Speaker A
Hello and welcome to How I Hire, the podcast that taps directly into the best executive hiring advice and insights.
David Stever, former Ben & Jerry’s CEO, shares leadership lessons on scaling a purpose-driven brand while maintaining culture and social mission.
Ask about this video. Answers come from its transcript only — with the timestamp, so you can check them.
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Key Takeaways
- Purpose-driven businesses can scale successfully without sacrificing their core values or culture.
- Balancing product, profit, and social missions creates a sustainable and impactful business model.
- Leadership requires empowering teams, fostering creativity, and maintaining a fun, inclusive environment.
- Professionalizing processes while staying true to brand identity is crucial during growth and acquisition.
- Storytelling and clear goal alignment motivate and connect employees to the company’s mission.
What the video covers
- David Stever discusses his journey from Ben & Jerry’s tour guide to CEO, highlighting the brand’s growth from a $50M company to a $1.2B global business.
- The podcast covers Ben & Jerry’s entrepreneurial roots, including their innovative campaign against Pillsbury in 1983.
- Ben & Jerry’s triple bottom line mission balances product quality, economic success, and social responsibility equally.
- Unique company culture elements include employee benefits like free ice cream, dog-friendly offices, and a 5:1 salary ratio.
- Stever explains how Ben & Jerry’s maintained its values and culture through acquisition by Unilever and scaling globally.
- Leadership lessons focus on scaling with soul, professionalizing processes, and proving the viability of purpose-driven business models.
- The importance of servant leadership, empowering teams, and fostering creativity and fun in the workplace is emphasized.
- The brand’s activism and transparency efforts, such as campaigns against rBGH and GMO labeling, are highlighted.
- Stever shares insights on sustaining an irreverent and authentic company culture despite growth and corporate ownership.
- The episode also discusses strategic storytelling and aligning company, department, and personal goals for leadership success.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction to How I Hire Podcast and Guest David Stever
- 01:53Ben & Jerry’s Early Campaign Against Pillsbury
- 03:48David’s Journey from Tour Guide to CEO
- 05:39Ben & Jerry’s Unique Culture and Employee Benefits
- 07:58Scaling the Business with Soul and Unilever Acquisition
- 09:37Professionalizing Ben & Jerry’s Approach and Brand Guides
- 10:37Leadership Lessons and Empowering Teams
- 13:13Storytelling, Culture, and Business as Unusual
- 16:59Sustaining Culture and Leadership Insights
- 18:27Servant Leadership and Aligning Goals for Success
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
I'm Roy Nottowitz, founder and CEO of Not Group Executive Search. As a go-to firm for purpose-driven companies, we've been lucky to work with some of the world's most inspiring leaders as they've tackled the challenge of building high-performance leadership
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teams. Now, I'm sitting down with some of these very people to spark a conversation about [music] how to achieve success in hiring, building teams, and how to create purposeful leadership for the next generation of companies. David Stever is joining me
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today. He's the former CEO and CMO of the iconic ice cream brand, Ben & Jerry's. David first joined the company back in 1988 as a tour guide at their factory in Waterbury, Vermont. He quickly moved up within the business and
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spent three and a half decades leading marketing initiatives and stewarding the unique culture [music] of one of the most beloved brands in the world. He joins me on the podcast to discuss his incredible journey leading through growth, working with the big corporate
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[music] parent, and balancing the brand's product, economic, and social missions while making game-changing hires and building [music] great teams.
Speaker A
David, thanks so much for joining me on the podcast. It's great to have you here.
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Thanks, Roy. Thanks for the invitation. Appreciate it. I'd love to just dive right in with a question about the beginning. [laughter] So, take us back, you know, what was your first spark or interest in the industry and how did that evolve into
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the career that you've built?
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Okay, we're going to have to go in the wayback machine. If we go all the way back to 1983, Ben and Jerry, they had just come out with a campaign called What's the Doughboy Afraid of?
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[laughter] And it was a campaign against Häagen-Dazs. And at that time, Pillsbury was the owner of Häagen-Dazs. And Ben and Jerry were just starting to get out of Vermont and New Hampshire and expand. They actually went into the Boston market.
