Meeting the CEO of The Body Shop

In 2000, when I was 25, I went on my first solo overseas trip. It was Thanksgiving, and I took advantage of an extra few days off from work to travel. I booked a trip to London and stayed in a hostel, using it as my base to explore the city. In the mornings I’d have breakfast with a woman from South Africa, whom I met at the hostel, and in the evenings, I read Franny and Zooey at the pub down the street over a beer and cottage pie.

My friend’s father was an executive at The Body Shop at the time, and he and his wife were living in a cottage in Arundel. They knew I would be in the UK at Thanksgiving. As Americans, they were still hosting a large dinner and invited me to join them.

I took a rickety train to Arundel. It was loud and clanky, loose metal constantly rattling. When we reached Arundel, a porter came by, slid open the door, and I hopped out. Our dinner guests included my friend, his brother and his wife, his parents, and Anita Roddick, owner of The Body Shop.

I knew very little about her. The internet was still newish to the masses at the time. I’m not sure I even owned a computer yet.

She sat on the couch before dinner, a radiant tornado of hand motions, hair, and energy. I was awestruck that she thought traditional marketing was unimportant, especially since I had just started my marketing communications career. I learned that her husband took two years to travel on horseback from South America to North America, leaving her behind with two young children, and that’s when she started The Body Shop. I vowed secretly to never be in a marriage like that.

But she spoke with conviction about it all. She never second-guessed herself. She was confident. Her marriage’s seeming faults (in my exceptionally naive mind) helped launch a strong career and environmental activism. I listened and absorbed her, but hardly said a thing. I was not self-assured. I was in her presence for about two hours one evening 20 years ago, but I think about her often. She taught me that a mother is capable of big things while raising children, to think beyond what society and business say is the “right” way to do something, that you can have ideas and be wildly passionate about them. You don’t have to follow the status quo – whether it’s traditional marketing or traditional marriage.