Pendleton CEO Jennifer Ingraffea on Leading with Curiosity and Building High Integrity Teams
Description
Jennifer Ingraffea is a seasoned executive leader with over 25 years of experience in the retail, apparel, product merchandising, and management sectors. In July 2025, Jennifer became the CEO of Pendleton Woolen Mills; a family-owned business since its founding in the 1860s. Before joining Pendleton, she served as Chief Product & Merchandising Officer at The North Face, prior to which, she worked at Nike in a number of high-level executive leadership roles. Jennifer and Roy discuss her new role and dig into essential leadership skills like curiosity, stewardship, and much more.
Highlights from our conversation include:
- Core beliefs, values, and principles in Jenn’s leadership playbook (2:53 )
- Leading through cycles of massive consumer and retail evolution (5:39 )
- Identifying areas of a business that are in need of clarification and simplification (7:36 )
- Aligning a team towards a long term vision (11:01 )
- Lessons learned around hiring and team building at major brands (14:58 )
- How Jenn developed her hiring process and philosophy (17:07 )
- What a great leader looks like to Jenn (18:36 )
- Valuable traits that Jenn identifies when hiring direct reports (22:58 )
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