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https://www.girlscoutsla.org/

@girlscoutsla

Theresa Edy-Kiene is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Greater Los Angeles Girl Scouts. She was appointed to her role in 2019 and has been serving ever since. She worked at Fuller Seminary before she committed to her role as a CEO of the Girl Scout council. At Fuller Seminary, Theresa developed plans and different models. She managed designs such as Fuller Seminary’s new campus. Theresa also during that time was the Executive Director for the Thrive Center for Human Development. Theresa was also an entrepreneur and co-founded two food brands, using her skills to help lead those brands and strives to help girls do the best they can. Before even that she was the television executive at Lifetime Television, CBS, Warner Bros., and Fox. Theresa truly made a big impact with what she did and made sure to make a difference in many ways.

Theresa Edy-Kiene, Chief Executive Officer. (n.d.). girlscoutsla.org. https://www.girlscoutsla.org/content/dam/girlscoutsla-redesign/documents/events/emerging-leader/Isms-Intersectionality-Allyship-Panel-Bio.pdf

Photo Credit: LinkedIn

Q: What school did you go to and what did you study that helped you prepare for the job you have now as the CEO of Girl Scouts Greater Los Angeles?

Ms. Theresa: I went to Alliant University, an international university, and I got a bachelor’s degree in fine arts and my major was dance. So, there’s not really anything that came together, for either of these things. It's not connected or issued directly to what I’m doing today but that’s the beautiful thing about college. You're allowed to try lots of different things that you don’t necessarily have to choose what you want to do for the rest of your life in college. The idea is to really get exposed to lots of different ideas and disciplines, and then see what sparks you.

Photo Credit: Girl Scouts Greater Los Angeles

Q: I saw that you co-founded Homemade Baby and another company Harvey Operating. What inspired you to pursue this?

Ms. Theresa: I have three daughters and I have always been concerned about how the media reflects body image to girls, and the pressure about looking a certain way. And what I wanted for my daughters was to have a healthy relationship with food and a healthy relationship with our bodies. So, they are not always trying to criticize themselves, right? My approach was that it starts from the beginning of how you develop your palate when you’re exposed to healthy foods early on, you're more likely to stick with them your whole life. And if you're polluting your palate with a lot of junk, you’re probably going to want it as well. So, I made all their baby food and then I began to realize there are a lot of moms like me that would like to be able to do this, but maybe don’t have the time or interest in doing it on their own. So, I thought “Wouldn’t it be nice if they just buy it?” Which is how the whole thing started.

Q: What did you do as a television executive and why did you want to leave the Entertainment Industry?

Ms. Theresa: I was in television for about 15 or 18 years, so it was a really long time. I loved it and it was a wonderful career that led me to meeting some amazing and talented people. My role was as a development executive. People would come to me and pitch their ideas, and we would develop a script, and if the script was picked up, we would cast it and get a director. You would go through a process for youtube considered for a television series. Or we would come up with ideas, and we would find a writer and pitch the idea to them. There were all different ways you could make something happen. I was developing television series and you would purchase a lot of scripts or ideas, but only a few really made it all the way. So that overall is what I spent my career doing in television. It was really fun.

But as my family was growing, and as my daughters were growing, and I was very passionate about this idea of healthy eating and healthy relationships with our bodies, that was tugging at my heart. To explore that more, I decided that I was going to do it and make the transition, and work for myself. I wanted to be an entrepreneur and not necessarily work for other people and so I decided that I would take the lead.

Q: How did you know that you wanted to be a part of Girl Scouts? When did it start?

Ms. Theresa: I was a Girl Scout at a time of my life where I really needed it. I was in fourth grade and I was joining a new school called Roosevelt in Santa Monica since I moved from San Diego to Los Angeles. It was when my body was beginning to develop so I looked a little bit different than most of the girls which caused me to be bullied. It was really bad and my mom, in a moment of parental wisdom, signed me up for Girl Scouts and didn’t know what to expect. When I wore my uniform for my Girl Scout meetings on Thursday, I felt so powerful, and I found my sisterhood in my Girl Scout troop. That gave me the power and the confidence to ignore the bullies, and eventually get them to stop bullying. It really saved me from a difficult time in school.