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And then Pillsbury went to the distributors in the Boston market and said, "Hey, if you want to have Häagen-Dazs, then you're going to need to drop Ben and Jerry's. You can't have both." And Ben and Jerry knew it was
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restraint of trade. They also knew they probably didn't have the money to fight Pillsbury in court. So they created this campaign and they flew airplane banners over Boston. They took out ads in Rolling Stone magazine. They created a
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1-800 number. Jerry flew out to Minnesota and was a one-man picket out in front of Pillsbury headquarters. And soon the press got so bad that Pillsbury let Ben & Jerry's use the distributors.
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Wow. And it actually launched Ben & Jerry's nationally and this was again back in 1983. I was getting out of high school and I thought those guys are badass.
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That's pretty cool. Maybe someday I'll work for them. Fast forward to 1988. That's when I started working for Ben and Jerry's as a tour guide and sales at the company at that time were about 50 million. Was there through
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the acquisition by Unilever in the year 2000 and sales were about 200 million and as of last year sales at Ben & Jerry's were about 1.1, 1.2 billion.
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Wow. The brand's in 38 countries, over 500 scoop shops, and I always like to quote the Grateful Dead here. What a long strange trip it has been.
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From tour guide to CEO. That's correct. Great story. And also the story you shared about how they dealt with Pillsbury. I mean, it's one of the great things I love about entrepreneurs is they figure out a way to be successful no matter what
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they're up against. So that's brilliant. So what was it like to work with Ben and Jerry in the early days?
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Well, it was definitely very entrepreneurial. And if I just start even with the year that I began, it was a pretty epic year because that was the year that Ben and Jerry created the flavor Chunky Monkey, which is a pretty
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cool flavor. They came out with a product called Peace Pops. That was a novelty ice cream on a stick covered in chocolate. And the goal there was to try to get 1% of the military budget directed towards peace programs, which
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would be, of course, billions of dollars. And Ben Cohen, of course, is still fighting for getting that military budget redirected to this day. It was also the time where Ben and Jerry won the small business persons of the year
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award from then President Ronald Reagan, ironically. And it was the year they came out with the three-part mission, which was really revolutionary at the time. Basically, the first triple bottom line saying that you need to balance the product mission,
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the economic mission, and the social mission and weigh them all equally in your decision-making. So that was the early part. And then there's always been these two quotes that have guided Ben and Jerry that Ben and Jerry are known
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for. And Jerry's quote is, "If it's not fun, why do it?" I used to like to say, "If it's not fun, get the sales team to do it." And then Ben's quote was, "Business has a responsibility to give
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back to the community." And in the early days, and even the present day, all employees at Ben & Jerry's get three free pints a day. That's not a week, that's a day. Um, dogs were allowed in the office. Uh, when the production crew
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was cranking out ice cream, there was a weekly masseuse coming in to give everybody massages. And there was also a 5 to 1 salary ratio where the highest paid employee could only make five times what the lowest paid employee made. So,
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this whole concept of linked prosperity. And on the social mission side again there was that 1% for peace initiative but there was also a big effort around labeling transparency, the right to label the products rBGH free, so recombinant bovine growth hormone,
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and then later on trying to get transparency around GMOs as well. Wow. You started when it was at this really interesting phase where they're really coming into their own and their values and you helped scale into a global
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billion-dollar business. What leadership lessons emerged for you through that transition? I'm sure there were different phases of growth and I know you were the CMO for 12 years. So, different roles, different phases. What were some of those leadership lessons
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that you can share with us that were impactful? Yeah, the main task was how do you scale the business with soul and there were so many entrepreneurial learnings from Ben and Jerry and then what made it special, the three-part mission that linked
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prosperity business model and then how do you take that and plug it into the machine and leverage the size and scale of Unilever. So I worked for Ben and Jerry's before, you know, the acquisition by Unilever for 12 years and actually
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worked for Unilever for 24 years. So actually twice as long within the Unilever framework versus simply being owned by Ben and Jerry's. One of the things that people glom on to is that Ben & Jerry's and SlimFast were acquired
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in the same week and Ben & Jerry's business model thrived and kind of accelerated under the leadership and then SlimFast they ended up getting sold to a different entity.
