In this talk, Lee Anne Grant, Head of Partnerships and Business Development at Brandless, shares her personal and professional journey framed around the word “embrace.” She begins by inviting the audience to set an intention word, then recounts five key lessons she has learned: (1) embrace your personality by choosing a career that fits your traits, illustrated by her shift from aspiring lawyer to a role at Google; (2) embrace happiness, highlighted by a poignant experience handling a team member’s death and the power of gratitude; (3) embrace failure, described through her attempt to launch a startup that ultimately did not succeed; (4) embrace self‑discovery, shown by her pursuit of yoga teacher training and the insights it gave her; and (5) embrace learning, expressed through her current role at Brandless, a company focused on “better‑for‑you” everyday essentials and social impact partnerships like Feeding America. She also discusses Brandless’s mission, recent recognition by Fast Company, and the importance of setting intentions and continuous personal growth. The talk concludes with a call for the audience to adopt the word “embrace” in their own lives.
Chapters
Hi everyone, my name is Leanne Grant and I'm the head of partnerships and business development at Brandlist. But before I start talking about myself, I'm gonna turn the tables around and I'm gonna talk about you. I want you guys to take a a couple seconds now to think about one word. And what that word should be is something that's your intention. It might be something based on the 4 women before me and something that they talked about that resonated with you. It might be a word that you've been thinking about in your past. So I'll give you a couple seconds. Okay. So keep that in your head. And I'll share with you what my word is. And that word is "embrace." And today I'm going to spend a few minutes talking to you about that word in a few different ways throughout my career that I found a way to embrace different situations and moments. And I'm even trying to embrace how awkward I feel right now. So, let's go back to when I was 22. I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, a senior in college, and I knew what I wanted to be in life. I wanted to be a lawyer. I loved, and still love, Law Order: SVU. Olivia Benson is, was, and like will continue to be my personal hero. I also took a bunch of social justice classes, and I had a sneaking suspicion that it might be me who changes the world. And so I did everything that you're supposed to do. I majored in legal studies. I interned at the American Bar Association. I studied for the LSAT. Check, check, check. Everything. Except for one small problem: my personality. I would make an awful lawyer. I have always had a problem with authority. I don't like rules. I shy away from conflict. And I like a lot of change. Like, it's such a bad idea. So, lesson number 1: embrace your personality and what makes you unique, and find a career that's going to complement your personality. So I made that change, and I was able to move out to San Francisco and work at Google. And at Google, I learned so many skills: sales, customer service, spreadsheets, how to write an email, We had email quality and they would, I could hear whatever. That was the whole thing. But I got really good at writing emails. And I traveled, I traveled around the US. I worked in our India office. I made amazing friends. Julie, you're out in the audience, thanks for coming. And my favorite part of my job was talking to all these tech founders who were using Google's AdWords product to grow their business. And I realized from that experience, hey, maybe I wanna be a founder. And so I decided to leave Google, and I went to business school at Yale. I interned at AOL. I was back on the East Coast, and then I came out here. And I was lucky enough to go work at Popsugar, which is an emerging media company. And there I headed up sales and business development for ShopStyle, which is an e-commerce site. And I, for the first time, was managing people. And I tried really, really hard to be good at that. I asked them about their feelings, and I said— goals, and I spent a lot of time with my team. But at the end of the day, we were churning out partnerships and deals and growing traffic and growing revenue and making decks and presentations and sending so many emails. We were so busy. And one day I was walking to work. And I was walking to the muni. And I love that time of the day. I would think about what I wanted to accomplish. I would enjoy being outside. And on my walk, I got a phone call, and it was a number I didn't recognize, so I cleared the call and I got on the Muni. And I was talking to my coworkers, and that number called again, and so I said, "OK, you know, it must be important," and I answered. And it was the brother of a guy, a young man on my team. And he was calling to let me know that his brother, my team member, had passed away that weekend. He was 26 years old. And it was somebody that I managed. And, you know, I'm not going to go into the details, but it was such a hard situation, and my team reeled from it, and we talked about it, and we didn't know what to do. And so I emailed his brother and his mom, and I just said, "I'm sorry." And his mom