Day 84: Jane Randel

December 23, 2009 at 12:01 am, Category: Featured, Inspiration

“And the other people that, of course, inspire me are the people who live through these domestic violence episodes … and every day they get up and they choose every day to either wallow in their grief and anger or push forward and do their best in the name of their child to make sure that other people don’t suffer the same fate.  How can you not be inspired by that?”

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Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Jane, for agreeing to be part of the Get Inspired! Project today, and before we begin, can you please introduce yourself?

Jane Randel: I would be happy to, and thank you for having me as part of the Project.  My name is Jane Randel, and I am by day the head of corporate communications for Liz Claiborne, Inc. and by night I am wife and mother of three little boys, ages 8, and then I have 6-year-old twins.

Toni: Oh goodness!  So you have your hands full!

Jane: Indeed.

Toni: When you think of the work that you do, the people that you come across, and you think of that word inspiration, who do you think you inspire and how do you do that?

Jane: Such an interesting question.  I think the first people I guess I hope I inspire are my children which, taking it out of the workplace for a minute, it’s doing … as  part of my job, my favorite part of my job, I oversee a very long, 18-year commitment to combating domestic violence that the company has undertaken.  It has become my passion, part of my identity in who I am.

I think looking at that, I hope to inspire my children to understand all sorts of things from that message; the most baseline being what a healthy relationship is, what it looks like, how to treat each other in a healthy relationship, but also then on a grander scheme, how to give back and why it’s important to give back and for them to realize how lucky they are.

Then, if I kind of take the concentric circles, move it out a little bit, I guess I hope to inspire the people that work for me.  I have a small but amazing team of, happens to be women, that work with me every day and they are … you know, I guess I hope to inspire them, again, not only with the work around domestic violence, the work that we do every day helping to communicate about Liz Claiborne in what has been some incredibly trying times for the company as well as the country as a whole, but also to inspire them to reach for whatever they want in terms of balancing work and life.

You know, I try and be, as much as I can … give them the flexibility that they need to live their lives and work here in a rather demanding environment.  Because my theory is that the more flexibility you give someone, the better return you’re going to get, and I hope I can inspire them in that way as well.

Toni: How do you think by providing that flexibility, the work/life balance that you try to do in work but then also through your children by setting that example, how do you think that by inspiring that way helps them to explore their potential?

Jane: The children or my coworkers?

Toni: Both.

Jane: I think it helps the kids to realize … I think it helps all of them to realize that you should always keep reaching and that it’s never going to be perfect.  I mean, there are plenty of days … just this morning, I ran and got my son before I made a 7:30 train a disposable camera to take on a school trip.  We ran out and got it and dropped him right off at the house and ran and made a train.

It’s never perfect; it’s always running.  But it can be what you want it to be, and I guess I hope to inspire them to reach for more and to be able to bask in their achievements for a little while and then keep reaching.

Toni: That’s interesting that you do bring that into the mix, to bask in your achievement but then to also keep reaching.

Jane: Yeah, you know, I think that all too often — and I’m probably guiltier of it than I’d like to admit — what does success feel like?  I just challenged an employee yesterday on that.  What does it feel like to you?  Because you have to give yourself a little bit of … you have to enable yourself to pat yourself on the back sometimes and feel good when you’ve accomplished something.  But we all know that if you become smug and content, your progress tends to stop, and you don’t really succeed at whatever it is that you’re trying to do.

And I think that it’s good to be able to acknowledge when you’ve achieved and done something good, and then you need to keep reaching and moving forward.

Toni: So the flexibility part of it in the workforce and dealing with your team, how do you think being flexible and hoping that return comes your way, but your techniques with dealing with your staff, how do you think that that helps them to explore their potential?

Jane: I think it enables them to … Well, first and foremost, I am a big proponent of you kind of catch more flies with honey.  And so I think that, you know, the more understanding you are – and it actually extends to my babysitters, too – she is a working mom just like I am, and I just think it’s important to kind of understand that.  I think it allows them to feel … I think it’s important for them to feel as though they can explore and yet still make mistakes.

