Honest Company CEO Carla Vernón on being mentored by Walmart’s Doug McMillon
- In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady talks to Honest Company CEO Carla Vernón about Walmart’s Doug McMillon.
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Good morning. I’m always fascinated by who CEOs turn to for feedback, and who they choose to mentor outside their companies. Some relationships develop organically through working with people who become friends after you move on. (I feel fortunate to remain connected to former bosses like Norman Pearlstine, as well as numerous colleagues over the years.)
Then there are the leaders whose names come up because they offered advice or made a gesture that was meaningful to another CEO. One of those names is Walmart’s Doug McMillon, who is retiring as CEO next month after 12 years at the helm. A lot will be written about his legacy in transforming the world’s largest retailer into a daunting competitor in the digital realm. But Carla Vernón, CEO of the Honest Company, recently recounted a story about him that stuck with me.
About a year ago, Vernón said, she had an opportunity to meet McMillon for about 30 seconds at an event. Instead of talking about the business that her $383 million-a-year company does with the $704 billion-a-year Walmart, she took a different tack: “I said, ‘I want to be an extraordinary CEO. You are, in my view, one of the best of our time. So, if I could borrow a bit more time from you, I would love to ask you a question or two.”
McMillon shared his email with Vernón, who’d been CEO since 2023, and told her to get in touch. “I thought it would be like a Zoom call, but he invited me to come to Bentonville with one of my leaders and set up an entire day of one-on-ones for us,” she said. “He connected us with everybody who we needed to know strategically, everybody on his executive team who he thought might be able to help me build a strong executive team in the C-Suite. There was no agenda and this was Q4, which is the season for retailers that’s super busy.”
She compares her experience in Bentonville to being in a regional dance company and getting invited to go backstage and watch the New York City Ballet rehearse The Nutcracker. “If I can, for one day, watch what the very best at what they do do, then I’m going to forever realize what’s possible from myself as a leader,” said Vernón, who brought her VP of Sales. “When you meet somebody who you think of as some kind of iconic business brilliant mind, and realize they are just human, trying to have a good life, trying to be good to others, it’s helpful to put in perspective what is possible for you.”
It’s clear she was moved by McMillon’s desire to help her in a meaningful way. “I’m Afro-Latina. I’m female … In these companies that we get to run, the people are changing. They are changing in their generational values. They’re changing in what they look like. The companies that we love will be run by different kinds of people in the next 20 or 30 years,” she said. “I wish that, in our sector of CEOs, we took more time to help coach, grow and build each other, so that maybe we could be a stronger body doing right by businesses, employees, culture and society. We’re in such units of one and we don’t have to be.”
Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com