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[Anna Schultz]: You're listening to the Real Intelligence podcast,
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[Anna Schultz]: presented by RXA, a leader in business intelligence and data science consulting services.
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[Anna Schultz]: We're here to bring attention to the unique stories,
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[Anna Schultz]: perspectives, challenges and success
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[Anna Schultz]: that individuals in the data industry face at every career stage. Welcome to the show!
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[Anna Schultz]: Thank you for tuning in to the Real Intelligence podcast.
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[Anna Schultz]: You're on today with Katia Sausys, SVP of Business Intelligence at RXA,
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[Anna Schultz]: and Anna Schultz, Marketing Coordinator at RXA.
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[Anna Schultz]: Our guest today is Anna Banks, SVP of
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[Anna Schultz]: Personalization and Performance Marketing at Sephora North America.
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[Anna Schultz]: Anna Banks has spent the last 30 years designing and launching consumer marketing
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[Anna Schultz]: experiences that drive business growth.
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[Anna Schultz]: She blends an ability for strategy and creativity
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[Anna Schultz]: with a mind for process and execution.
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[Anna Schultz]: In her current role, she leads the data-driven side
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[Anna Schultz]: of Sephora North America marketing, including market research and insights,
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[Anna Schultz]: life cycle marketing, and paid media.
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[Anna Schultz]: Anna earned an AB in Sociology and Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard College
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[Anna Schultz]: and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
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[Anna Schultz]: In her career, Anna has held marketing leadership positions
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[Anna Schultz]: at walmart.com and Fair Trade USA, and spent over 15 years at top marketing agencies.
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[Anna Schultz]: She is also part of an angel investing network focused on funding and empowering
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[Anna Schultz]: underrepresented entrepreneurs.
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[Anna Schultz]: Welcome to the show, Anna!
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[Anna Banks]: Thank you.
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[Anna Schultz]: Absolutely.
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[Anna Schultz]: So, we like to start off the podcast by getting to know the real you.
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[Anna Schultz]: So, I have a few questions that we might not find the answers to in your professional bio.
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[Anna Schultz]: The first one being, what's an interesting fact about you that isn't on the Internet?
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[Anna Banks]: Um, it is
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[Anna Banks]: that I used to be a martial arts practitioner. Actually, Katia would know this,
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[Anna Banks]: but it is not on the Internet. So I practiced martial arts for about 10 years, and I hold
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[Anna Banks]: black belts in two different styles of kung fu.
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[Anna Schultz]: Oh wow.
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[Katia]: Be careful with Anna!
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[Anna Banks]: I'm harmless now. I'm old and harmless now.
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[Anna Schultz]: Well, I won't be messing with you!
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[Anna Schultz]: My second question is, what's the last thing that you were excited to learn outside of work?
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[Anna Banks]: Yeah. So it actually is a practice that I took up, like, deep in the pandemic,
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[Anna Banks]: when I was like, struggling with balancing like, mental health,
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[Anna Banks]: being working at home, kids at home and trying to work at home, and I started to do yoga.
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[Anna Banks]: And I actually started working with a yogi who is in
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[Anna Banks]: Los Angeles and doing zoom yoga every week. And so now for two years,
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[Anna Banks]: on Friday morning, at six in the morning, I get on and do yoga with him.
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[Anna Banks]: And so recently he has been teaching me
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[Anna Banks]: some really interesting meditation and breathing techniques,
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[Anna Banks]: about thinking about the center of energy that runs from the top of your head
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[Anna Banks]: down through the center of your body. And so,
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[Anna Banks]: some of these, sort of, unusual things about how to become more grounded,
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[Anna Banks]: have become super important in the, sort of, really challenging time we're in right now.
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[Katia Sausys]: Martial arts also focuses on that as well, right?
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[Anna Banks]: Yes, yes in different ways. I don't get to beat stuff up anymore
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[Anna Banks]: to, like, expend that energy. So I have like,
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[Anna Banks]: figure out how to be more calm other ways.
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[Katia Sausys]: Channel in different ways. Wonderful. I'm glad it helps you.
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[Anna Schultz]: Absolutely, it's something you learn outside of work, but probably
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[Anna Schultz]: affects your work life as well. So...
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[Anna Schultz]: Great.
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[Anna Schultz]: And so, I know I gave you a bit of an introduction before,
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[Anna Schultz]: and some of your career highlights, but I kind of like to
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[Anna Schultz]: have everybody tell us some of their career journey and some
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[Anna Schultz]: things about themselves in their own words.
