Hilary Schreiber

I'm willing to fail. I am willing to take risks and chances, and I think that's okay. I would have never imagined where my career has gone just by taking chances and being who I am every day. I think sometimes when people's voices are quiet and soft or not heard, it's hard to establish credibility, be able to influence, and be able to be a decision maker at the table, and I think that me not being scared to say, hey, I think this is the right direction to go in, has really gotten me as far as I've gotten today. It seems like something so little, right? But so many people stay quiet. They have all their ideas, but they're not voicing them because they don't want to be different than everybody else.

Just surround yourself with people that are different than you. That have different skill sets, different perspectives. That you can collaborate with and fuel with and figure out paths forward, right? If you hire people who think like you, who have your background, who have the same mentality, it's hard to see all the paths forward. And so I think just surrounding yourselves with those different kinds of personalities, mentalities, educational backgrounds, work histories, has been really valuable throughout the years.

Don't be scared to ask questions, I think is the number one thing that I see, just a lot of employees, not even women do, is they get an assignment, they're excited about it, and they run with it. And then they don't do checkpoints. They don't come back and ask questions and clarify the direction that they should be taking something in, because they're scared it's going to look negative on their thought process, their decision making, how they take projects. But sometimes the people that are giving out those instructions to begin with, they may have a very specific idea of what they're being, you know, what they're telling their employee to do, but if that person's not asking questions and asking how to deliver it, they might not meet the expectation. So I think never be scared to ask questions would be my number one thing.

If we look from a retail perspective, the political atmosphere - you think about the things with the tariffs, the war, right? Those are all very impactful on retail. Do consumers feel confident spending right now? You know, our price is going to have to rise because of the tariffs, right? So we're always thinking about those things, especially in a procurement setting, because we're always being tasked to save money, right? But if we're having to increase prices in the stores, that means that we're going to have to do some work on the back end to make sure that we're being profitable. And so, I would say right now, it's just understanding the trends in the market, being able to navigate those and work with our supplier partners very closely to be able to overcome some of those challenges.

I think having balance between your professional life and your personal life. I mean, huge advocate for that with my teams. I've let them know, you know, it's fine if you work after hours, but remember that that's not something we're expecting of you. I think we actually have it right in our tagline. You know, just because I'm sending you an email during these hours doesn't mean you have to reply during these hours. So I think it's really important for my team, and at this very moment, I have all single moms or single ladies on my team right now, so I think it's especially important for those single mothers to know that they don't need to stay on after 5 o'clock. They don't need to be logging in on the weekends.