Q: What are you most proud of during your time with the Girl Scouts?

Ms. Theresa: Well, it’s interesting because when I took the role, we had a fire, a school shooting, and then covid started. So, I wasn’t even sure what my job was at first because I felt like it was crisis control. I did know that I loved Girl Scouts, I loved this particular organization, the people that worked for it, all of the girls, their families, and the volunteers. When I think about it now, what I am most proud of, was navigating covid. That was so much longer than we thought, and I was worried about keeping girls engaged with one another because I know I was watching my own daughters doing zoom classes, they couldn’t interact with their friends because they had to just focus on the teacher. It was draining but I knew if girls could get together with their troops, even if they were not even doing badge work or even if they were talking and sharing, that girls would get more out of being together and talking to one another about their experiences. We were very aggressive about making sure that the opportunity existed. So, I think about that being a very proud moment.

https://www.hellobello.com

@hellobello

Jennifer Pullen is the co-founder of a baby product company called Hello Bello. She grew up in Shanghai before moving to the U.S. when she was nine. She did not know English, so she had a harder time living in an unfamiliar place. She went to college years later at UCLA. Jennifer Pullen worked at Ares Management where she learned many skills that would help her co-found Hello Bello into a successful company with the help of the other founders including Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard. One of Jennifer Pullen’s classmates asked her to join this company as a founder and they worked together to build Hello Bello into what it is today.

Photo Credit: YouTube Segment by Zain Pirani

Photo Credit: Passionate Penny Pincher

Photo Credit: Hello Bello

Photo Credit: UCLA Anderson School of Management

Q: Was it hard moving from Shanghai to the U.S.?

Ms. Pullen: When I moved over to the U.S. officially with my family, I was nine, so it was really hard and tough. Just imagine, leaving all you know behind, it's one language, one country. So, it was like leaving the family I knew for my whole life at the time to a group of people I only knew through pictures and phone calls. It was a big change.

Photo Credit: NonWovens Industry

Q: When you got to college, did you know that an entrepreneur is what you wanted to be when you grew up?

Ms. Pullen: No, I had no idea. When you start college, some people know that they love science or something else. When I went to college I wanted to be a lawyer. That was what I thought I was going to be. To go to law school, I needed an undergrad. So I decided to go into business and then apply to law school. That was the plan. I was focused on Information Systems, the technical side of the business. I really thought that this was a really hot industry, it still is really hot now. There was an internet bubble at the time where all the startup internet industries were coming or had launched. I didn’t think that I would start my own business out of college. I think when you're young, you don’t think about that and now that I’ve been doing a lot more of guest lecturing at UCLA, teaching some classes, I see the 18 year-olds or 20 year-olds all have entrepreneurship in the back of their mind. When I was going to school, not many people left school or left in the middle of school to start a company.

When I graduated, I was recruited by a big consulting firm to do IT Consulting at Arthur Anderson, but it's no longer around. I got this offer that I accepted and I was waiting for the job to start when my friend who worked at an internet company, a startup, asked if I would like to join her instead. This was weeks before I was supposed to start. I went there and loved the energy and I thought “do I go with this small startup or do I go to this big firm where I am just one of many people.” I guess I have always had it in me.

I decided to choose the startup. I came out of school, did that for a year, and the company got bought. Then, I joined an investment company, Ares Management, which at the time wasn’t big, there were only 30 employees, now it is huge. So every time I talk to someone they’re like “oh, how do you feel about moving from this big company to starting your own company.” When I started working at Ares Management, it was very much like an entrepreneur environment. The company was very young, nobody really knew what we were supposed to do. We got hired, but we didn’t have a real job distribution. That company grew a lot when I was there for 18 years, it grew from 30 to thousands of people. So when I left, I really missed the small company feel and then that’s how I became an entrepreneur.

Q: What was your strategy in making Hello Bello? What were you thinking when you made Hello Bello?

