Pendleton CEO Jennifer Ingraffea on Leading with Curiosity and Building High Integrity Teams

About this episode

Jennifer Ingraffea discusses her leadership philosophy and experiences in building high integrity teams.

Jennifer Ingraffea is a seasoned executive leader with over 25 years of experience in the retail, apparel, product merchandising, and management sectors. In July 2025, Jennifer became the CEO of Pendleton Woolen Mills; a family-owned business since its founding in the 1860s. Before joining Pendleton, she served as Chief Product & Merchandising Officer at The North Face, prior to which, she worked at Nike in a number of high-level executive leadership roles. Jennifer and Roy discuss her new role and dig into essential leadership skills like curiosity, stewardship, and much more. Highlights from our conversation include: Core beliefs, values, and principles in Jenn’s leadership playbook (2:53) Leading through cycles of massive consumer and retail evolution (5:39) Identifying areas of a business that are in need of clarification and simplification (7:36) Aligning a team towards a long term vision (11:01) Lessons learned around hiring and team building at major brands (14:58) How Jenn developed her hiring process and philosophy (17:07) What a great leader looks like to Jenn (18:36) Valuable traits that Jenn identifies when hiring direct reports (22:58) Visit HowIHire.com for…

People in this episode

Host: Roy Notowitz

Guest: Jennifer Ingraffea

Topics covered

• leadership
• curiosity
• team building
• hiring process
• integrity

Keywords

• Pendleton Woolen Mills
• The North Face
• Nike
• executive leadership
• retail evolution

Mentioned in this episode

Products: Pendleton Woolen Mills, The North Face, Nike

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