responded almost immediately, and she said, "I just want to thank you." I want to thank you for the opportunity for my son to work at your company. He was so happy. And that's all I ever wanted for my kids, is to be happy. What an amazing response when you're in the depths of grief, for somebody who's probably having the worst moment of her life to thank me, to talk about happiness. And how many times do I get frustrated at work, or something's going wrong at home, or like, you know, something small happens, and to just smile and to laugh. And so that was my second lesson, to embrace smile, embrace happiness. So let's all smile real quick. So a couple years later, I left PopSugar, because I was thinking back to my time at Google, and how I loved working with all those founders, and I thought, maybe I wanna be a founder, maybe it's my time now. And so a friend and I got together, and we did everything you're supposed to do to launch a company. We did user interviews and industry research, and we marketed it, and we built a product, and we generated revenue, and we talked to investors. And when things didn't work, we iterated them, and we tried new things. And then it just wasn't working. We weren't getting enough customers. And we were gonna fail. And I don't fail. In fact, one time I was doing an Ironman triathlon and I got in a bike accident and I blacked out and I cracked my helmet and I got up and I finished that Ironman. I do not— thanks. I just like, I don't quit. And this time I had to quit. And so that's my third lesson, embrace the failure. Because if I hadn't tried to start a company, something I'd wanted to do for some, for so long, I wouldn't have failed. And so after I brushed myself off, got over myself a little bit, it was time to look for a new job. So I updated my resume, I did networking, I went into that black hole of stalking on LinkedIn that everybody's done late at night. And I realized, you know, I'm not quite ready to get back into the 50 hours of working. I want to do 50 hours of something different. I want to become a yoga teacher. And so I did 50 hours a week of yoga teacher training. And I was learning anatomy and studying Sanskrit. In the middle of a downward dog between Warrior I and Warrior II, I'd like run out for a phone interview, or I'd put my heels on, and I'd put on a dress, and I'd go for an interview. And at the end of that time, I had a job. And it was not as a yoga teacher. I'll tell you what it is in a second. And that was my fourth lesson, which is to embrace self-discovery. Take that time, even when you're busy interviewing or talking to people at work, and find something new that you're gonna have for the rest of your life. And I ended up at Brandless, which is where I am now. And for those of you who don't know, Brandless is a new kind of company. We're trying to bring better everything to everyone. And so what that is, is, better-for-you everyday essentials, non-GMO snacks, clean beauty, compostable tableware, tree-free toilet paper. And the reason I joined Brandless is not necessarily for what it does, but for what kind of company it is. And it really ties back to a lot of the things that I looked for in my past. So I felt like maybe this is my time to really save the world like I wanted to in college. And we're trying to bring better products to people, and we have a partnership with Feeding America. So we're probably not gonna save the world, but I'm trying to do a little bit of that. I also was hearkening back to my Google days, and I loved working with innovative founders. We actually just won yesterday, I think, Fast Company's one of the most innovative companies of the year. And so I love— I know, it's pretty. And so I'm so lucky to work there. And I also like the culture we have, and we print on all of our products, we put people first. And it's really about setting intentions, like I asked you to do at the beginning, and we'll get back to that. And thinking about not people's roles and what they do, but who they are. And last, I love my role. I love business development and partnerships, because I get to learn and I get to work on the most interesting things. So new businesses, talking to people. I don't know a lot of things, but as Jess was talking about earlier, being uncomfortable. So that's my 5th lesson. Embrace learning, embracing discomfort. So that's my career, and that's how I got here today. So just to recap, the word embrace. I challenge you guys to think about ways that you can do that more in your life. So embrace your personality, figure out what role is right for you and who you are. Embrace happiness. In those moments where you're frustrated, try to smile or laugh and try to get somebody else to do the same. I forgot my third one. Embrace failure. It's okay to try things, and it's okay to fail. It means you actually tried. Embrace self-discovery. Take some time out and do something for you. And last but not least, embrace learning. Try to find a way to learn every single day. So I just shared my intention with you, and I want you guys to take a second before the next speaker and share your intention with the person next to you. And I hope maybe that you can come back to this stage in a couple of years, and you can share your intention with more people. Thank you.
