Jana Hunt: Know Your Worth

“I’m an imposter,” Jana Hunt began, displaying the words on a bright red PowerPoint slide. “Yes, you’re reading that correctly. I mean, here I am talking tonight to an audience of business students. I don’t have an MBA; I don’t even have a business degree. So, yes, I feel a bit like an imposter this evening.”

Ms. Hunt may not have a business degree, but she has a custom degree in Merchandise Marketing from CSUEB and a career in leadership and design at apparel companies like The North Face.

Despite her qualifications, she can still find herself worrying that she’s not skilled enough to be where she is. “So if ‘imposter syndrome’ is a thing that affects us,” she said, “then the question becomes: How can we redirect our thoughts, push through it, and grow from it?”

When she entered the apparel industry, it was immediately clear that it was a boys’ club. Just about everywhere she worked, the workforce was almost exclusively female, the executive teams almost exclusively male. “So I think, subconsciously, I knew that no matter how hard I worked, I would probably only make it so far up the chain.

“The outdoor industry in general is a white dude industry. You know, skiing, snowboarding — these are very expensive sports, so it’s a privileged space.” Her first day at The North Face brought her face-to-face with the company’s ‘bro’ culture. The team went snow camping to test the product — the next day, anyone who had snuck back to the hotel to sleep was publicly called out. To work at The North Face, it seemed, you had to be a certain type of person.

The Women’s Empowerment Network, a group Ms. Hunt helped found, began as a book club. She and a few colleagues read texts like Lean In and The Confidence Code. Before long they were inspired to expand their mission — “to promote the leadership and empowerment of women through networking, mentorship, and professional development.” They poured what they had learned and experienced into a workshop they called “Confidence Matters”. It was received so well that HR asked them to present the workshop to North Face’s sister brands.

And why was it so successful? “First of all,” Ms. Hunt said, “it was really validating for the women on our campus to know that they weren’t alone in their feelings and in their struggles; and it was also the techniques for communicating with confidence that they walked away ready to practice.”

In her view, far too many women doubt one fundamental truth: that they matter. “It’s so simple, but you’d be surprised how many women question themselves, resist speaking up, and they ultimately hold themselves back from their true potential.” When women’s voices are routinely disregarded, it’s incredibly difficult to hold onto an internal sense of worth. Yet women’s perspectives are indisputably necessary. “You know,” Ms. Hunt pointed out, “women make up seventy to eighty percent of all consumer purchases in the United States. While men are driving a lot of the product strategies and decisions! There’s a disjoin here.

“The North Face ended up gathering all this data that showed us that these hardcore users — these mountain climbers and extreme skiers — they really made up such a small portion of the product that was sold. The volume came from keeping soccer moms and their families warm.

“So why are women still so underrepresented in leadership positions? How do we change this?”

There was a study, Ms. Hunt said, in which women and men were asked to predict their success before a test. Men consistently overestimated their performance, while women underestimated themselves.

“And this is important to be aware of. Women are investing in their educations and earning more Bachelor’s degrees than men. But, generally speaking, men are more willing to take risks — to be bold and resilient even after failures. And guess what? This is what yields success.”

There are three inner voices, Ms. Hunt said, that can either hold us back or push us forward. The ‘inner critic’ makes us doubt ourselves; the ‘scared child’ makes us fear failure; but the ‘authentic voice’ makes us believe in ourselves. “It takes us from reacting to what everyone wants us to be to operating from our own internal compass.”

One day, Ms. Hunt recounted, everyone in her office found an anonymous letter on their desk with a set of stickers.

“And it said, ‘It’s not acceptable to have zero women represented in the executive leadership team,’ and then it went on to ask that we post these stickers around the campus. The stickers were an exact play on our current marketing campaign: instead of ‘Walls are meant for climbing,’ they said ‘Ceiling are meant for breaking.’

“And whether the approach was right or wrong, it definitely won the attention of leadership, and now the Women’s Empowerment Network was invited into conversations. Shortly following this event, our first female Vice President was hired, and a Women’s Business Council was formed. We had our first female athlete team captain, and the ‘She Moves Mountains’ marketing campaign started.

“I was not the author of that letter. I’m definitely not that bold. But it really shows the power that we have when we work together.”

For more information on the program, please visit Women in Leadership Program, CBE.