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[Anna Schultz]: So if you want to give us some of that, that would be awesome.
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[Anna Banks]: Yeah! I mean, I'm someone who has always been interested in marketing.
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[Anna Banks]: Like, even in college, I wrote my senior thesis
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[Anna Banks]: on the image of the African American woman in print media, and did some analysis around
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[Anna Banks]: how economic trends influence visual trends,
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[Anna Banks]: and how those impact perceptions of confidence in young women.
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[Anna Banks]: So I've always been... It started off, kind of, more as a, sort of,
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[Anna Banks]: social impact piece around marketing,
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[Anna Banks]: and decided I wanted to get into marketing
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[Anna Banks]: because I was like, you know what? I don't see a lot of people who look like me in marketing.
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[Anna Banks]: I don't see a lot of images of me in marketing,
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[Anna Banks]: and I really want to influence that, and that's what led me to
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[Anna Banks]: jump into marketing in the first place.
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[Anna Banks]: So I started the more, sort of, visual interest,
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[Anna Banks]: the role that I wound up taking first, wound up as a more data focused role.
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[Anna Banks]: My first role was actually at a
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[Anna Banks]: direct marketing group at a tech company. So Lotus Development corporation,
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[Anna Banks]: which, you know, before they were acquired by IBM, had a little mini direct
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[Anna Banks]: marketing team internally. And so by working in direct marketing, that
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[Anna Banks]: led me to be a marketer who's always been focused on
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[Anna Banks]: things that are more data-driven and results-driven,
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[Anna Banks]: and I was exposed to things like modeling really early on.
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[Anna Banks]: And so that also led me to see this transition coming with like,
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[Anna Banks]: the Internet. So I'm old enough that, like, when I started working,
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[Anna Banks]: there was no Internet marketing. There was no email marketing.
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[Anna Banks]: People were like, oh, yeah. That Internet thing... What is that gonna be?
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[Anna Banks]: But one of the advantages of working as a tech company,
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[Anna Banks]: they're often a little bit further on the edge than a lot of other companies.
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[Anna Banks]: And so being exposed to that very early on,
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[Anna Banks]: made me want to transition from just direct marketing into
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[Anna Banks]: what we now call digital marketing.
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[Anna Banks]: And really focus there in business school. So,
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[Anna Banks]: looking for professors who were on that edge of, like,
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[Anna Banks]: where do we think this is gonna go? What is this gonna be? So keep in mind,
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[Anna Banks]: this is now in the mid-90s. So, it was very new.
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[Anna Banks]: Very much started to look at agencies who are starting to capitalize on this trend and area,
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[Anna Banks]: and then went, on my first job out of business school, to look for an environment that would allow me to
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[Anna Banks]: learn more about the digital space, learn more about strategy and companies who were looking to
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[Anna Banks]: move into that.
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[Anna Banks]: I thought I would only spend a couple years on the agency side.
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[Anna Banks]: I stayed fifteen years on the agency side, because it was just
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[Anna Banks]: such a fascinating environment to be in, I'm super interested in consumer insights and it gave me a chance to
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[Anna Banks]: really dig into the data behind how people make decisions, what influences them.
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[Anna Banks]: How do they consume their media? Where do they go with their media? How does it influence
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[Anna Banks]: how the, the decisions they eventually make?
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[Anna Banks]: And then take that insight, and for many of the companies the agencies work for,
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[Anna Banks]: translate that insight into programs that we would put together for them, for their marketing ecosystems.
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[Anna Banks]: What does that mean for their brand site? What does it mean for their CRM program?
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[Anna Banks]: What does it mean for their social?
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[Anna Banks]: Many of the brands that we were working with were sort of scared about dabbling in social at that time,
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[Anna Banks]: and we designed some of their early influencer programs.
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[Anna Banks]: So after a bunch of years on the agency side, so, agency is fun because it is...
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[Anna Banks]: You know, it's an idea factory. Your life is...
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[Anna Banks]: I get go sit in a corner and think about stuff.
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[Anna Banks]: Like, what do I think is gonna be a really cool thing to develop?
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[Anna Banks]: And then go pitch it to companies. And so that's a lot of fun.
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[Anna Banks]: But after a certain point, you're like, okay...
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[Katia Sausys]: And very demanding.
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[Anna Banks]: And very demanding! And you can turn, you know, work with really amazing cross functional partners.
