Weinberg College
of Arts & Sciences

Waldron Career Conversation with Katrina Gentile '08 & Smera Dwivedi '27

In this episode of the “Weinberg in the World” podcast, student host Smera Dwivedi interviews Katrina Gentile, VP and head of global strategy at Wella Company. Katrina, a Northwestern alum, shares her career journey from consulting at BCG to various roles in the beauty industry, including a long tenure at Estée Lauder and her current role at Wella. She discusses her passion for problem-solving, her transition from consulting to corporate strategy, and her interest in the emotionally driven beauty industry. 

Transcript:

Smera:
Okay. Welcome to the Weinberg in the World Podcast, where we bring stories of interdisciplinary thinking in today's complex world. My name is Smera Dwivedi, and I'm your student host of this special episode of the podcast. I'm a second-year student studying chemistry on the pre-medical path, and today I'm excited to be speaking with Ms. Katrina Gentile who is the VP and head of global strategy at Wella Company. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today.

Katrina:
Oh, it's my pleasure. Happy to be here.

Smera:
To start off with today, I would just like you to go ahead and introduce yourself.

Katrina:
So, hi. I'm Katrina Gentile. I am a proud Northwestern alum. I graduated class of 2008. I have spent my career in various business fields. I was an econ and math double major at Northwestern, and I started my career in consulting at BCG right out of undergrad. After that, I've spent the rest of my career in the beauty industry, so from consulting, went to Estée Lauder in a corporate strategy role for two years, and then after that, spent about eight years operating at Estée Lauder. In between, I got my MBA. And after Estée Lauder, spent a couple of years in startup land at a couple of indie brands in the beauty space before joining Wella at the beginning of this year as the head of strategy.
So really thrilled to be a part of the Wella Company journey. It's a long history, a 140-year company, but only four years as an independent company so we're trying to figure out not just, we're grown up, but we're still trying to figure out what we want to be when we grow up, and that's a large part of my role.
That's me personally. I have a mom, I have two little kids, six and three, and most of my free time is with them on whatever it is they want to do.

Smera:
That's adorable. So how did you end up picking Wella or end up being where you are now?

Katrina:
Well, where I am now is a bigger question than Wella. Maybe I'll start with the bigger question and then get to Wella. I ended up where I am now for two reasons. One, I've always loved solving problems. I remember doing word searches as a kid, math books, and it sounds corny, but it was always something like puzzles and games and crosswords and things like that was just always something that kept my mind busy. And that's actually what really led me to consulting because consulting is all about solving problems for companies.
And I truly believe BCG is the best job, first job for any person. And not just BCG, but consulting in general. I had a really incredible formative experience there. I use those skills every day, not just in this role, but in every role I've had. And I ended up using that BCG platform to go to Estée Lauder and start in corporate strategy and then ultimately operate.
Beauty has always been something I've been interested in personally as a consumer, but more because I find beauty to be a very emotionally driven category, and it's about making someone feel good, and I love that. I love that about what I do. And so when the opportunity arose to go to Estée Lauder, I jumped at it and I had a very long career at Estée Lauder that really brought me to Wella.
And I think doing my detour in startup land, Wella is a happy medium, and that's why I joined the company. I'm excited about this role and continue to be excited about this role. We are a mid-sized, I would say, company. We're not as big as Estée Lauder, but we're not as small as a startup. We're somewhere in the middle and we're trying to establish what the future looks like for our company.
Right now we're owned by a private equity firm called KKR. And KKR doesn't want to own us forever. No private equity wants to own any asset forever. So it's a really exciting journey to say, "Okay, what does our company look like in a post-KKR world? What do we want to be? How do we want to establish ourselves? What capabilities do we need to build to get there?" And from a strategy perspective, for someone like me who likes solving problems, there's a lot of them to solve. So that's been the common thread in my career, and that's ultimately what brought me to Wella company.