Ms. Pullen: We wanted to create a brand in the baby and family category that is both good for the baby and also good for the parents' wallets. It’s a premium brand, but affordable which is very hard to do when you want nice, natural, premium products and you want to make it cheap, not like 30% more than the normal priced conventional products. That was our goal and I think the only way we were able to do that is when we launched, the company we partnered with was Walmart. Walmart had like 4000 stores, and because there were so many stores we could get our cost down because we had so much pricing power and so much volume that we were able to buy products at a lower price. We were able to do that because of that partnership. Otherwise, I don’t think it would have worked, we wouldn’t have made the money for it to work.

Q: How did you and your co-founders meet? How did you come up with Hello Bello after Ares Management?

Ms. Pullen: I wasn’t planning to leave Ares, I loved my job there. I would invest in companies, much bigger than this, not like startups. My friend that I went to business school with at UCLA approached me and said that they had an idea for a company and Walmart was on board with it, and asked me what I thought about leaving Ares Management and starting this company. Two of the cofounders, one of whom I went to business school with named Sean Kane, another is Jay McGraw who is the son of Dr. Phil McGraw, and we’ve all been friends, so that helps because when it is people you know, trust, and like, it's nicer. The two celebrities also knew the sister of one of the co-founders and they were friends. They could relate to the concept because they also didn’t have any money growing up. We also have lots of family and friends that can’t access good premium products at reasonable prices so they felt like they were ready to be behind a brand like this.

All the founders had kids and that was a common thread for all of us. We cared about what was on our kids' bodies and we knew a lot of parents cared about that. We were all ready to disrupt this market. We were all connected.

There was a reason why it took me so long to be an entrepreneur. Everything you do over a number of years helps you get there. Whatever relationships I built at Ares or I built at startups or at UCLA, it takes time to get those right relationships.

Now that I am an entrepreneur, it's hard to stop. I have Hello Bello and a new company and when you're running a startup, everyone is coming to you for answers. Everything is new. You're setting all the rules, creating all the schedules, and you don’t sleep. This was all very good timing for me though with my kids more grown, it was the right time and obviously with the right people.

Photo Credit: Waco Tribune Herald

Q: What part of Hello Bello did you love?

Ms. Pullen: I love that we are super flexible and nimble. I love that we can talk to our customers. We have our websites and we sell in a number of places, but because we have our own website, we sell directly to consumers, we get feedback. They aren’t shy to tell us if they love or hate something and aren’t shy to complain about it. Also they are not shy about asking for things. We get some really great ideas from our customers and I love that, or sometimes they’ll say that they don’t like the taste of the vitamin or that the lotion is runny. Being in a startup, you can change that very quickly versus a big firm, it's a big process. We will all sit in a room and test all these lotions or eat a few vitamins and we will agree with them and change them. It still takes some time, but it doesn’t take a year. When you are with a big company like Ares, you have people who don’t perform well and you can’t do anything about it. It takes a long time. Here, everybody has to perform in a startup, if they are not, we can do something about it. It was refreshing for me, to run a company where I can give people feedback right away.

Q: What are you most proud of in Hello Bello?

Ms. Pullen: I am most proud of the fact that when we launched this firm, people asked “what do you want to be?” I said “I wanted to be a brand where every mom or dad with a baby knows who we are.” I don’t think we are there yet, but now when someone asks what I do, I say that I founded a company called Hello Bello and my new company, and almost everyone if they have a kid or baby will say that they know the brand or use it. I am just proud that we are able to make a company grow into a household name in four years. In the beginning, I would have to explain what it does, but now they know it or will find me at events saying that I’m from Hello Bello.

Q: What were the hardest challenges you faced?

Ms. Pullen: Money is always one because we launched in such a big way that all of that inventory that we have to buy up front has to be ready to ship somewhere. That was always a challenge about where we were going to get the cash to do that. Then, all the costs were rising over the past few years because of inflation and it became hard to control the cost while providing nice products at low prices. That became a new challenge, building our own manufacturing plan. Which is a huge challenge over the past 2 years that also required more money to do but you need a new set of skills, new set of people that you have to hire. There were so many challenges, daily challenges.

Photo Credit: Hello Bello Instagram

Q: What advice do you have for young girls who want to start their own business?

