How Passion and Intuition Led Anisha Raghavan to CMO

Some things like trusting your gut and allowing your passion to guide you can't be taught in school. Not even at a prestigious ivy like Harvard, where CMO Anisha Raghavan received her MBA. What really played a major role in her career growth was her confidence in her skills and drive to succeed. Anisha, a graduate of the Adweek Executive Mentor Program, has been the North American CMO for the No7 Beauty Company, a CPG business owned by Walgreens Boots Alliance since 2020, leading a portfolio of global beauty brands including No7, Soap & Glory, Botanics and Liz Earle to name a few. She leads Brand Marketing, Ecommerce, Paid Media, PR and Influencer, and Content teams focused on a North American growth trajectory that includes establishing brand awareness, expanding distribution, and digital acceleration. Learn more about Anisha's passion for marketing, how whale watching feeds her soul, and the role mentorship has played on her journey to chief marketing officer. How did you get to where you are today? My career choices have always been made based on my internal gut. I started my career at Grey Advertising, which gave me a true foundation in brand strategy and creative excellence. From there, I pursued my MBA at Harvard Business School, then joined Unilever, which I (was) drawn to because the company pioneered "new media." Though I loved working for Unilever, I itched to deepen my e-commerce knowledge. I left Unilever to join StriVectin, a private equity-backed prestige beauty brand where my role focused on building the digital marketing teams and driving e-commerce sales. It felt risky, and many told me not to leave the renowned Unilever name, but my passion guided me, and it paid off. I went on to senior roles at PepsiCo and then Rodan + Fields, honing expertise across traditional brand marketing, digital marketing, and general management. Having these combined competencies, plus beauty experience, led to my current CMO role. Can you share a situation in which you've been unfairly characterized in the workplace due to conscious or unconscious bias? Early in my career, a boss told me I had "too many opinions" and asked me to "tone it down." Ironically, she was a woman, but it was a clear case of gender bias driven by her expectation that women should be softer, as none of my male counterparts, who were equally opinionated, received this feedback. I continued to just be myself, including regularly sharing my point of view. That quality, combined with listening to others' views, enables me to be the senior leader that I am today. How should women address these microaggressions and slights when they occur? Have a polite but frank, one-on-one conversation with the person who slighted you – they may just not be aware of their bias. Suggest the need for team-wide bias training to your leadership. Most importantly, choose to work for companies where mutual respect is at the core of the culture and is expected of everyone, regardless of gender, race, seniority level or any other personal factor. No company is perfect, but when there is a culture of acceptance and accountability, anything can be worked through. Choose to work for companies where mutual respect is at the core of the culture... What's one thing we can start doing today to help close the wage gap between men and women? In 2020, 4x more women left the workforce than men, largely because as schools closed or parents fell ill, the burden of care fell mostly on women. Recouping this loss on top of closing the gap that already existed is going to take the mighty will of each one of us. Request transparency of your company's current pay equity status and any plans for progress if needed. Share and compare compensation information with trusted colleagues. Have a conversation with your spouse about sharing home or childcare duties. And if you are a senior leader, hire more women into positions of power. How have you prioritized your own mental health as a leader? Though remote working afforded me more time with family, which I was exceptionally grateful for, I hadn't realized the negative impact I was experiencing from many of my stress busters being stripped away: social interactions, international travel, dance classes, concerts, massages…I needed to find alternate ways to feed my soul. Fortunately, I lived two hours from Monterey, where you can experience some of the best whale watching in the world. I have been fascinated with whale watching since I was a little girl, so I talked my way into being a research intern and spent weekends all summer on a boat studying humpback whale behaviors. It truly fed my soul. Tell us about one major setback you've had in your career—how did you handle it? It was the summer of 2001, and I had just graduated college, ready to start my first job that August as a merchandising analyst at a major retailer. However, in the time since I'd signed the offer, the economy had sunk into a recession, and I lost the job before I even started it. With a confidence boost from my parents, I took that setback as a signal that I was meant to chase my dream of being in advertising in NYC, a path that excited me but that I'd ignored during my senior year because there was no on-campus recruiting. Despite all odds – an industry notoriously difficult to break into, a major recession, and then 9/11 – I landed a job at Grey Advertising by November 2001. I credit mentors for teaching me how to network and my own intense passion, which led to my tenacity in pounding the pavement until I got my dream job. Thank God for second chances – I might never have become a marketer! I credit mentors for teaching me how to network. What's one way you've broken the rules and challenged the norm in your career? As I was rising in my career, I was often coached not to jump companies too often, and there was validity to that – I stayed at my first and second companies for five and six years, respectively, and am grateful for the incredible learning foundation that provided me. However, in more recent years, I've made a few sequential moves after only two-three years, and it's worked in my favor. I've now held roles across CPG and DTC brands at big and small companies in mass and prestige markets and I've faced both turnaround and hypergrowth trajectories. This has enabled me to be a broad thinker and a well-rounded business leader, and I approach business challenges with a wider lens than if I'd had a more linear approach. What's the single best piece of advice you've ever received? Don't take no for an answer! Finding Gender Parity at the Intersection of Venture and Crypto

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How Passion and Intuition Led Anisha Raghavan to CMO

Harvard business grad, but her intuition played a major role

Netta Thomas

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Netta Thomas