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[Anna Banks]: Like, so, Katia and I were like, kind of joined at the hip. I was like, the strategy side, she was my analytics arm.
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[Anna Banks]: So many... Taking really awesome insights to clients, and then sometimes watching them like, not really
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[Anna Banks]: implement them the way you would have hoped that they would.
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[Anna Banks]: And that starts to get old after a little while. And so that's why eventually,
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[Anna Banks]: I decided to jump out of the agency side and move over to the client side,
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[Anna Banks]: and that's how I wound up at walmart.com.
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[Anna Banks]: It was actually a former
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[Anna Banks]: agency friend who is the head of marketing at walmart.com,
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[Anna Banks]: and said, hey, I have this role that I think would be great for you because it,
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[Anna Banks]: you know, Walmart sells everything under the sun, and this role has a team of marketers
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[Anna Banks]: that market all of the things that Walmart is marketing. So it was category marketing.
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[Anna Banks]: And so suddenly, I was like, marketing electronics, and apparel, and toys,
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[Anna Banks]: and health and wellness, and beauty.
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[Anna Banks]: And so that was a really exciting adventure.
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[Anna Banks]: And from the data perspective, I mean, there's nothing more data driven than e-commerce
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[Anna Banks]: because everything is by the numbers. It is definitely like a model driven business.
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[Anna Banks]: And so that was a really exciting kind of experience to understand how the components of, like,
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[Anna Banks]: the marketing component and the merchandising component and the site experience component
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[Anna Banks]: all come together and have to be firing together
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[Anna Banks]: in order to drive the, really, the best results for an environment.
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[Anna Banks]: So that was actually really cool. Working for Walmart, it was like getting another MBA.
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[Anna Banks]: But it was a really challenging environment and coming out of there, I decided I wanted to give back.
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[Anna Banks]: Like I've had, you know, been blessed with so many different experiences and learned,
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[Anna Banks]: you know, so much across my career and worked on so many really cool brands.
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[Anna Banks]: I decided, you know what? The description of the role I want to do next is,
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[Anna Banks]: is kind of a passion role. And so that is how I wound up at Fair Trade as their Chief Marketing Officer.
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[Anna Banks]: I said, I would like to work with
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[Anna Banks]: a company that is focused on driving equity
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[Anna Banks]: and giving back to the world at large. And Fair Trade really fell into that. And it also had the bonus of
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[Anna Banks]: allowing me to really exercise a lot of the skills that I had, kind of, gained
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[Anna Banks]: along my journey and my career.
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[Anna Banks]: So I spent a couple of years there. That was a really,
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[Anna Banks]: very fulfilling kind of an environment where I suddenly, I was like,
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[Anna Banks]: I'm doing B2C marketing, I'm doing B2B marketing. I'm doing brand-building.
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[Anna Banks]: I'm also helping them like, drive their marketing automation. You know, you're working with
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[Anna Banks]: really tiny little budgets compared to Walmart. Like, I mean, I think
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[Anna Banks]: my entire budget at Fair Trade was spent in, like, about 15 minutes at Walmart.
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[Anna Banks]: But it still was super satisfying and it's really exciting to work in an environment where
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[Anna Banks]: any kind of company or partner you show up with and say I'm working with Fair Trade they're like,
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[Anna Banks]: "How can I help? How can I even donate my time or my energy?" So, that was very cool. But,
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[Anna Banks]: working for not-for-profit is very challenging, and with the pandemic became even more challenging,
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[Anna Banks]: and I think about the third or fourth time, I had to give, like,
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[Anna Banks]: 20 or 30 percent of my marketing budget back,
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[Anna Banks]: I said, you know what? I think I need to
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[Anna Banks]: transition to something else. Because
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[Anna Banks]: the value that I feel like I could give to this organization, I think that it's...
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[Anna Banks]: That's sort of run its course at the moment.
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[Anna Banks]: And around that time, Sephora actually showed up at my doorstep and said
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[Anna Banks]: hey, we have this role that we think you might be interested in.
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[Anna Banks]: I had actually interviewed for another roll at Sephora a while back,
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[Anna Banks]: and obviously not wound up getting it, but apparently made an impression.
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[Anna Banks]: Because their CMO showed up and said, hey, we have this role that is over all these different pieces.
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[Anna Banks]: It's over marketing analytics, it's over media, it's over what was then called CRM. And would you be interested,
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[Anna Banks]: and retention, which includes email and mobile,
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[Anna Banks]: would you be interested in, kind of, checking it out? And
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[Anna Banks]: there you go. That brings us to today. I've now been at Sephora coming up on two years.
