Backstage with Kenvue and Innovid

Briana: Hi, Joy.

Joy: Hi, Briana. How are you?

Briana: I'm good. I'm glad we're at this Brand Marketer Academy event together.

Joy: Likewise.

Briana: Why don't you kick us off? Tell us a little bit about what you do now, and then we all know that we did weird things to get to where we are. So, what did that look like for you? What's your journey?

Joy: Absolutely. I'd love to share. So right now, I lead global innovation and brand comms for Aino Face, Hair and Sun. My journey actually started in banking. So I like to say it came from banking to beauty. That's really how my journey began.

Briana: A well-rounded woman.

Joy: Exactly right. I've been in beauty for over 15 years now.

Briana: Amazing.

Joy: And I absolutely love what I do. Back in the day, when I graduated, I went into banking. Ethnically, I'm Nigerian, and I always say, as Nigerians, you're either a lawyer, a doctor, or nobody. So you have that pressure of doing something more traditional. I felt that pressure, and that's why I went into banking.

I did that for about two and a half years. I was great at my job, excelled through the ranks, but after a couple of years, I wanted that feeling of waking up in the morning and absolutely loving what I do.

Briana: Something to fill your...

Joy: I agree. And so I remembered an experience I had while I was in college. I worked behind a counter at a brand called Laura Mercier at Nordstrom, and I loved that job.

Briana: Really?

Joy: That was like my dream job. But my boss had told me that I couldn't use any other foundation. I had to use Laura Mercier.

Briana: You're like, "Oh, please."

Joy: But they didn't have a shade for me. They didn't have a shade for me. So she told me I had to mix and match and figure something out.

Briana: Mix and match? I'm horrified on your behalf.

Joy: I know. But that was back in the day. Things have improved now, right? And so I remember candidly telling myself, one day, I want to come into the beauty industry and change the beauty industry so no one feels the way I do in this moment.

Fast forward years later, I'm trying to figure out, what do I do next? And I was like, okay, it is beauty. I'm going to pivot into beauty. Then I was told I needed to get an MBA. I needed to go to business school to pivot into beauty, and so I did that.

I went to Wharton, and while I was there, I fell in love with marketing because it was the perfect combination between analytical and creativity. Fast forward 15 years later, I'm still in marketing within the beauty industry. So that's a little bit about my career journey.

Briana: That's beautiful. I feel like we're in a pivotal moment right now as women, where finally our voices are being heard a little bit more, and the things that are injustices for us, like you not having a color-matched makeup, it's literally our face. It's your brand. That's what people see.

Being told that you have to align with what they have and having that not align with you, that's such a pivotal moment.

Joy: I agree. I agree.

Briana: What I would love to know, because there are moments as a woman where I've either had male bosses that don't fundamentally understand me as a mom or me as a woman, what advice would you give to yourself if you could go back and talk to yourself when you were trying to meet parental expectations or societal expectations? What would you tell yourself to do or do differently?

Joy: Oh, that's a good question. I would say it depends on what life stage. If I could go back to before I graduated, when I was thinking that I kind of needed to fit into that mold, maybe then I would have put my foot down and said, this is the time that I really want to be able to follow my heart.

I would have told myself not to be afraid to do what I really wanted to do. And I actually would say that's advice that I'll keep on giving myself throughout the journey, because even knowing better, we still find ourselves in situations where we're scared to speak. We're scared to raise our hands. We're scared to ask for what we want. We're scared to basically be.

So it's: do not be afraid and just ask. There's this saying which I absolutely love: "Closed mouths don't get fed."

Briana: My grandmother would have loved you.

Joy: It's the idea that if you don't speak up, you will not get fed, right? So be bold, be fearless. Of course, in a respectful manner, like anyone else. But I would say boldness and fearlessness would be my advice.

There isn't anything holding you back. It's just what's in your mind that is holding you back a lot of times. That's really what it comes down to. It's in our minds. Even though, yes, there are real situations, don't get me wrong, that are happening around us. But most of the time, the thing that is holding us back, even in those real situations, is what we're telling ourselves.

Briana: It's funny, I was literally just talking to my coworker this morning about imposter syndrome. She was saying to me, "I'm going to be speaking with a CMO," and she was like, "I do this for a living." But in that moment, she felt a little bit paralyzed, like, "Do I belong in that conversation?"

As a woman, on a day-to-day basis, how do you battle imposter syndrome and say, "Okay, I do belong in this room. I don't need external validation"? What advice would you give somebody else? How do you park the imposter syndrome?

Joy: Another great question. One thing that I do, and I would say I probably learned this from my dad, is he would say things like, "That person doesn't have two heads."

Growing up, because of the high expectations, I remember when I was probably six years old, I came home with my report card. I was so excited that I got third. I was third in class, really super excited. And I remember him saying, "That's great, but who came first?"

I would say, "This person came first." And he would say, "Does that person have two heads?"

Yes, in a way that could be, "Well, it's too much of a high expectation that he was setting for me." But I would say that's actually one thing that I use when I am in those situations.

You're talking to your CEO, and things are rambling through your head. I now think, well, they're just human, right? They don't have two heads. They're human. They're just like me. They have the same fears that I do.

I find that the more I humanize who I'm trying to talk to, the better it is. It really, truly helps to demystify the imposter syndrome. I humanize them because, at the end of the day, we're all human.