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So how did your leadership need to evolve then as the organization matured and especially post-acquisition by Unilever? The focus was how do we prove that this model works? How do we prove that a triple bottom line business can be as
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successful, actually even more successful than a business that's just focused on profit? And it was in the early days where we really needed to professionalize the approach. You know, I think that was important. And I think at one point I counted that we had
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created 32 guides at Ben and Jerry's. A social guide, a style guide, a tone of voice guide, and my personal favorite, a humor guide. What's in bounds for humor for Ben and Jerry's. And the brand also was very good, very nimble about tying
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into cultural flash points, whether that was something that was happening in the nonprofit world or the activism world or if it was just pop.
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it approved and do it with speed. So your path ultimately led to you becoming a CMO.
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Mhm. What do you think made you great at doing that? Because you obviously were in that role for a lengthy period of time and were very successful in it.
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What was it about that that you enjoyed most or that you felt was a formula for success?
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Yeah, as the CMO of Ben & Jerry's, I as you mentioned, I don't remember if it was 12 years or a baker's dozen or 13 years, but um it was a long time in the seat and it was one of those things
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where you just constantly learned as you went along. I think for me, I love this quote where a turtle doesn't make progress unless it sticks its neck out.
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And so in order for us to continue to be relevant in the space, we had to stick our neck out from time to time. And at at one point, we had a consultant group come in and look at the brand health of
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Ben & Jerry's. And the consultant group basically came to the conclusion that, you know, I think you as a business might have peaked and you might actually be going down that other side of the hill. And so for me, it was like, okay,
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not on my watch. How do we not have this happen? And so I had always had this idea for a flavor named after a Saturday Night Live skit and it was called Shreddy Balls.
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Oh yeah. I remember that skit. I think it was 2000y 2011 maybe. Yes. Peach sweaty.
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And it was one of those things where okay, this may be the time to do this flavor. So it was again a very cult following for that skit. Had to sell it in across Unilver. had to sell it in to
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the Ben & Jerry's board of directors. And then at that time, we had a new CEO who was actually Norwegian who had never seen the skit. But once he saw the skit, he's like, "Okay, I'm in." And I
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remember going home to my wife that evening and I said, "This is either going to be a really good thing for my career or I'm going to get fired." [laughter] And we launched it and it worked. People went and sought it out and grabbed it
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off the shelf. It did get kicked out of Walmart because a spouse of one of their board of directors complained. So, they pulled it, but that actually made it even more popular and people wanting to find it. So,
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that kind of kicked it up a notch as far as turning into what does a CMO need to do in order to keep a brand relevant. And, you know, and it is sticking the neck out every now and then.
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And one of the beautiful things about Ben & Jerry's is it attracts amazing people. And I think when people are working for something greater than selling a product, it elevates them. And when I saw the opportunity to be the
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CMO, one of the things that I realized was it's a time to tap into all of those talented people and let them shine. Let them have their ideas come to life. And sort of another learning for me was this
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was a personal learning. I at one point when we were acquired by Unilver, we had a new head of marketing and all of the ideas that I was coming up with were getting shot down. And so I said to myself, well, I had this one
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idea that I really wanted to see happen. So I wasn't going to tell him about it.
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And I started creating it on the side. And it was for a flavor called Festivus after the Seinfeld show. So I worked with R&D on developing a flavor. I worked with the design team on developing what that pint would look
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like. And then I actually reached out to Jerry's executive producer, Howard West, and had a conversation with him and actually got a contract already. And then a week before our sales meeting, I went into the head of marketing and
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said, "I have this idea. I'd like to share it with the sales teams. And what do you think?" and he actually agreed at that time that it was a good idea and we should go forward. But for me, what that
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showed me was there are people that are working on the marketing team that have these ideas and if you let them take those ideas and run with it, then they will run through a wall if they think it's a good idea. Let them present their
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ideas. Let them take the credit for the idea. And to me, that was the beauty of being a CMO is there were so many talented people that I could leverage and let their ideas fly.
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That's amazing. So, how did you get the best ideas out of your team? How did you make sure that you were hearing those ideas or encouraging that open sharing of ideas in a safe way?