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[Anna Banks]: It has been a really exciting journey. I joined the end of 2020, which is during the pandemic,
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[Anna Banks]: I do not recommend doing that. My entire first year,
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[Anna Banks]: so, so difficult. Like I didn't even meet my team, I think for my first six - in person - for the first six months of my role.
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[Anna Banks]: But, really excited to say that, like, now that I'm coming into my second year,
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[Anna Banks]: feel like I'm getting my stride and really excited with the progress that we've made over the course of the couple years.
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[Katia Sausys]: Wonderful, congratulations.
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[Katia Sausys]: Really. What a fascinating career path
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[Katia Sausys]: Thanks for sharing it. That was a great way to catch up with you, a little bit.
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[Katia Sausys]: You've definitely been a role model for me. And I wanted to ask you,
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[Katia Sausys]: why the topic of women in data is important to you to discuss?
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[Anna Banks]: Yeah.
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[Anna Banks]: So I started looking when you guys at first asked me to do this. I started to look up some stats,
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[Anna Banks]: because I was like, I know the stats are gonna be crappy, but
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[Anna Banks]: I want to, like, really dig into it. And so
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[Anna Banks]: I think that... And, you know, I should have pulled them up again right before we start talking but
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[Anna Banks]: I think only about like, 20 percent of data scientists are women.
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[Anna Banks]: And then when you look at what percentage are
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[Anna Banks]: Black or African American, it's like three.
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[Anna Banks]: And it's just ridiculously
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[Anna Banks]: small, the representation in this area. So that was part of this, of what's really important to me, is
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[Anna Banks]: because who tells the story
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[Anna Banks]: about the data
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[Anna Banks]: makes a really huge difference.
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[Anna Banks]: It really matters, because we all bring our biases to all of these. And as much as
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[Anna Banks]: we try to be objective, there's always gonna be a bias in the storytelling.
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[Anna Banks]: And so maybe that's not as important when it's about sales revenue.
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[Anna Banks]: But when you're counting things like, you know, mass incarceration,
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[Anna Banks]: or rates of poverty - the perspective that the people who are doing the analysis
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[Anna Banks]: bring to the table makes a really huge difference. And so representation
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[Anna Banks]: is phenomenally important.
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[Anna Banks]: Mhm. That's a great point. That's why don't kill the messenger exists.
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[Katia Sausys]: Because people...
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[Katia Sausys]: Yeah. We resonate with what people are saying, and how they say it and how they deliver it.
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[Anna Banks]: Yeah. Definitely.
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[Katia Sausys]: Definitely. And so what career advice would you give
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[Katia Sausys]: to a woman who is just starting her career and aspires to be in data?
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[Anna Banks]: Yeah.
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[Anna Banks]: I mean,
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[Anna Banks]: I not sure it's any different for data than it is for other areas. It's always about,
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[Anna Banks]: understand what you are really good at.
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[Anna Banks]: What are the gifts that you bring to the table?
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[Anna Banks]: And then the second piece is
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[Anna Banks]: understand what gives you energy, and gives you joy, and makes you happy.
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[Anna Banks]: And find the thing that is the intersection between those two points.
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[Anna Banks]: Because when you find that intersection, like, that is where you're gonna be unstoppable.
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[Anna Banks]: Right? Because you will bring the passion to your work, you'll bring the energy to your work, people will see that.
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[Anna Banks]: And so, you know, that applies to data, that applies to anything. So that's... I mean,
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[Anna Banks]: that would be my
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[Anna Banks]: you know, that's a perspective. I often get asked that.
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[Anna Banks]: Because I
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[Anna Banks]: try to mentor some of the young,
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[Anna Banks]: younger employees at Sephora as well, and
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[Anna Banks]: always, that's part of my message.
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[Katia Sausys]: Wonderful, wonderful message. Totally
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[Katia Sausys]: resonates with me, totally.
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[Katia Sausys]: I remember fondly our time at Organic.
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[Katia Sausys]: Where we would brainstorm solutions to some
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[Katia Sausys]: challenges on measurements, analytics, perspectives,
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[Katia Sausys]: for existing clients or for new business pitches.
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[Katia Sausys]: And I still think that the most
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[Katia Sausys]: important questions that we women, or humans get asked, is
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[Katia Sausys]: how do you prove that my marketing dollars matter?
