hmm.

Carla Vernón (24:00)
the accuracy of forecasting and inventory and just end to end management of that in alignment with the P &L owners. And there is a process that’s called SIOP. Ooh, acronym, somebody’s gonna have to look it up, S-I-O-P. And that has this methodology that’s called BaseCamps. I know it’s not specific to honest because I remember we took a BaseCamp approach when I also worked at General Mills, which is identify what skills and capabilities

ability

levels you should have it step one of your maturity and in a given craft then if you go all the way up to the five base camps imagining that you were I’m not a hiker imagine that you were gonna ⁓ mount what is it called like hike up a mountain

Shelley E. Kohan (24:40)
⁓ yes. Yeah.

Carla Vernón (24:46)
Yes, ⁓ that there are these base camps of levels of skill building and maturing. And I love that mindset and metaphor because if I tell myself as a CEO, I have base camps that I want to hit until I reach peak pinnacle operating practices. But if I can say to all my other leaders, we’re all on a journey on base camps. None of us are at base camp five.

I have met some Basecamp 5 CEOs, I know I’m not there, then I can be humble, but I can also say I’m not just being hard on you, right? I’m expecting the same growth for myself that I’m expecting for you.

Shelley E. Kohan (25:26)
my gosh, I love that. I am gonna look that up too. I usually don’t take notes during these, but I did take a few notes there, because I have to look that up. That’s really fascinating. All right, so let’s talk about culture for a minute. So what steps do you take to make sure that you have diverse perspectives and that these are integrated into the decision-making process?

Carla Vernón (25:31)
Thank

I’ve learned that you have to get out of the way sometimes. So as leaders…

When you’re really passionate about doing something, sometimes you can have this overconfidence that the way you would do it is the best way, or the way you do it is the way others should do it. And as I’m developing my own leaders, one of the things that’s going to make us a great company is if, as my leaders get great, they move out of the way and make room for new kinds of greatness. if you create an environment where you show people there’s room for you to bring

your unique view, your unique ambition, your unique skills against this shared goal, this shared strategic outcome or journey that we’re on. And then when you see people bring forward their unique ways, you…

take a moment to be grateful, to recognize it, to sing the praises of what was special that they brought, to affirm that this is a place where you want to encourage people to do that, then those sprouts will bloom and blossom all over the place. And that’ll build a culture where others can appreciate that in one another. I think that is important. And honest though, we also make sure we take time to be human. And that’s unique to the kind of companies and cultures

I want to build. I’ve worked at places where your humanity as an employee is not always on the forefront ⁓ of the work that’s expected. At Honest, we want to live.

and practice a culture that reflects the people we invite to buy our products and that their lives are complex and human. And so we should be complex and human. So we make time to enjoy things that aren’t just work in building our relationship with each other. We started this thing we call Inside Out Day. It’s named after the Pixar movie Inside Out. There’s now a sequel Inside Out, the original and Inside Out 2. And that’s a movie that focuses on

Shelley E. Kohan (27:46)
⁓

Carla Vernón (27:57)
how normal it is to have human feelings.

array of feelings at any given time and that You’re interacting with other people who may be having a different feeling from the feeling you’re having when you’re having your own So for example in that movie for people haven’t seen it. There is a character that is the character playing joy There is a character that plays fear. There is a character that plays anxiety There is one that plays anger and it goes on and on and they’ve introduced new characters in the sequel and we use that movie as a real-world way

to ⁓ humanize the fact that every day we show up to work, we show up as a person. And we’re having a mood that day, could be a great mood, could be a tough mood. And that if we can learn to recognize the humanity in each other, we can do these other challenging things that we’re setting out to do. And we could hopefully like doing it.

Shelley E. Kohan (28:54)
love the inside out strategy. think that’s great. I mean, we all are human and we feel like we have to sometimes act like robots when we’re at work. And that’s just not the reality.

Carla Vernón (29:05)
No, we are not robots. That’s the good news.

Shelley E. Kohan (29:07)
So I want to

ask you a question about wellness and balance. So what strategies do you maintain to keep your well-being and really avoid burnout, especially at the CEO level? What advice would you give to future women leaders who are, as we say, trying to do it all?

Carla Vernón (29:28)
Please keep your tribe, your community, your personal board of directors, whatever your words are for it. Please keep your cheering section ⁓ at the forefront of your life and your energy.