My CEO is a big proponent of something called servant leadership, and one of the tenets of servant leadership is being able to show vulnerability.  And I think that when you struggle with work/life balance and see … When I got here at 10:00 one morning and then had a sick kid and had to turn around and make an 11-something train home, you know, I think you show vulnerability.  And I think it’s important to show that all the answers are not always before us, but that together we can find them.

So I find that in my team here, and I find it with the PR firm – who I hate calling just a PR firm – but the agency I work with on our “Love Is Not Abuse” campaign, this domestic violence awareness campaign that we have been running, as I mentioned.  And in particular, there is a woman there that is a huge partner of mine, and we’ve become great friends and, beyond that, just really both very committed to pushing this forward.

Toni: People who listen to these interviews on a regular basis know that there are certain words that come to me when I’m listening to you or the people that are on the interview, and the word that I just wrote down for you was empathetic.  That’s what I’m hearing, and that there’s some great empathy that you have for the people who work for you that, you know, every day they’re struggling just like you are, and there’s a great empathy that’s coming from you on that.  That’s just the word that hit me just now.

When you think about inspiration from your own perspective, Jane, and what you need to be inspired, what do you reach for?  What do you do to be inspired?

Jane: I’m not sure I have a good answer.  I mean, I don’t necessarily, you know, go for a walk through a museum or run to the beach.  I’m not sure that I have a solid answer for that.  I just know that I look a lot to the people around me.  My family, beyond my husband and my sons, but I have two sisters and my mom, and I have these amazing people that I work with who have become incredibly good friends of mine.  Someone who is a friend and mentor — who retired last year but we stay close — we speak several times a week.

I think I look around me.  I look at what other people are doing.  And not in an envious way — but in kind of an awe-inspiring way — and say “Look at all these people are accomplishing,” and it inspires me to keep pushing through.

I think that everybody has times where you step back and feel as though the world is closing in on you.  I’m not sure how I’m going to, you know, make it do all the things that I have before me to do, but you know, then you kind of … I find that taking a deep breath and accomplishing one thing at a time.

This is not rocket science, nor did I make this up.  It inspires me to keep going.  I know that sounds kind of basic, but it does.  You know, once you accomplish something, you feel like “Okay, I can handle this” and bite off smaller pieces.

And the other people that, of course, inspire me are the people who live through these domestic violence episodes, either as victims themselves or more recently of parents of teenagers who have been victims or parents who have lost their teens to dating abuse.

I look at these people, and every day they get up and they choose every day to either wallow in their grief and anger or push forward and do their best in the name of their child to make sure that other people don’t suffer the same fate.  How can you not be inspired by that?

Toni: Absolutely.  It’s just amazing.  When you know that you need to fill yourself up and to take that break for yourself, is there anything that you do?  Are there any tools that you reach for?  Is there music that you love to listen to or say “You know what, I need a break for me so that I can be re-inspired”?  Is there any other methodology or tools that you might use?

Jane: Yeah, I mean I have been practicing yoga for a couple of years, and I find that that always energizes me.  One of my sisters and I went just this past June on a little retreat for a few days, and that’s always … you know, a yoga retreat, and it’s really, really energizing.

I like to … I have an elliptical in my house, and I work out as many days a week as I can.  Again, I find that helpful as well.  Just watch incredibly mindless television.  I don’t want to watch anything heavy, you know?  My husband comes up and he’s like, “You’re watching this nonsense, this drivel.”  And I say “Right, because I just want to be entertained for the time I’m on the elliptical and just zone out and fall into someone else’s life for a little while.”

I like to read, and again, you know, there are books that I read for information, but there are a lot of books that I read for entertainment.  It’s just the way that I escape and go somewhere else for a little while.

Toni: When you look at moving yourself forward and exploring your own potential, what do you need?  What do you need to explore your own potential so that you can keep moving forward?

Jane: You know, I’m not sure that I have an answer for that.  I have all my life felt like I have fallen into the things that I’ve done.

For example, when I went to college, you know, I wasn’t sure what my major would be.  I went through a very liberal arts school, and I ended up taking a Japanese history class the end of my freshman year and suddenly decided that I wanted to take Japanese language and ended up being an East Asian studies major.