Smera:
Got you. Okay, that makes sense solving problems. How did you end up deciding on Wella, or how did you find BCG or Estée Lauder as a position or a company that you could be a part of?

Katrina:
So look, it was very different in my day when I went to Northwestern. I understand now that people apply for summer internships a long time before the internship happened. When I was in college, that was not a thing. So I remember going through recruiting for my BCG summer internship through campus recruiting. I think I went through it in January and my summer started in June. It was not a long gap, and I found it just by knowing that consulting was of interest and going to the campus recruiting sessions and signing up for the campus interviews and then doing a campus interview. So it was a very straightforward path for me at BCG.
And from BCG, again, I am going to date myself here, but finding my first job at Estée Lauder was just a, it was a very similar process. Lauder posted a job on BCG's job board. I applied for it, and I interviewed for it. But in a lot of ways, I think things are more difficult today. I mean, I watch people going through consulting interview processes, and I hear people talking about how much farther in advance it is and how fewer spots there are, or I guess more people applying for more spots so the take rate is lower. So I fully recognize that my journey is a little bit different, but that was my path, at least to BCG and Lauder.
From Lauder, it's been much more about my network. And that's one piece of advice that I really give to everybody is this concept of a network seems so theoretical, I think, and it did to me too, until you have to use it. And when I left Estée Lauder and was looking for what I wanted to do next, I was senior enough in my career that it was no longer like a job gets posted, you apply for it and you get interview and you get it. A lot of these, especially in beauty and especially in some of these industries that are a little more tight-knit, a lot of positions aren't posted. A lot of positions are done through someone who knows someone who knows someone or private equity companies who have this network of executives that they place in roles.
And what I found actually is that when I left Estée Lauder, both of the startups I worked for were people I'd worked for at Estée Lauder or worked with at Estée Lauder, worked alongside at Estée Lauder who were looking for someone, and neither of the jobs I had were posted publicly. They were both word of mouth through my network that I ended up working there. And Wella was similar. So my old boss at Lauder is now at KKR who owns Wella Company, and she introduced me to my now boss at Wella.
So all of that to say, I think I can't stress enough how every person you interact with may come back somewhere. Just today I was talking to our new head of HR, and it turns out she's also a Northwestern alum and we overlapped when we were there. And it's really crazy how we didn't know each other at Northwestern, but it's really crazy how small the world is and so my best advice to people is it's never too soon to start making genuine connections. It's never too soon to start engaging with people and asking them what they're interested in and talking to them about what you're interested in because you never know when it'll come back and when you'll be looking for something or someone that they might have something or someone for.

Smera:
Right. Okay, this makes sense. So you said your advice is to expand your network, make sure you are networking. What's the best way you can ensure you're doing that because it's nice to say, but that putting it into-

Katrina:
You know what? I don't actually actively network. I don't go to networking events. Well, I guess sometimes I do, but always because I'm genuinely interested in the event, not because I want to broaden my network. My network has been built by genuinely engaging with people that I meet and I work with. So I didn't go to a networking event and meet people, though I know that that is a viable way. I'm a little bit of an introvert in some ways, and I'm not very good in those situations where I don't know anyone and I'm like, it's hard for me to find my way. I actually find I do best just by talking to people in confined settings that I know.
So every job, every internship I've had, I've really stayed in touch with people, even if it's just quick emails or texts or following them on Instagram and DM-ing them sometimes. And to me, that feels much more authentic. It's something that I do because I choose to, not because I have any sort of motive. And what I realized when I was looking to leave Lauder and then when I was looking for this new role at Wella about a year ago, is that even people that I hadn't done that or spoken to or texted with in the last three or four years, because I had genuinely invested them in them at the time that I worked with them, when I reached back out of the blue, they were always willing to help, always willing to answer an email, always willing to answer a call.
And a couple of those people ended up helping me find really meaningful opportunities. And I had an advisory role at a company that came to me through someone that I worked with at BCG who I haven't spoken to probably since 2012, 2013. But because I reached out to her with a question on something else, she was like, "Oh, hey, actually there's something that maybe you could be interested in," and she followed up.
So it's about figuring out what works for you. Somebody who's really outgoing and has no social anxiety or anything might like going to networking events. For me personally, I prefer the one-on-one connections, and I just encourage people to do what feels genuine to them because other people can tell when it's not authentic, right?