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[Katia Sausys]: Or how would you prove that my marketing efforts work?
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[Katia Sausys]: What, in your experience, are the most challenging aspects of this?
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[Katia Sausys]: Is it that we don't have the data that we need? The type of data, the way we collect it,
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[Katia Sausys]: or even the way we
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[Katia Sausys]: frame that question?
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[Anna Banks]: Yeah. So yes to all of those.
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[Anna Banks]: I think the first one that I start with is,
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[Anna Banks]: there's not always clarity around like, what success looks like.
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[Anna Banks]: So even defining the goal in the first place because you can't...
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[Anna Banks]: You won't know what to measure if you don't know what
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[Anna Banks]: you're trying to get to. So I think that's the first thing. And I think I've run into that a lot.
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[Anna Banks]: Even now here at Sephora, we'll run a campaign it'll be like, did it work? Like, well,
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[Anna Banks]: you know, we got a lot of traffic,
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[Anna Banks]: which was great. It's like, okay, but
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[Anna Banks]: maybe the metric was these particular SKUs over here that we wanted to drive sales.
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[Anna Banks]: And we drove a ton of traffic, but we didn't drive the sales. So was it successful?
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[Anna Banks]: So having real alignment around what the key goals are, I think is the first thing.
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[Anna Banks]: Then the second thing obviously, is like,
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[Anna Banks]: did you set it up to actually measure what you think are the important things in the first place?
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[Anna Banks]: Because that often is the challenge. We'll get to the end or people will think about what they want
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[Anna Banks]: after something is running, and then you're like, well, it's too late. We can't...
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[Anna Banks]: You know, you need to tell us that at the beginning, or we couldn't have set it up so that we can measure that.
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[Anna Banks]: So that's the second one is actually setting it up to measure it in the first place.
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[Anna Banks]: And then, yeah I think those two are some of the biggest ones like
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[Anna Banks]: goals, and then actual, you know, setting it up to measure,
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[Anna Banks]: so you can actually measure it on the back end.
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[Anna Banks]: And then maybe even giving folks the time to
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[Anna Banks]: actually do the analysis on the back end
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[Anna Banks]: and then
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[Anna Banks]: setting it up so that there is time for whatever, learnings there are
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[Anna Banks]: actually can go into whatever's happening next.
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[Anna Banks]: So I don't know how many times we have set something up where we're like,
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[Anna Banks]: okay. We now finally have the analysis, and they're like,
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[Anna Banks]: actually, we started the next one, three months ago. So it's kinda too late! Like,
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[Anna Banks]: thanks for the insights, but it's too late to influence the next thing.
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[Anna Banks]: So I would say that's, that's another really critical like,
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[Anna Banks]: make sure you're setting up the cycles so that you actually can take,
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[Anna Banks]: like, give folks the time to do the analysis, and then actually have the time to take the insights
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[Anna Banks]: to put them into the next cycle of the work.
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[Katia Sausys]: Pause in between. Yeah.
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[Katia Sausys]: Is that one of the topics people
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[Katia Sausys]: come to you more often or are there others?
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[Katia Sausys]: Is it more on the HR side and
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[Katia Sausys]: managing the team?
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[Katia Sausys]: Is it on analytics?
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[Katia Sausys]: Is it on strategy?
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[Katia Sausys]: Because you're so well versed on all.
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[Anna Banks]: You cut out for half a second, I didn't catch the very beginning of your question.
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[Katia Sausys]: What are the... The most...
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[Katia Sausys]: topics that people come to you more often?
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[Anna Banks]: Oh what do people come to me for?
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[Anna Banks]: Oh,
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[Anna Banks]: I used to joke at Walmart that I felt like I was, like, the marketing therapist.
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[Anna Banks]: So the things that people come to me the most.
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[Anna Banks]: They are usually around,
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[Anna Banks]: kind of, people dynamics, that are meant...
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[Anna Banks]: things that seem like process problems, that are actually people dynamic problems.
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[Anna Banks]: And so some of it is a bit of the, kind of, diagnosing of
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[Anna Banks]: helping people talk through
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[Anna Banks]: what is the challenge that they're seeing and helping
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[Anna Banks]: them kind of solve for themselves, what steps they might need to take next. Is it like,
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[Anna Banks]: Oh, I actually need to go talk to this person and tell them that
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[Anna Banks]: you know, this step in this order isn't working well for the team and that's how we would fix it,
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[Anna Banks]: or whatever the thing is. So you would think that
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[Anna Banks]: it's more around...