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Yeah, I like the quote, "Intelligence is creativity having fun." And so, for me, it was really all of the crazy brainstorms that we had and just really making sure that everybody felt safe to put their idea out there. There was no
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like magic process, but there was definitely magic in the collaboration and the building upon those ideas and having people kind of put them out there and throwing pieces of paper around at each other of like what's this idea? Can
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you build on it? And really it was like how do you build on somebody else's idea and making sure that everybody was participating in that sport.
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When you transitioned from CMO to CEO, what surprised you the most about stepping into that top seat? Well, as the CMO since I had done it for, you know, again, 12, 13 years, the focus really was on the consumer, on
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innovation, activism. As I mentioned, I have that skilled team that is really driving a lot of the business. And then as the CEO, you have a big full responsibility for the business. What actually made me uh kind of pause when I
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first became the CEO was the fact that you get less autonomy doing the CEO role. And you're thinking, I'm in charge now. I should have more autonomy. But there's inputs that come from all parts of the business, all parts of the
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organization, whether it be from Unilver or departments or the Ben & Jerry board or even the founders. So I found that there was a lot of folks who were like, "Hey, tell us what you're doing." And we they would have of course inputs on how
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that was going. And every decision has P&L implications. I think that's another big thing. The thing for me was when I became the CEO, my first instinct was to fall into the role models that I had seen go before
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me. And I relied heavily on here's the P&L, here's the KPIs, here's our OKRs, and I realized that I was doing it not necessarily to the best of my abilities because I needed to broaden my view of who the customer was and use
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storytelling in the strategy to inspire and motivate and get Ben and Jerry's back to business as unusual. I love that. What did So, tell us about business as unusual. How did that come about? It's like a mantra, right? Or a y
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maxim that you had there. You know, as I mentioned, we had 32 guides, which is crazy. We have the three-part mission. There's the progressive value statement. And one of the things that I realized is that how do you simplify things? So, the person
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scooping ice cream or the person making the ice cream in the factory or putting the chunks in the fruit feeder, how do they grab a hold of some of these concepts? And it was this idea of what's Ben and Jerry's six-word story. And
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there have been a few different six-word stories over the years. One is back to business unusual. Another is ice cream can change the world. But if you simplify it down to these wonderful sound bites, people can really understand like, oh, I'm scooping ice
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cream right now. You know, chunks and swirls can save the world. And if I do my job right, I'm contributing to that.
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And it makes everybody, I think, get on the same page and buy into that. So, you've said you felt more creative as a CEO than a CMO. What made that possible?
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Why did you feel that way? For me, the light bulb went off in my head that hey, I don't need to do the CEO role the way everybody else did it.
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I can do it from my strength. I can do it from the fact that I I am this creative cultural connector and brand architect. And how do I take that to global town halls? How do I take that
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when I'm selling in a plan to Target? And for me it was again using storytelling in the strategy. One of the things that I truly believed is that the brand with the best story wins and internally those stories are truly
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important to get people to connect to get people to motivate and to understand the direction of the company and where we're going. I think that for me that was an unlock. It was really tapping into my strength and also I think helped
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me create moments that were a little bit more inspiring than simply here's some information team go forward. That's cool.
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A lot of people ask me what exactly do you do at Notto Groupoup? We partner with entrepreneurs, founders, executives, investors, and boards to help them build high performance leadership teams that excel and [music] endure. We've had the privilege of
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working with more than 250 leading brands from early stage innovators to global icons, and we've placed hundreds of executives along the way. As a certified BC Corp since 2013 and proud 1% for the planet member, it always starts with your mission and values and
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finding leaders who can bring those to life. If you're curious, you can find out more by visiting our website nottoroup.com.