Smera:
Got it, understood. It's good advice that I will have to take part of. So with all your roles and your career, what's something you wish you did differently or regret or wish you took a different approach in?

Katrina:
That's a great question. I think everybody needs to trust their gut and not what somebody else defines for you as you should do for your career or should be a path for your career. For me personally, I went and worked in a couple of startups, and I think I knew to be honest with you in my gut that startup life wasn't necessarily for me. I think I knew that I preferred the security and the safety of a big company, but everybody in my business school class was going to startups and so I was like, yeah, I should do that too.
I learned a ton. I mean, it was probably the biggest two-year learning experience in my life, but it wasn't for me and I think I knew that at the beginning, but I felt like that's what an HBS grad should do so that's what I did. And at the end, it ended up being two years that it could have been better served somewhere else for me, if I'm honest. So I think trusting your gut is a big thing, knowing what works for you personally and not being swayed is a big thing.
And I would say the other thing is, at least when I graduated, and I don't know how it is today, there was a lot of pressure to have a very linear path. Like you did two years in consulting, then you went to HBS, then you did this, then you did that, then you did this, and I had that mindset for myself to be a CEO someday that this is what I had to do and it was very linear. And I realized, somebody said to me a couple years ago when I was not super happy in startups that if you look at people with linear career paths, they're usually pretty boring careers, and that has stuck with me since someone that advice was given to me because at the end of the day, I want to do work that I feel happy doing and that has meaning.

Smera:
Right.

Katrina:
And yeah, I don't think that doing something linearly always gets you there.

Smera:
Understood. I think in undergrad especially, it's easier to think of your future career as being pretty linear, but it's usually not going to be like that, so that's great to hear. That's very reassuring. Okay, so you said you started BCG with a career fair of some sort at Northwestern?

Katrina:
Yeah, they did a campus recruiting event.

Smera:
Okay, okay. Did you ever look into anything else other than BCG?

Katrina:
Well, I applied to all the consulting firms.

Smera:
[inaudible 00:13:07].

Katrina:
BCG, Bain, McKinsey, there were some others I applied to at the time. But I had done a summer in investment banking my sophomore year summer, and then I applied to BCG in consulting for my junior year summer.

Smera:
Okay.

Katrina:
I was super fortunate that I hadn't offered to go back to Citigroup my junior year summer, so I worked there as a sophomore. They had a sophomore program at that time, and they made me an offer to come back as an IB intern my junior summer. So I was very lucky in the sense that I had a fallback that was very, very good, and I didn't do a lot of summer recruiting, but I was very lucky to get an internship at BCG. And then I came back to BCG full-time after I graduated.

Smera:
Got you. And so then when you started college, did you know you wanted to go into consulting or investment banking of some sort?

Katrina:
Yes and no. I knew I was interested in business, so I knew that I wanted to study economics. I tested that hypothesis a little bit, but I thought that's what I wanted to study. I didn't know what that would mean. And I think a lot of eighteen-year-olds don't, quite honestly. Other than people who say with confidence that they want to be pre-med or that they want to be a very specialized field, I think a lot of people, at least in my experience, were exploring at that time.
So I think that there was, I sort of knew, but not really. I didn't know what it would look like. That really was crystallized for me when I did my summer in banking, which I took it as I have this cool opportunity, let me just try it out. And the summer prior, I had worked in city government in Boston where I'm from in the Economic Development Council Office. And so I knew a little bit about what public service could look like or government could look like, and then I figured I'd go the extreme other direction in banking and consulting actually was somewhere in the middle.

Smera:
Understood. Actually just speaking of your time in undergrad, do you remember what was probably the hardest thing to understand as an undergrad or hardest class or something social that was just difficult to overcome or to deal with?

