#78: Sonia Syngal: President and CEO, Old Navy

No Limits with Rebecca Jarvis

ABC News

Business, Careers

4.7 • 703 Ratings

🗓️ 3 April 2018

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

As President and CEO of Old Navy, Sonia Syngal begins her day by reading customer comments every morning. She became CEO of the $7 billion, 57,000-employee business in 2017 and has lead the company to record growth. But her path to retail wasn’t always so clear. Sonia, who has a background in mechanical engineering, began her career working for a car company before eventually finding her way to Silicon Valley and eventually to Gap Inc. and then exclusively Old Navy. On this episode, Sonia opens up about why she veered from her position at Ford for grad school in Silicon Valley, career transitioning at a senior level, and what she believes it takes to become the CEO of a public company. Congratulations to our No Limits Entrepreneur of the Week: Hipatia Lopez, CEO of H.L. Unico LLC and Inventor of Empanada Fork Find out more: http://www.empanadafork.com/ Want to be a featured NLEOTW? Know someone who should? Send your nominations to [email protected] Don’t forget to subscribe and leave us a review! It’s easy! Click here: http://bit.ly/2ks4f90 ABOUT REBECCA JARVIS: Rebecca Jarvis is an Emmy Award-winning journalist and the Chief Biz, Tech and Econ correspondent for ABC News. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm 21 years old, a young engineer, don't know a lot.
0:06.4	And that role was supervising a midnight shift manufacturing line.
0:11.3	So probably one of the youngest people in the room?
0:13.0	I was by far the youngest.
0:14.5	The supervisor.
0:15.4	The supervisor, you know.
0:16.8	And there I was with my clipboard and my pencil and my stopwatch.
0:20.5	And my job was to assess how productive they were.
0:25.2	So could you imagine, right?
0:26.7	I was a bad guy.
0:27.7	It was hard.
0:29.7	From ABC, it's no limits.
0:32.7	I'm Rebecca Jarvis.
0:33.9	And each week we're talking to the most bold and influential women playing at the top of their game,
0:40.0	trying to demystify success and what it really takes to get there and all the trade-offs.
0:46.2	Whether you're looking for answers or you just want to hear a good story, you're in the right place.
0:53.3	On today's episode, Sonia Single.
0:56.0	She's the president and CEO of Old Navy, leading the company to record growth at a time of great uncertainty and challenges for retailers.
1:04.0	But it wasn't always a clear path to clothing.
1:07.0	Sonia got her start at a car company in Detroit, took a leap of faith and moved to Silicon Valley, led manufacturing at a major tech business, before finding her way to Old Navy, which, by the way, got its name from a bar in Paris.
1:21.1	Now her employees are 77% women. Here is Sonia Single.
1:27.3	Sonia Single, welcome to No Limits. Thank you very much. I'm glad to be here.
	...

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