Ms. Pullen: This is for everyone. Make sure the timing is right for you. I didn’t start this until I was 40, and some people start in their 20s or 30s. I think a lot of entrepreneurs that you see that are very successful actually start later because you have to go through a lot of the journey of learning. Make sure to time things right for your family and yourself because it is so demanding on you. So make sure you have the ability to dedicate all of your time to it but also make sure it is the right time in your career. There is no one too young or too old to start a business. You do have to plan a little more. As long as people around you are supportive because you are going to be busy and everyone around you will have to understand or have to help you in other ways. Make sure you have a support system

https://www.tower28beauty.com

@tower28beauty

@amyliu_t28

Amy Liu is an entrepreneur and the founder of beauty company Tower 28. Amy Liu went to the University of Southern California and worked at Accenture first as a consultant before deciding to found Tower 28. Amy Liu is also a mother of three children. She wanted to help people who were uncomfortable with their skin who had acne, a blemish, etc. Amy Liu wanted to encourage others to be more comfortable in their own skin. Tower 28 has become more and more popular ever since it first came out in 2019. It’s in Sephora shops all over the U.S. and continues to grow with multiple products.

O’Neill, M. (2023, February 21). Stack Your Habits, Follow Your Dreams, and Indulge in Fluttery Mascara and Chic Lip Jelly. goop.com. https://goop.com/beauty/makeup/makeup-and-skin-care-tricks-from-tower-28-beauty-founder/#:~:text=AMY%20LIU%20%7C%20CEO%20and%20founder,LA%2Dbased%20mom%20of%20three.

Photo Credits: Amy Liu Instagram

Q: Was starting this company something personal for you?

Growing up in California as a Chinese-American, I always felt like an outsider, and I wanted to create Tower 28 as a way to break that mold of what a beach-y LA beauty brand looks like. Because at the beach you truly do see every kind of person (not just the blonde, blue-eyed models we are used to seeing in advertisements), and it’s a place where everyone gets to enjoy a healthy, fun lifestyle.

Q: Why did you want to start Tower 28?

Like many startups, Tower 28 was born out of a personal need! I worked in the beauty industry for years, but as a longtime eczema sufferer, I was missing out on the best part about working for beauty brands: trying out all the products! I never knew what was going to irritate my sensitive skin, so I stuck to my very clinical, boring tried-and-true products. I came to see this as an opportunity, and launched Tower 28 in 2019 as a beauty company that’s designed for sensitive skin, but made for all. We’re the first and only beauty brand to follow the National Eczema Association’s Ingredient Guidelines, and it’s been so much fun to develop products that I know I – and anyone! – can use safely and with confidence.

Q: How did you get the business started?

I’ve been fortunate enough to develop a strong network in the beauty industry, which I’ve fostered over the years in my career. I really leaned on those connections to get Tower 28 off the ground; you never know what questions you have until you’re actually going through the process of launching a business! I now try to “pay it forward” through things like our Clean Beauty Summer School, which is a mentorship and grant program I launched to help advance BIPOC-owned small beauty businesses.

Q: What keeps you motivated to keep pushing for more for your business?

It may sound cliche, but our community keeps me motivated every single day! It’s a big responsibility to put anything out into the world, and hearing the warm reception from our customers – and their desire for the next Tower 28 launch – fuels the fire.

Photo Credits: Tower 28 Instagram

Q: How do you manage your time knowing you have so many events/promotions to attend while juggling family life?

Anyone who says it’s easy to balance everything is lying! Over the years I’ve learned that trying to juggle work, family, friends and time for myself is all about boundaries, which is extra challenging when you are working and living under the same roof. A very wise friend once told me, “you can have it all, but you can’t have it all at once.” I’ve let go of the idea of perfection and have replaced that with “progress.”

Photo Credit: Gloss Angeles

Do you have any tips for people who dream about starting their own business?

Be kind! I’m a firm believer that you earn your reputation. Warren Buffett once famously cautioned not to do anything you wouldn’t want seen written on the cover of a newspaper. With social media’s ubiquity, I think that advice is more current than ever!

Photo Credit: Tower 28 Instagram