Katrina:
Say it one more time. I'm not sure I followed the question.

Smera:
Well, when you were in undergrad, what would be the hardest thing you faced that was aside from just academics?

Katrina:
Oh, in undergrad, that's a great question. I think, and look, I acknowledge that this is a very privileged thing to be able to say, but I don't think I struggled with too much in undergrad only in the sense that I found my group at Northwestern, my people really early, and I think that that is something that I don't undervalue.
I was very fortunate. I lived in Allison Hall and my freshman year roommate is still my best friend to this day. My kids call her Auntie Janelle. She is fantastic. And I lived down the hall from a group of individuals, four or five guys, and Janelle and I just became super close, and they're still, all of them are still in my life today. And that group really got me through Northwestern. So no matter what I was struggling with, no matter what I faced, I had this close group of six or seven people that I leaned on.
And it wasn't to say that I had a easy-breezy ride. There were definitely drama moments and things that I didn't do as well as I wanted to do, but if I really take a step back and look at it, I don't feel like there was something where I would say, "Yeah, I really had a tough time with that particular thing," right?

Smera:
Right.

Katrina:
It was more just there was the initial adjustment to college and then making sure I stayed on top of my grades and stayed on top of the extracurriculars and all of those sorts of things. But truly for me, the people that came out of Northwestern really helped me through a lot of it. So, yeah.

Smera:
That's good to know. And it's good to know that you're still friends with her. That's-

Katrina:
Oh yeah, and not just her. I mean, all of them are still in my life. One of my friends has three children, two of them are about the same age as two of my kids, and they come once a year and spend a weekend with us in New York. We go and see them in Massachusetts a lot. These are lifelong people for me, and I can't stress enough how grateful I am to Northwestern for giving me that community.

Smera:
That makes sense. Then speaking of your friends, how often do you, you just mentioned you ran into a Northwestern alum in your company and you guys actually overlapped. How often does that happen?

Katrina:
Somewhat frequently, I would say. As much as you'd think. I think the community of Northwestern and New York community is maybe a little bit less concentrated, and then Northwestern and New York and beauty community is maybe a little less concentrated. There were definitely a couple of us in my class at business school and every so often there's so-and-so who knows so-and-so who knows so-and-so. But I think that the people that I've stayed in touch with from Northwestern are the ones, and that are in my life from Northwestern, are the ones that I knew in college. There have been a couple new ones, but maybe not as often as you'd think, at least in my particular city industry combo.

Smera:
That's wonderful to know. You said not very much in New York. Would you ever consider going back to Boston?

Katrina:
That's a loaded question. If my parents are watching this, absolutely because they still live there. No, honestly, the answer is probably no, unless there was some real reason for it. I love New York City. I live in Brooklyn and Park Slope. I love Park Slope. My kids love it here. My husband's very happy here. I don't see any world that we leave before our kids go to college, and then when I leave, I'm not going somewhere cold.

Smera:
Makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. Do you think the alumni community is bigger in Boston or in New York?

Katrina:
Probably in New York, but I think in Chicago is where it's probably most prominent.

Smera:
Right, it's going to be the most concentrated.

Katrina:
The other thing I would say is just for me also because I did go to graduate school, I have two alumni communities. And the HBS community is very, very strong here in New York so that might be a part of it too for me is just having those two different elements.

Smera:
That makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. So what kind of skills or habits did you pick up on, or talents did you pick up on that have helped you in your career? Like stuff you learned at whether it was BCG that's helped you now, at Wella or even other types of skills or talents or abilities?