When I got out of school, I had no idea what I wanted.  I thought I wanted to be in advertising but had met somebody from a PR firm and took a writing test, realized what a press release was, and suddenly realized I’d been doing that a lot, you know, in high school and college.  I’d been doing PR anyway in high school and college.

I can’t really tell you that I’ve orchestrated my career here, either.  I’ve been at Liz Claiborne for 17 years, which is crazy.  I always said I didn’t want to be 40 in here, and lo and behold, here I am.  I have always just been fortunate enough to seize opportunities that were placed before me to expand my own horizons.

So, when I left my PR firm and they said “You’re going into fashion beauty, you’re going to be pigeon-holed.”  I’m anything but pigeon-holed.  I have been doing corporate communications for a public company for a lot of years now, and I don’t feel pigeon-holed at all.

Toni: In your industry, are there things that you need to do to stay up on the latest and greatest, and that moves you, that you’re going “Oh, I have to work on this.  I have to get a little more knowledgeable in this?”  Does that have to happen?

Jane: Yeah, and if you can show me a way to make me do that, I would be really pleased.  Yes, there are definitely more things that I should be doing in that regard.  Obviously you read the trade papers every day, and I am fortunate to have some people who happily take me to meet other people and make introductions for me.

But it’s interesting; you know, I find I was just … I’m not sure this is on the topic, but it just struck me.  You know, networking is such an important thing, and I have found that when I go to big events, I’m terrible at networking.  I am not someone who’s comfortable at walking up to people, having a conversation, and just interjecting myself or injecting myself.

However, in a smaller setting, you know, I’ve managed to make amazing partnerships just by meeting people in really random ways.  I’m much more comfortable in that way and taking advantage of networking in that way.  But it’s hard for me.

Toni: It’s interesting — and I don’t know if you realize that this is what has come out in this interview, and that’s why these are just so amazing to listen to people like yourself — but you’ve said a couple of points here that even your networking on a big scale you don’t purposely seek that out, but you have had wonderful partnerships and powerful partnerships in random ways.

You have fallen into things in random ways — like your career and what you’re doing — and I’m imagining that it’s not so … maybe not as random as you think.

Jane: I’m sure you’re right.

Toni: And I’m wondering if those random ways also have put you in touch with the work that you do on domestic violence?  You said that you’ve been dealing with that for 18 years.

Jane: Yeah, I’ve been dealing with it for a long time … well, 15 years for me, but yeah.  I have to be honest, I’m not sure … Domestic violence is my issue and my passion now.  I think that what I embraced at the time was the opportunity to give back to the community in a creative way that kind of flexed different muscles for me in my career.

I’ve maintained all along that I think it could have been any issue at the time.  Now I’m quite committed, and this has been entrenched and this is my thing.  Had we been breast cancer or heart disease at the time, perhaps that would be my thing.

But there is something … you know, domestic violence is a bit of an underdog issue in the sense that no one really likes to talk about it.  And I’m sure you could barely name a celebrity that has really made the same kind of commitment to it the way others have to other issues, which is unfortunately very important in our society in order to kind of remove stigmas around things.

So now, perhaps you’re right.  You know, I mean I think maybe I wouldn’t haven’t taken to another issue quite the way I’ve taken to this one.

Toni: I’m wondering with who you inspire — and you use the words “I hope to inspire” — and how you go about it, plus what you seek for inspiration and how you explore your own potential, which you originally stated was very random, and that there’s not a process that you go through to do that.  I’m just wondering if that perceived randomness hasn’t been the most powerful thing you’ve done.

Jane: It may very well be.

Toni: It’s amazing.  It’s really amazing.  You’ve given a lot of insight, and your honesty is very appreciative and that’s where people that are reading and listening to these interviews will connect with you, and that’s the power of this Project.  For that, I thank you for giving your time today to tell us a little bit about you and how you come at that word inspiration.  So, Jane, for that I thank you so very much.

Jane: Thank you very much for letting me be  part of this.

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For more information about Jane Randel:  jane_randel@liz.com

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