Speaker A
Thanks. And now let's get back to our episode. So Ben and Jerry's has always blended activism with commerce and I'm curious, how did that shape your approach to leadership and influence the business priorities? Well, as they say, the
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revolution must be funded. You need to kind of prove that what you're doing is working in order to say, hey, this is the budget we need for the social mission and the impact and influence work that we're doing. So there was this
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big need to prove the model. So the revolution could be funded and there was a belief around Ben and Jerry's that the strongest bonds you can create are overshared values but we needed to prove it and so we looked into how do we
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leverage IRI how do we leverage Neielson to prove it and we were able to get to a point where we were able to determine that when we made a post or an ad for ice cream it returned around 3 to1 which
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is again really really good. Yeah. But when we did an activism post or a blog about the social mission, we were getting greater returns. And then to take that even a step further, when an ice cream post followed a post
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about the social mission, that ice cream post actually performed even better. Wow. Now, to be clear, that's not why we were doing our social mission or the activism, but to be able to go back and say, "This needs to be funded because
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look at the results is truly special and a and a kind of a unlock for the brand." And then I think the other piece that we were able to do was we created a social mission tracker. And I think this really
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goes to the point that you got to measure what matters. And so our social mission tracker, we weren't just measuring our performance in consumer's minds versus ice cream, but we wanted to measure how were we doing versus Tomms
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or Patagonia or Seventh Generation? And were our campaigns sticking in consumer's minds? And they did they get the three-part mission from Ben & Jerry's and that was another piece that kind of professionalized our approach across the business.
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That's brilliant. You once said that if culture isn't in your top five priorities as a leadership team, you're missing something. And so I'm curious, how would you define Ben and Jerry's culture in your own words?
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Well, I think culture is really just as simple as the personality of the organization. And with Ben and Jerry's, I think that's one of the things. It's known to people as so many different things. But if I were to limit it down
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to just a few words, I would say it's irreverent, quirky, fun, an activist brand.
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But probably even more important, it's a brand that's being run not as a brand, but as a company with a full heart and soul. So for me, that's really the definition.
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That's awesome. So how did you bring to life or sustain that irreverent, quirky, be who you are culture after scaling and being acquired and maintaining that as the company grew bigger and bigger.
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One of the things I think helps a lot is the fact that we're in Vermont. Vermont is certainly a different state. It's a little akin to Austin where, you know, keep Vermont weird. And I also think the way the business was set up, it really
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attracted kind of this collection of really activists, business people, folks from the CPG world. It was really what I would say almost this band of merry pranksters.
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So going back to the Ken Casey 1960s bus tour across the US and I always felt like it was this anti- business business and the irony is the anti- big business business is in the middle of Unilver which I think is something that also is
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is one of the reasons that it worked. Now Ben & Jerry's is 46 years old now and I think one of the things that I said is it needs to be run as a 46-y old startup.
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It can't be a a heritage brand. It needs to be just a brand with heritage. And again, that mantra of back to business unusual, I think, is has stuck across the business. I'm sure there are lots of times where just the corporate nature of
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the parent company in a culture that was maybe less strong might not have survived, right? So you've made hires across different stages of the company from startup to global scaleup and inside a multinational corporate parent.
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What patterns have you noticed in the people who thrive in those different environments? I think you know the simple statement is it's the people who are comfortable being uncomfortable. I know that Ben and Jerry always said in the beginning there's this myth of
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expertise in business and they always said you don't need to be an expert to do some of the stuff we are going to need you to do. So I think throw expertise out the window and if you want
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something you never had before you're going to have to do something you've never done before. So if you want to improve the business or your own leadership then it's going to be uncomfortable. So I think for me that's
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the real difference is folks who are kind of okay with not being a perfectionist but know what the opportunity is and what the goals are and they lean into it. You know I think we've all read the book Grit and I think
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that really applies to to Ben and Jerry's and having that scrappy mindset. I hope people rewind that part and listen to it again because that is [clears throat] huge and I think too often companies really look for that
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somebody who's done this before. exactly that before. And I think sometimes the best outcomes are from people who are feeling like they're challenged and they have guard rails or a direction or a goal that they need to accomplish and they
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just figure it out because they're smart. So I love that and they figure it out in a different way than somebody who was an expert, which actually probably is better.
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Yeah. And maybe more insightful, maybe taking in different inputs that other people wouldn't have. I love that. And again, I think that's a huge great call out. Can you share a story about a game-changing hire or what you saw in
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them that maybe others missed that would give you an example of what we just talked about?