Katrina:
I would say that the biggest capability build I had was at BCG. And I'll tell you that the couple of things that I still carry with me from my BCG days because I believe that they are the reason I've been able to make it this far.
Number one is a really robust analytical toolkit, so being able to work quickly in Excel. Some of that is just I am a mathematical person by nature, I was a math major, but I can build models, I can use Excel. I'm not the best, but I can do well enough to get me through, and that I think if number one.
Number two is the ability to learn quickly. It's something that when you're a consultant is really important because you're not on a client project for two years. You're on a client project sometimes as short as six weeks, and you need to be able to learn that client's business and speak about it with confidence really, really fast. So the first week of any client engagement, you are really learning that client's business. And if on week two you're expected to know at least the industry and the category and the dynamics. And so the ability to learn and digest information quickly is something that in every job I've had since BCG has been called out as one of my strengths, and I really attribute that to BCG.
The third thing is the ability to see both big and small. And it's another thing that when I look at folks, especially in beauty who have grown up in beauty, a lot of times it's really hard for them to step back and see the bigger picture. And that's something that consulting really teaches you from a very, very junior age or a junior tenure that I think has helped me tremendously. The ability to take a step back and say, okay, what is the actual story here? What is actually going on? Distill a complex problem, make it seem simple, and then really walk through the action items that could get us to where we need to be.
I would say the last thing is the confidence to work with senior people, even when you're junior, to speak up to express your mind in a way that is not arrogant, that's not seen as overstepping, but that's additive and that shows it really is inquisitive and adds value. So those are the things I would say I learned at BCG.

Smera:
Okay, and then similarly, I'm not as familiar with the field of consulting. I've always been in the medical path. What's a big misconception people have about the field or the people or the work?

Katrina:
I mean, I think all those consulting movies are actually a misconception. There is some element of you come in, you tell people what to do and you leave. That is sort of true. You don't actually do it yourself. There is a little bit of truth to it, but I think that consultants really can be thought partners if business leaders let them be. And I do believe that people who have a couple of years of consulting experience can go and do, not everything, we can't go be a doctor, but learning how to tackle a problem and learning how to learn quickly can allow you to be successful in a range of jobs beyond being a consultant.

Smera:
Right. And so similarly, it feels like you have a lot of skills and abilities that you were able to pick up through this career, but how does that help you balance between your personal interests? Like you said, you're a mother, you have two kids. How are you balancing that with your lifestyle?

Katrina:
There is no balance. There is no balance. There's only trying, right?

Smera:
Okay.

Katrina:
And I think that I tell myself all the time that there will be a day that my kids don't want to sit down and have dinner with me, but right now they do and I need to take advantage of that. And I think 80% of balance is mental. 80% of it is acknowledging that you won't be able to do something for work because you're going to do something for your kids and making that choice and being okay with making that choice and letting it go. And that's taken me a long time to figure that out. My daughter is almost seven, and I think I'm just now figuring it out. And I'll probably keep figuring it out as she gets older, my older one.
But I think if we strive for balance, we'll never get there. We just have to strive for doing our best and acknowledge that our best will never be good enough on everything and that's okay, as long as it's good enough on some things at the right times.

Smera:
Exactly. And then when it's not good enough, how do you stay motivated? How do you [inaudible 00:24:15]?

Katrina:
I had a boss once who whenever she would see someone starting a spiral, she'd start singing, "Let it Go" from Frozen, just break out in song and just start singing it. And I hear her singing in my head sometimes when I start to get myself down a path like that and I just let it go. I have to force myself to let it go. You have to because otherwise the anxiety will drive you crazy. No one person can do it all.
This concept of having it all, you can have it all at the right times and different times, but I have yet, at least anyway, to meet anyone who has it all in that very traditional excels in all areas at all times in all ways concept. You can excel in some areas. I can excel at work this year, and maybe next year I'll excel at my family life and do okay at work, but it's hard to keep every ball equally high in the air at all times. I personally haven't found the solution. If you do, you let me know.

Smera:
Oh, no. Especially I feel like going to Northwestern, it seems like everybody's at there all at all times and that's just not true, so it's definitely good advice. And then speaking up, how do you determine whether you take a risk or you play it safe in something like your career?

Katrina:
I don't think you can determine each. You got to trust your gut.

