There’s nothing more powerful than women coming together to support each other.
On Wednesday evening, a record crowd of nearly 300 gathered at the annual Footwear News Women Who Rock event — held in partnership with Two Ten — for cocktails, networking and conversation. The event, held at Lavan Midtown in New York, honored over 40 female leaders from all corners of the industry.
During the evening’s program, six boundary breakers took the stage to share valuable career lessons and talk about successful strategies for mentorship and sponsorship.
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Here, FN recaps some of the best quotes of the night.
Tracy Knauer, senior vice president of North America at New Balance:
On empowering her team: “It’s our responsibility to create the next generation of leaders. Early in my career, I thought I could walk into a conference room and basically say to the team, ‘This is what we need to do, this is how we need to get it done, so go do that.’ Well, that’s actually not what needs to happen, right? I think leaders need to listen and they need to empower their team to do the right thing, and to come up with a solution. And I’ve said time and time again, my best days are when my team does something phenomenal, and I get to watch what they do.”
Jennifer Jones, senior vice president and general merchandise manager women’s accessories, Bloomingdale’s:
Tipping points in her career: “When I think about some of those main pivotal moments where you make a career move — or you do something meaningful in the industry — I think back to a time when we were renovating our 59th Street floor. We were bringing our contemporary business and our luxury business together, and my boss at the time said to me, ‘This project is yours, take it and do everything with it.’ I was terrified. I didn’t think I was capable, I didn’t think I was ready, but she gave me that confidence to do it, and I really took partnership across the entire organization to build a 360 strategy to deliver the results on that floor. [Now again today], we’re kind of on this journey of rebuilding and reimagining and changing what it can be like to be in retail today, and it’s been an incredible opportunity. You keep moving forward with that momentum, and those moments help to shape the future.”
Kate Pinkham, vice president and general manager, Chaco and The Collective at Wolverine Worldwide:
On role modeling and flexibility:
“I very vocally say, ‘I’m leaving at 4 o’clock today because my son has a football game or I have to go to parent teacher conferences.’ And when I go on vacation … I [make] it really clear I’m not bringing my computer with me. I give them the same permission that they can also disconnect. It’s so important at this time to be able to disconnect, and I think role modeling is a key piece of that.”
Emily Cole, executive vice president, chief product officer and creative director, Kenneth Cole:
On men being a part of the conversation:
“We’re making a lot of progress, but the majority of companies [that] have been represented in this room are still run by men. So, a lot of these policies have to come from men feeling like it is your job to participate in this, and it’s not just to cheer on women. It’s to like really get in the ring and make sure you have the right policies in place, and know that it’s your job to really champion female talent, and make sure you’re recruiting in the right way, and make sure your management team is going about things in the right way.”
June Ambrose, creative director, fashion designer and cultural architect:
Revolutionizing culture: “[Thirty years ago], high fashion was not working with pop culture. So, I was able to, without asking for permission, revolutionize the genre of music and turn something that was very niche, which was hip-hop, into pop culture. And hip-hop is the number one genre of music in the world right now, and why? Because we didn’t look at it as one singular thing, we looked at it as an inclusive thing.”
On her Naturalizer collaboration: “We launched our first collection that performed extremely well. What did we see come down the runway for next season? Everything that we had presented in the marketplace first. Those kind of things are super important and validating that it’s okay to take the risk to bet on yourself.”
Brandice Daniel, founder and chief executive officer of Harlem’s Fashion Row:
Honoring LeBron James’ mom with the HFR x LeBron 16 in 2018: “He said, ‘My mom raised me as a single black woman, she’s the strongest.’ I listened to hours of footage of him just talking about his mom, and we pulled out four words that he kept saying over and over. It was courage, dignity, loyalty, and strength. What I said was, ‘How can I find designers that really match this, where their personal stories match this story of hers?'”
On empowering Gen Z to change culture internally: “A lot of times I would actually give Gen Z the work without explaining the strategy behind it, and I recognized after a while that in order for them to really get excited about it, they have to understand why — like, why was this the goal…And then the second thing, when we were having this conversation about this panel, I thought, ‘Who’s the Gen Z on my team who would love to moderate this?’ [Mikayla Morrison, brand partnerships & sponsorship manager, Harlem’s Fashion Row] And so sometimes it’s also putting the people in the room as well.”