Briana: 100%.

Joy: Even though we also put people on pedestals, right? So that's one thing that helps me. How about you, Briana? What's one thing that helps you when you encounter imposter syndrome?

Briana: I'm a mother of three, and I have two daughters. They look at everything I do. I change my hair, they notice. I change my makeup, they notice. I bought a new shirt, they notice.

And so, in that moment, I think about the person that I want them to see me as. That person is brave. That person stands up for herself. That person has an opinion in the room.

I take that with me everywhere. I say becoming a mother made me better at my job because it made me really confident. At one point, that person probably wasn't a CMO. At one point, that person could have been just like me.

And I'm good at what I do. I've seen that through my career. So I should be able to stand in that room and have my opinion and not be afraid.

I had someone say to me once, "You could be the juiciest, ripest peach, and some people just don't like peaches."

Let me tell you, the way that stayed with me. I say it to myself all the time because it's always, "That person doesn't like me." They don't need to like you. They don't need to. You could be the best person in the whole world. They just may not like you.

So I try not to depend on that opinion and instead validate that I belong in that room. I feel like that's been my guiding force.

Joy: I so resonated with that, Briana, because I am a mother of two. My daughter truly is my compass because I see myself in her. Even when you were asking the question in terms of your younger self, every time I think of my younger self, I see her.

Briana: You see your daughter?

Joy: Yeah. It's like, what would I tell her? How can I tell her to be brave if I'm not brave? I don't want to be a hypocrite.

Briana: No.

Joy: Right? She sees everything. She's like, "Yeah, you're doing this, so why are you telling me to do otherwise?"

Briana: Yes.

Joy: I had a moment like that. Back in the day, I would use chemicals, like texturizing, on my hair to kind of straighten and loosen my hair. And then I'm telling my daughter, who has curly hair, to be bold, be free.

She didn't say anything about the fact that I used texturizer on my hair, but I had a strong conviction in my heart. I remember telling her this when she was probably about six. She was saying, "Why don't I have straight hair? Why isn't my hair this long?" She was having all these different ideas and coming to me.

I remember telling her to be confident in who she is, and I had this internal conviction in the sense that, are you really confident in who you are? Because then why are you texturizing your hair?

I remember telling myself, okay, no more. I'm going to grow my natural hair without any chemicals. I did that because of her.

Briana: I feel this.

Joy: Very similar to what you were saying. Because of her.

Briana: When my first daughter was born, she looked just like me, the spitting image of me. And I was like, I grew up disliking all these things about me, and they're perfect on her.

So I made a conscious decision. I was like, I don't want to use fillers. I don't want to do things to change my body because I don't want her to think that those are things that I don't like about myself.

I carry that through my job. I think about them all the time when I'm working, when I'm thinking about my next career move. I think, how will that impact them? How will they see me? And that's such a guiding force.

I feel like, from one mother to another, I love that that's a shared experience. I love that I have a daughter for that reason.

Joy: I agree.

Briana: I feel like she grounded me in a way that I don't know that anything else could have.

Joy: The mirror, right?

Briana: The mirror.

Joy: She's a mirror. Your daughters are mirrors, too. I love that.

Briana: I love that, too. As you think about what's next in your career, what is something that you learned when you were younger that is going to influence how you take that next step? What's a little nugget that you carry with you?

Joy: I would say one thing that I've seen time and time again, because I've pivoted, is that you can always pivot. You can always change your mind. You can always change. You can have different careers.

I remember when I was about 17, having the feeling as though I didn't know what I wanted to do next. I didn't know where I wanted to be.

Briana: No one at 17 knows.

Joy: But I didn't know that.

Briana: Yeah.

Joy: I remember being so caught up in my head. I was having a conversation with my godmother and telling her, "I don't know what I want to do next."

She was in her 50s, and she told me, "Nobody knows what they want to do next." She told me that she'd had five careers in her life, and since then, I know she's had even more.

She gave me permission to feel as though I can always change my mind. I could start with something now, and that doesn't mean I wouldn't want to change my mind later. My career has shown that.

It's given me the ability to know that there's nothing to be scared of when it comes to quitting. There's nothing to be scared of when it comes to changing your mind. You can have different careers and be okay going with the flow.

Briana: I think it's also being able to be comfortable not knowing.

Joy: Yeah.

Briana: Which, I'm so Type A. I find that, for me, is such an uncomfortable place to be. I feel like I always have to have the answer, know the next thing.

Being a mom actually, I think, makes you realize you don't know all the things, and you're going to feel totally out of pocket all the time.

I think that's such beautiful advice because I've struggled with that. I will probably continue to struggle with that, to really be comfortable not knowing and saying, "It's okay to change my mind. It's okay to not always have all the answers."

I just listened to four different people's career trajectories, and I mean, banking to beauty might be my favorite, I'm not going to lie. But I think, wow, what beautiful advice to give other women.

Joy: Yeah.

Briana: Amazing. Well, Joy, I have so much love meeting you. I could talk with you for ages. Seriously.

Joy: Truly, truly.

Briana: Well, maybe we've made a friend.

Joy: I know we have. I know.

Briana: I love this. And thank you for your time.

Joy: Thank you for yours.

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