Smera:
Right, okay.

Katrina:
You got to trust your gut. You got to know. I always ask myself what's the worst thing that can happen? I get fired and I find another job. What's the worst thing that happen if the company goes under? I find another job. What's the worst thing that can happen? I've been sharing a lot of past boss anecdotes. Another one, I had a past boss who used to say, "It's just lipstick. We just sell lipstick. We don't cure cancer." And I think the perspective is important. What is truly the worst thing that could happen? If this decision that I'm making fails, we sell a little less lipstick, we'll probably still be okay.
So I think that it's just about, it's not easy. I'm making light of what is a very difficult thing because I too can second guess every decision I make all the time, but I think over time I've just had to force myself to just make a call and trust my gut.

Smera:
Well, that's really good advice. And then speaking of what's a time where you might've not done as well as you'd liked or you failed at something and how did you grow from it if it was something like that?

Katrina:
I mean, look, there are tons of times I can point to where I haven't done as well as I'd hoped, and I said it, nobody's perfect. Nobody excels all the time. I think one that comes to mind is I can't, obviously confidentiality I can't go into too many details, but the startups I worked at, neither one of them flew off the shelves. There were times where we had launches that didn't work. There were times where the business was struggling. There were times, and I think that's part of being a startup. That's part of working at a small company that doesn't do billions of dollars or even hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. There are things that you do that don't work.
I think what I have to remind myself in those moments is this is how companies are built. This is how people are built. This is how people learn. This is how people grow. No company, no person, no project hits it out of the park every time. And it's about what you do with the learning rather than being perfect at all times. Because if you're perfect at all times, you never learn. You just keep doing the same thing. So I think that's the mindset you have to have. To me it's all mental and it's all what you make of it, and it's all how you take that learning and don't do it again and use it to do something else that's even better that's important.

Smera:
For sure. So to close us off because I don't want the Zoom to cut me off, but just to close us off, what is the best piece of general advice you could give to somebody in your position?

Katrina:
In my position or at Northwestern?

Smera:
I mean, both. Let's say both.

Katrina:
Okay. So if I were talking to current students, my best advice is don't do the thing that you think you're supposed to do. Do the thing that you think you'll be good at.

Smera:
Okay.

Katrina:
And I think I see too many people saying, "Well, I'm supposed to do X. I should do Y. My parents think I should do Z. I always wanted to do X, so I'm going to do it." That's a recipe in my opinion, for being unhappy in whatever it is you choose to do. You spend more time at work than you do with your family. You spend more years working than you do in school. Pick the thing that's really you're going to enjoy and that makes you happy and do it. And if you don't want to do X, Y, and Z, don't do it just because your parents think you should, or your friends or your career counselor or your teacher or your brother or whomever. It's not just parents. It's any number of people. So that's my best advice to students.
I would say to people in my position or who are looking to do what I do or who are mid to later in their careers, the advice I give is the advice I gave earlier, which is don't underestimate the power of talking to people and building genuine relationships with people because you never know when someone's going to need someone like you. And if they don't think of you or they think of you in a negative light, that won't be you. So that's the advice that I would give to people.

Smera:
Definitely heavy on the first one. My parents pushed me towards a medical path. I wasn't sure if I wanted to so we'll see how that ends up being.

Katrina:
Look, it's a long life. It's a long life. Whatever you choose, you're going to keep doing it and you got to love it, especially medicine. My sister and brother-in-law are both doctors, and I see it firsthand. You've really got to love it.

Smera:
You have to love it, for sure. And the second one, for sure. Just don't burn bridges, I guess.

Katrina:
It's not just that. It's not just don't burn bridges. It's really truly invest in people because you want to.

Smera:
That makes sense. Okay, thank you so much for speaking with us.

Katrina:
My pleasure. It was lovely getting to know you.

Smera:
It was wonderful getting to know you too. Thank you for listening to this special episode of Weinberg in the World Podcast. We hope you have a great day, and go Cats.