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Yeah, I think the beauty of Ben & Jerry's is there's lots of gamechanging hires. I think what comes to mind for me, which may sound weird at first, and I'll explain, but I'll focus on the two-timers.
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And what I mean by that is the people that were with the company in a specific role and left and then came back.
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I've never heard that before. Two-timers. Yeah, exactly. When two-timers are good, one person comes to mind and they started out their career as Ben and Jerry's executive assistant.
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So, a lot of learnings just by being with Ben and Jerry, but being their executive assistant, you probably learned a lot, right? And this specific person went on to work at Greenpeace. And then they went on to also work at Seventh
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Generation. And then they came back to Ben & Jerry's to work on our social mission team. And they culminated their career as being the head of our social mission team. And really were institutionalizing a lot of the way in
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which the brand activated, the way the brand had the plugin to marketing to leverage the marketing tools to reach our fans. And I would say that they really professionalized that approach and it was because they had that time
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with the founders, the time away and then came back and then you know there there's a couple people like that at Ben & Jerry's the head of PR at Ben & Jerry's started out in the integrated marketing team through a unilver
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reduction program left and then came back as the head of PR and last year Ben & Jerry's PR numbers were about 20 billion impressions.
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Wow. Which is pretty impressive. That's amazing. Y So you were CMO for over a decade, which is rare in an industry where there's lots of churn in that role.
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What was your approach to building and nurturing your marketing team across those cycles of change and growth?
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A lot of it was really aligning goals, aligning kind of everything to the north star, which was the three-part mission.
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So linking the company goals, the department goals, the personal goals, and making sure that was pretty clear of what needed to be accomplished. But it really was what I will call servant leadership, letting them present to Unilver executives, letting them present their
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ideas to the Ben & Jerry's board of directors. And every year there's a franchise meeting at Ben & Jerry's and you would have folks come in and present on the stage to about 500 600 people and there would always be a few Unilver
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folks in the audience and what would typically happen was you know that VP or president of Unilver would lean over and say so who's this person and what do they do and you say well they're a you know they're an ABM and they work on the
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scoop shop business and they're like they're not a director they're not a VP. So it was really, I think, giving them all the opportunity to stretch, to work above their grade level.
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And when you do that, people pretty much rise up to do it. And when you champion their ideas as well, they definitely lean into it, work harder, and the results can be exceptional.
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Yeah, that's awesome. What leadership qualities and competencies did you look for in your top leadership team, whether it was when you were CMO or CEO?
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Yeah. For me, the the primary thing that I think a leadership team needs to understand is that their number one team is that leadership team because that leadership team needs to act as one. It can't be, you know, well, I'm the head
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of R&D over here and I don't agree with 100% of what's being brought out on the leadership team. So, I think it really needs to be that connector connector across all departments. And so for me that's one of the big things is making
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sure that that is the case. The other piece for me is they need to be a culture amplifier. So they need to model the values of the company.
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I love that. I think anybody in leadership needs to have a bias for action. And I think last but not least is and sometimes this is the hardest part, right? Is make yourself replaceable. And if you're doing that then you're probably leading
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the right way. Okay. So, you would look for that in people that you hired into your leadership team.
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For sure. What do you believe interviewers often overlook when trying to assess the right fit just based on your experience?
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Yeah. I know that I've hired a lot of folks at Ben & Jerry's and I really love it when an interview turns into a conversation and it feels less about me asking questions and it's more about them telling their story. So, that's one
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thing that I really feel is definite. And once you've got an interview, it really is a question of is there chemistry? Because if you've got the interview, it's pretty sure you can do the job. So then it becomes a question
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of chemistry. And one of the things that I usually like to do is I like to ask people that I interview, give me a couple reasons why you're not the right candidate. And for me, that really is about them knowing their strengths and
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weaknesses and also being able to be honest of like where they may fall short in the job description or in the career history. And then one of the other questions I typically like to ask is the old teacher question, which is get them
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to ask their own question. So for me, it's if you only have one question that you can ask all of the candidates to determine if they're the right person for the job, what's your magic question?
