I had the privilege of interviewing Martine Reardon, who was most recently the CMO of Macy’s and spent more than three decades at the company. In this interview, we talk about how she got into the retail industry, what it was like being a female leader, how she managed her time, career setbacks as well as the story of how Macy’s grew into the being the largest department store in the United States. Martine was very honest about the sacrifices that she had to make in order to get the top marketing job at Macy’s.
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Here are some of the highlights from our conversation:
- Started her career off as an intern at Abraham & Straus (now part of Macy’s) in the events and PR department.
- One of her most important mentors, Doris Shaw (an executive at Abraham & Straus) created a role for Martine after college. That role kickstarted her career in retail. Had it not been for Doris, Martine might have ended up working on Wall Street to help pay off the large debt accumulated from college.
- She knew that the pursuit of becoming the CMO of Macy’s was going to be difficult and made the personal choice to not have children. While there are certainly examples of women who were able to pursue both a successful career while raising children, she felt that it was necessary to focus on her professional career and that it would be too challenging to do both.
- One of the tougher moments in her career was being passed for the CMO job twice at Macy’s. The first time they hired an outsider and the second time they promoted someone more senior internally into the role. Similar to my last interview with Vineet Mehra, Martine was given the advice to bloom where you’re planted. She had to wait her time, gain experience in different areas but the patience paid off and she eventually was selected for the top job.
- She was always an early riser. Tuesdays and Thursdays were her gym days at 5:30am and she would not set meetings before 8am (yes, she said before 8am). - On other days, she would get into the office around 6:30am to have quiet time so that she could catch-up on work and to get ready. Sundays were usually an important day for her to get prepared for the rest of the week.
- One advice she would give to her 25 year old self would be to sit back and listen more. Don't be so quick to make decisions and to jump into something without looking at all of the available options.