MEET SARAH CROCKETT

Board Member Spotlight

Sarah just celebrated her 3-year anniversary as a W Project placement on the board of Rumpl! She also serves on the board at Stance. In this informative and inspiring interview, Sarah shares key career achievements, valuable insights on being a woman in the boardroom, and some great takeaways, including a book she loves and a quote she lives by. Thank you, Sarah, and congratulations on 3 successful years at Rumpl!

What are your top 3 career highlights?

My role at Backcountry.com comes to mind, where I led the organization to grow in its confidence and ability to be brand forward and connect that to performance for the first time in 25-years. This was accomplished by building a marketing strategy that aimed at driving brand awareness while enhancing our retention capabilities and driving towards a full customer journey marketing strategy as opposed to a bottom funnel, exclusively performance marketing, approach.
In a 9-month period, l fully restructured the Global Marketing organization of Dickies, bringing in new capabilities to deliver to the potential of the brand. I worked on defining the brand foundations, brand guidelines and creative guidelines. After this organization evaluation and restructure, I worked on leadership recruitment and identifying priority workstreams. This enabled us to grow in social media engagement KPIs with an increase in brand aligned content.
I was the executive lead of Force of Nature by REI. I worked on framing the scope of the project and leading a multi-divisional team through an 18-month roadmap driving the strategy, plan and execution. This initiative disrupted the Outdoor industry, authentically put skin in the game on a broader cultural tension, grounded the effort in a commissioned research effort and introduced new categories (extended sizes) and capabilities (women forward, women only creative to change for minimum of 1-year) to the organization.

What inspired you to pursue joining a board?

Whenever I contemplate a new opportunity, I evaluate it through the lens of “what value can I add, and what about this will challenge me?” I find the ideal opportunities to be a blend of value I can bring, and growth I can achieve. Once I started having enough engagement with board members in my career to understand the responsibility of the board, and the role they play in an organization, it immediately become compelling to consider. Couple that with getting to a point where I felt my diverse experience was unique enough to be a high contributor on a board, and that’s when things immediately became attractive.

What unique perspectives do you bring to the boardroom?

With my brand and marketing background, I most often play the customer advocate in the room, to ensure our strategies are customer centric. Having had a full career in marketing and operating, I’m able to be both empathetic to the realities of a complex business or challenge, while also knowing enough about many the functions in a business to be a thought partner on the right path forward—whether that is a brand challenge, product challenge, fulfillment challenge or otherwise.

What does it mean to you to be a woman in the boardroom?

Being a woman is a huge part of my identity.

When I walk into a board room, I am representing myself, my perspectives and my experience in a way that is aimed at strengthening the organizations position. Much of my perspective and experience is colored by who I am and my engagement with the world around me, so naturally I will be bringing a woman’s perspective in addition to a marketing and brand expert’s perspective. I feel highly accountable to my peers, Chairperson, and the organization I am advising, to ensure my voice is leveraged to guide the right outcome. Said differently,

“what it means to be a woman in the boardroom is to be my authentic self, and to ensure that position is heard and felt.”

What book has had the biggest impact on you?

“The Imposter Cure” by Dr Jessamy Hibberd

is one that I’ve really valued over the years.

I go back to it time-to-time and revisit specific chapters. This is a book all about Imposter Syndrome, which many professionals deal with, especially female professionals, me included. The book allowed me to recognize that this is normal and build a suite of tools to acknowledge when a spike in Imposter Syndrome is in play, and how to swiftly move through it and win on the other side. I recommend this book to anyone who has been affected by Imposter Syndrome, as it does a great job of enabling the reader to turn something that is relatively illogical and to flip it on its head so you can move forward in your life with confidence.

What is a quote you live by?

“Beware the lollipop of mediocrity; lick it once and you’ll suck forever.”

-Brian Wilson (Beach Boys Co-Founder)

I love this quote, because it’s not enough to “be basic” as a leader who is driving transformation and movement across industries, and I love how this quote acknowledges how you do anything is how you do everything. Don’t get that twisted with perfection…that’s not the point. It’s a reminder to me of striving to amaze vs. striving to simply not disappoint.