The cheering section is the first place that wellness happens for me sometimes. I know we want to talk about workouts and walking and sleeping and eating well. Okay, I got it. That’s to me is like a ⁓ never ending ⁓ subscription that I always re-up because I let it expire and then have to get back to it. But the constant

that really makes life worth living.

that helps you have wisdom beyond what you yourself can bring and maybe not take yourself so seriously is who are those people that you let into your heart that really carry you along? And so I would just encourage everybody like fuel that. That might be your WhatsApp list or your text group or that might be the best friends that you always go on a vacation with. Or for me, even now my kids are adults and my husband’s been an incredible partner to me.

Shelley E. Kohan (30:35)
Mm-hmm.

Carla Vernón (30:46)
always and so sometimes those people can see more clearly than you ⁓

things that you could use more clarity on. I also just don’t hesitate to reach out to some of those people sometimes and say, got a second, maybe a trusted leader who’s a few years ahead of me on the journey in corporate America, a CEO who’s got more laps around the track than I do and say, can I run this by you? Because I’m really struggling with this and it’s keeping, you know, the whole what keeps you up at night. Now that I’m in this, I used to be able to say, sleep well, nothing keeps me up at

Shelley E. Kohan (31:21)
Yeah.

Carla Vernón (31:24)
like this enterprise means so much to me and I run it on behalf of shareholders so it’s so important that I do it responsibly for them ⁓ that I actually do sometimes ⁓ have trouble sleeping when I’ve got these really important challenges or really important dilemmas to face and so the ability to find some trusted places that you can just kind of like let your shoulders down be really honest about what you’re working through because sometimes somebody’s just got a real pivotal way of thinking that

Shelley E. Kohan (31:29)
Yeah.

Carla Vernón (31:52)
that suddenly breaks it wide open and lets the light back in.

Shelley E. Kohan (31:56)
That’s a great advice. Okay, we’re getting to the end of the interview and I just, this is my favorite part, it’s called the rapid fire questions. So it’s gonna be boom, boom, boom. Yep, you got it. I’m gonna ask you questions and you’re just gonna tell me what the answers are real quick. You ready? Okay. What one piece of advice would you give to female leaders that are currently working?

Carla Vernón (32:07)
⁓ Uh-oh!

Okay, I think so.

Talk kindly to yourself. Talk kindly to yourself. I mean literally. I just saw a thing about this little Instagram with this guy. He’s like the youngest guy in Mensa or something like that. And he talked about the importance, he’s like six or seven, of whispering positive thoughts to himself in the mirror. Talk.

Shelley E. Kohan (32:45)
Love that.

All right, what three tips would you give to students, our emerging leaders?

Carla Vernón (32:55)
Tip number one, first impressions matter. So you’re entering spaces where other people might be able to avail you of an opportunity or open a door for you and they got a lot going on and they’ve been around the block a lot of times and they’re gonna make snap judgments based on what you’re wearing, how well you’re pulled together, how…

what you say, whether you look them in the eye with a seriousness like you are ready to be at the table. That’s tip number one. First impressions matter. The second tip, I wish I would have learned this when I was in my 20s, ⁓ follow up to stand out. Follow up to stand out. A lot of people…

might do that great thing in the room. They might interview well, or they might be great at the whatever, the cocktail party or that business meeting. The people who really stand out to me with the hustle are the people who afterwards say, Hey, thanks. I really love what you said about such and such. And it’s made me look into this or it was really lovely meeting you. Might I ever take a chance to get another five minutes to just ask you this one thing or just a thank you so much for coming to talk to our group.

It really mattered a lot. I might apply for a job at the Yannis Company down the road. I want you to know how much I admire you. Stand out by following up. Then the last piece of advice I would say is this is your life. You are uniquely in your position and you are an individual with gifts that only you have.

So choose to understand your gifts and then find a place where your gifts will bloom.

Shelley E. Kohan (34:44)
Excellent. Okay, last question. Well, it’s a second to the last question. What’s your legacy? What do you want to leave behind for the next generation?

Carla Vernón (34:55)
hope I empower people to know that they have greatness inside of them.

Shelley E. Kohan (35:05)
Beautiful. Okay, last question and it could be anything you want. I want to know what is your secret power?

Carla Vernón (35:18)
I wanna say my secret power is not taking life that seriously. I don’t know. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust. We won’t be there here that long, so we might as well have some fun.

Shelley E. Kohan (35:31)
I it. I love it. my gosh, Carla, thank you so much for being here and recording this with us. It is just amazing. I love your journey. I love your advice that you give to students. So thank you so much from my heart. And I’m a big fan of the Honest Company.

Carla Vernón (35:46)
Thank you Shelley, I always love getting a chance to talk to you. I appreciate the work you do to inspire so many.

Shelley E. Kohan (35:52)
Thank you.