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And then the heads up is that they have to answer their magic question. And typically everybody comes up with a great question, but then they realize that they may not have the right answer for their own question. They want to say
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that, oh, I want to, you know, ask a question around culture and fit and make sure that they're going to, you know, be the right person from a culture and fit perspective. Or they get real technical and start going down that road. But for
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me, what I think we all, we're in an interview and we want that interview to go well. The interviewer does, the person on the other side of the table does, the person being interviewed. And I think we forget that sometimes we're
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going to have to make that interview uncomfortable because we all kind of want to come out of there feeling good about it. So for me, that's where those questions of, you know, look at the job description and tell me the things that
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you're really think you're going to get right in the first 90 days and then give me the two things that you're not going to get right.
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Okay, that's great. Looking ahead, what excites you most about this next chapter? Yeah, I obviously have had the benefit of working on one of the most beloved brands, you know, that being Ben & Jerry's. And one of the things that I
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think I've learned to do really well is driving differentiation. When you think about it, there's lots of good ice cream out there. And Ben and Jerry's being set up as a different company by the founders and me being able to take that
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and continue to stretch it is something that I think is a key strength. I like to say that nobody notices normal in today's world, right? So true. If you've got a brand that's playing by the rules, it's probably normal and probably not
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going to be around in 10 years. And there's a a percentage I might get the percentage slightly wrong, but the percentage that I've heard is 76% of brands people don't care about. And so for me, I think that I can bring that
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ability to create a brand, help build a brand, help accelerate a brand that people will care about and will be sticky in people's minds. And to me that's the exciting part. And so I'm really at this point in
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my career looking at that intersection of purpose and profit and is there a business out there where I can be incremental to their thinking whether that's on a board or advisory or back at the seauite. I'm sure whatever is next
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will be really meaningful and I'm looking forward to seeing that. So, one question I do have remaining actually is maybe the most important question out of all of the flavors that you've tasted, which I'm sure thousands.
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What were your top three favorite ones? Picking your three favorites, that's a difficult ask, but I will say that I've tasted a lot of ice cream. And, you know, I do like ice cream from other companies. Just to be clear, there's
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other folks that make good ice cream, but for Ben and Jerry's, I mentioned already chunky monkey because that was a flavor that came out when I started. And to me, that's just such a unique flavor.
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It's banana flavored ice cream with chocolate chunks and walnuts. I helped create, I was actually walking the plant floor with the head of Vermont Manufacturing at the time, and we came up with this idea for core concoctions. And so that's how Caramel
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Sutra was born. Oh, cool. And caramel sutra is caramel ice cream on one side, chocolate ice cream with chocolate chips on another side, and a center of caramel going down the middle. So caramel sutra would also be up on that list. And then probably
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New York Super Fudge Chunk, which is chocolate ice cream with white chocolate, dark chocolate, chocolate covered almonds, pecans, and walnuts.
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Wow. So those would probably be my top three. Wow, that's cool. I know it's hard to choose but Yeah. [laughter] And it depends on the day and depends on how you're feeling.
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Yeah. What are you going to do without three p pints a day or how often did you take advantage of [laughter] three pints? What do you do with all those pints, I guess, is the question.
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Yeah. I think there's a lovely Vermont barter system going on where most people aren't paying for ice cream and they're probably getting discounts on getting their car fixed. So, that certainly goes on.
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That's funny. My sister lives in Burlington and some of her neighbors work at Ben & Jerry's and so I think she's been a beneficiary of some of those pints. Well, it's been super great talking to you. I really have enjoyed
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our conversation and getting to know you and I'm looking forward to seeing what's next.
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Yeah, I appreciate it, Roy. Thank you so much and love the podcast and thanks for inviting me on.
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Thanks for tuning in to How I Hire. Visit howihire.com for details about the show. How I hire is created by notroup executive search. To find out more about us, visit nottoroup.com.
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You can also sign up for our monthly email job alert newsletter there and find additional job search strategy [music] resources as well as more content on hiring. This podcast was produced by Anna Mlan. To learn more about her and her team's work, visit
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[music] aomlane.com.
Topics:Ben & Jerry'sDavid Steverexecutive leadershippurpose-driven businesscorporate culturesocial missionbusiness scalingUnilever acquisitionmarketing leadershipemployee empowerment