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[Anna Banks]: What is that, like, functional expertise? But I think the more senior you become like,
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[Anna Banks]: less and less of it becomes functional expertise
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[Anna Banks]: and more of it, more and more of it becomes around like
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[Anna Banks]: organizational orchestration.
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[Katia Sausys]: And birds-eye view, to be able to go above and really discern that it's not
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[Katia Sausys]: the process usually it's a people... How people's dynamics get applied to that process issue.
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[Anna Banks]: Yeah.
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[Katia Sausys]: Wonderful.
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[Katia Sausys]: I mean, I have to ask.
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[Katia Sausys]: What is the quality that people
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[Katia Sausys]: admire most about you?
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[Anna Banks]: Oh,
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[Katia Sausys]: Being the therapist?
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[Anna Banks]: And well, in order to be a good therapist, you have to be a good listener.
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[Anna Banks]: So I'd say that I usually try to call that out as one of my first
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[Anna Banks]: and most important qualities to me is in any environment,
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[Anna Banks]: doing a lot of... more listening than talking.
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[Anna Banks]: It can get me into a little bit of trouble, right?
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[Anna Banks]: Because people are like, we wanna hear more from you! We wanna hear like your perspective!
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[Anna Banks]: We want, sort of, more aggressive. And that's just not... That's not the energy I bring to things.
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[Anna Banks]: It's more around listening and then being thoughtful with contribution.
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[Katia Sausys]: So wonderful. Thank you.
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[Katia Sausys]: And I'm gonna ask you just a last question. If you could be a fly on the wall
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[Katia Sausys]: of a C-suite marketing company,
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[Katia Sausys]: any company. What company would that be?
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[Anna Banks]: Any company...
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[Anna Banks]: Oh, Twitter!
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[Anna Banks]: Yeah.
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[Anna Banks]: I wanna be a fly on the wall at twitter right now.
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[Anna Banks]: Because that just...
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[Anna Banks]: That's like a marketing nightmare...
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[Anna Banks]: At least at this moment in time.
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[Anna Banks]: That's just such a difficult environment
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[Anna Banks]: just all around. So that's kind of like the hard one.
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[Anna Banks]: I think, what's one that I think is more
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[Anna Banks]: kinda warm and fuzzy?
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[Anna Banks]: I'll have to think about that one a little bit more.
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[Katia Sausys]: Okay.
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[Katia Sausys]: Always come back to us. We're happy
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[Katia Sausys]: to continue chatting.
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[Katia Sausys]: Thank you, Anna.
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[Anna Schultz]: Yeah. Thank you, Anna,
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[Anna Schultz]: so much for giving us your time to come on, give us some of your advice, and
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[Anna Schultz]: talk us through your career journey.
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[Anna Schultz]: I think hearing you talk about kind of that intersection of
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[Anna Schultz]: where your skills are and where your passion... Where your passions are, and the kind of, you know...
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[Anna Schultz]: Is really the best place to be, and it really sounds like you found that.
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[Anna Schultz]: And I think that's really inspiring and great to hear. So,
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[Anna Banks]: Oh, thank you!
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[Anna Schultz]: Yeah, absolutely.
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[Anna Schultz]: We really appreciate it. I know you're probably so busy. So,
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[Anna Schultz]: taking the time to kinda share that with people, really appreciate it.
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[Anna Banks]: Anything for Katia. When she reached out, I was like, oh, my god I haven't talked to her so long.
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[Anna Banks]: So amazing to connect with, like...
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[Katia Sausys]: Amazing to connect, we will, we will. And our CEO Jason Harper is super, super sad
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[Katia Sausys]: to have missed you, but he will be catching up with you.
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[Anna Banks]: That's right, I'll catch him in the next go round.
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[Katia Sausys]: Have a great rest of the day, Anna
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[Anna Schultz]: Alright, thank you! Thanks for thinking of me. Take care!
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[Anna Schultz]: The Real Intelligence podcast is presented by RXA, a leading data science consulting company.
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[Anna Schultz]: RXA provides project-based consulting, staff augmentation,
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[Anna Schultz]: and direct hire staffing services for data science, data engineering and business intelligence,
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[Anna Schultz]: to help our clients unlock the value in their data faster.
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[Anna Schultz]: Learn more by visiting our website at www.rxa.io
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[Anna Schultz]: or contacting our team at
[email protected] today!
