CEO Vanessa Cartwright Thinks Common Sense Is ‘Massively Underrated’

June 16, 2017 | Filed in: Woman of the Week

What happens when you suddenly get promoted to CEO of the company where you’ve worked for the past five years? Last November, Vanessa Cartwright found out. “I think I’ve still got How to Succeed in Your First 90 Days as a CEO on my nightstand,” she laughs. “It’s been a learning experience.” Now more settled into her leadership role at Fluid, a company that helps brands and retailers stay up-to-speed with (or ahead of) e-commerce customer experiences, she invited us over to talk transparency, dressing one’s age, and the most underrated quality in the workplace.

I WAS RAISED in the countryside of Suffolk, England, which is about as remote and different from New York as you could possibly get. Since I grew up in what felt like a field, I had a hankering to get out into the world a bit. I studied English and Russian at university, which is not especially helpful for anything at all, and I actually lived in Russia during that process. Then I moved to London and worked in publishing. I realized very quickly that the publishing industry was spoiling my love of literature and books, so I moved into marketing, which I loved. I got a job at a big marketing agency that was run by a female managing director who was incredibly impressive. I’ve been very lucky to work for a lot of great women.

Vanessa wears the Pauline dress in true olive.

FROM LONDON, I MOVED TO VANCOUVER with my husband at the time. I worked at a company that was founded and run by a woman named Virginia Greene, who has since passed away. She was smart and inspiring, and taught me about how to be a strong business leader but also care about people. I learned an awful lot from her. Then I moved into the role of managing director in the Vancouver office, reporting to our global CEO, who was based in New York. I found myself on a plane every week flying to clients in New York, D.C., and Atlanta. That was a bit of a struggle. I was living in Vancouver and raising my family there, but my clients and work were somewhere else, not even in the same country—it was discombobulating. I decided to figure out a way of not being so far from everything, so I went to a different Vancouver-based company that gave me the opportunity to run their New York office. That got me to New York, and I was extremely happy to come here. The whole time I was in Vancouver, a big part of me always wanted to go back to London—I loved the culture and the energy of working there. And when I got to New York, I was like, “Okay, fine. I don’t have to worry about getting back to London anymore.” This place has a great spirit of getting things done.

ABOUT FIVE YEARS AGO, I moved to my current company, Fluid. I started out managing accounts, sales, and business development, and then moved up. In November, I became the CEO, and had to get my head around what that means. It’s starting to be fun. It was difficult for a while, because it came with changes in the company, and we had to make sure that we maintained our vision. We didn’t change focus, but we decided to build on what we were doing and take it in a slightly new direction. To be able to articulate that clearly to ourselves, and tell that story to our clients, was definitely a challenge.

Vanessa wears the Shelby top in black and the Oshima pant in russet.

ONE OF MY SKILLS is that I can combine left-brain and right-brain thinking. At the end of the day, Fluid is a customer-experience design company, and the visual part of my brain meshes well with understanding the finances and the mechanics of how the business works. I’m also very sensible. I think that common sense and being able to get things done are massively underrated. Yes, you need people that do innovative work and come up with things that have never been done before. But you also need to be able to make sensible, effective decisions, and be able to communicate them quickly and fairly and move on. You read about how people get up at 4:00 a.m. or have this philosophy on leadership, and of course people want to work for someone who is clear in what they’re trying to do, but I think you have to couple that with humanity. I try to be smart enough, transparent enough, and also human. I try to make our work environment feel informal but hardworking. I call it, “intensely informal,” or something like that.

WE HAVE AN OPEN PLAN OFFICE, so no one has a bigger desk than anyone else. We share the same space. We go to gym classes together and share a communal kitchen. It’s all part of the culture we try to encourage. When we travel for work, sometimes we share AirBnBs to save costs, and we’ll hang out in our pajamas and drink wine. I hope those things make a difference. If you share a bathroom with someone for four days and watch her do her makeup, you probably feel that she’s relatively accessible.

Vanessa wears the Etsuko dress in cobalt.

I DO GET OVERWHELMED from time to time, particularly when I’m traveling a lot, but it helps to get home and spend time with my family. Cooking for people, that’s how I reconnect. I have two children, and we got a puppy last summer who we all completely love. When I’m not working, I’m a suburban mum. I get home from Manhattan and go to lacrosse games and volleyball tournaments or walk the dog and have piano lessons.

WHEN YOU WORK for any kind of agency, the work you do is so varied that you’re always learning somebody else’s business. Next week I’m learning about a big cosmetic brand on Monday, and on Tuesday it’s all about footwear. I really love the insights you get from all different kinds of companies. Our vision is to create experiences for tomorrow’s customers. We can’t do that without always thinking ahead, about what’s next from a technology perspective and what’s happening with trends. That’s part of the reason I’m interested in MM.LaFleur. I like the clothes, but the business model is fascinating, too—the Bento Box isn’t a subscription service, but it’s similar.

I PROBABLY HAVE FIVE basic black shift dresses in my wardrobe because they’re so easy. I want to look smart enough to be in a client presentation but still look like I work for an interesting, innovative digital company. I also have a lot of young clients, so I don’t want to look ancient, but I also don’t want to look like I’m trying to be their age—because I’m not. I wear a lot of MM.LaFleur clothes because they can be more formal when I need them to be—say, if I’m meeting with a financial services company—but they also look great with jeans.