Celebrate The Pivot: Evite CMO on Building A Brand, Changing Careers Post-COVID
Karen Graham, CMO at Evite, is about celebrating human connections and pivoting when you need to in your career.
Maybe, just maybe, Karen Graham can attribute her new career as vice president of marketing and brand for Evite back to her mom who loved to throw parties when she, her younger brother and older sister were growing up in the northern suburbs of Chicago.
“I’ve always loved events, I’m very social, but I haven’t thought before that my mom loved throwing parties. She went big for birthday parties. So something rubbed off on me,” says Graham, who is in charge of rebranding Evite, the 24-year-old online invitation platform.
Eliminating a reliance on ads for the brand, and concentrating on “delivering joy,” Graham says her journey to this position began with a passion for design, graphics, storytelling, brand building and fashion. And all of these come into play in her latest role.
Graduating from the University of Illinois in 2003, after studying graphic design and fine arts, she also studied abroad in London and decided she had “ambition to work in fashion and design.”
“Eliminating a reliance on ads for the @Evite brand, and concentrating on “delivering joy,” Graham says her journey to this position began with a passion for design, graphics, storytelling, brand building and fashion. #careerbuilding”
Post graduation, she moved to Los Angeles to work for a design collective that included Juicy Couture and Yaya until 2009.
“It was amazing doing website design, editorial, soup to nuts,” Graham says. “That’s where I got excited about building a brand story.”
The market crash of 2009 deeply affected retail and fashion, so Graham went to work for HauteLook as marketing director of the fashion startup. In 2011, it was acquired by Nordstrom.
“I was able to grow the company with rapid growth in content, creative and development. E-commerce was blowing up,” Graham says.
Read more in Take The Lead on layoffs and pivots.
Staying on with Nordstrom as head of creative for Nordstrom Rack and HauteLook from 2011 until 2014, Graham says she helped to grow the brand to be a $450 million business, launching NRack.com.
In charge of creative, editorial, events, public relations and more, Graham says she loved it. “It was a moment in my career to decide if I was going to stay in creative—or was I going to pivot and expand? I decided I wanted to do it and see the brand all the way through.”
Becoming vice president of marketing at Nordstrom’s was a “big thing,” Graham says, and she held that position from 2017 to 2018.
Read more in Take The Lead on women in marketing
“I was so ingrained in the business and it all felt very natural. I got exposed to so much,” Graham says of her career at Nordstrom. “It was the best education I could have.”
But she also loved the startup business and in September 2018 she took on a role as senior VP of BH Cosmetics, partially because Nordstrom wanted her to relocate to their headquarters in Seattle. The startup was not a good fit, and after one year there, “Nordstrom came calling.”
In July 2019, the fashion retail giant invited Graham to be Chief Marketing Officer for all stores, now a $5.5 billion company where she would lead a team of 85 staffers.
When COVID hit retail hard, in May 2020, she was laid off.
“It was a blessing too because I had two elementary school kids, now 7 and 9 years old, and I could catch my breath,” Graham says.
Read more in Take The Lead about COVID and working mothers.
Consulting for one year, she was contacted by David Yeom, CEO of Evite, whom she had known since 2009 at Haute Look. “He’s a serial entrepreneur and was leading growth marketing.” Graham joined Evite in 2021.
“Karen Graham, CMO at Evte, is about celebrating human connections and pivoting when you need to in your career. #careerpivot #careeradvice”
“It was a pivot away from fashion; I had really loved it, it was a marriage of technology and design,” Graham says. “And it was rocky at first joining a business during COVID that makes money off of in-person events.”
Systematically “doing away with all ads,” for a business with a revenue model based on ads, was challenging. But the Evite brand now is based on premium design and is no longer a free product and has expanded offerings to include greeting cards and more.
Read more in Take The Lead on the Great Resignation
“We are investing heavily in artists and looking for a range of styles and designs,” Graham says. “We also added in more editorial content such as gift guides. We are making the site not only useful, we make it delightful.”
Read more in take The Lead about a post-COVID fashion pivot
Graham attributes her new career and her pivot to COVID.
“Without COVID, I would still be in fashion retail,” she says. “This happened by chance and it’s funny but I wouldn’t have considered this move. But I felt it was related enough and spoke to me in the intersection of design and technology.”
“Graham attributes her new career and her pivot to COVID. “Without COVID, I would still be in fashion retail,” she says. “This happened by chance and it’s funny but I wouldn’t have considered this move.” #careeradvice #carpethechaos”
The Great Resignation, also known as the Great Reset, The Great Reinvention, or the Great Attrition, affected women enormously to reconsider remote work, compensation, mission, intention, flexibility, and access to advancement and leadership roles.
“The #GreatResignation affected women enormously to reconsider #remotework, compensation, mission, intention, flexibility, and access to advancement and leadership roles. ”
Read more from Gloria Feldt about Great Returnship
A January 2022 McKinsey report shows that, “Between the closure of schools and childcare facilities and the blow to service-oriented businesses that employ many women, the pandemic has forced a great number of them out of the workforce. Among those who remain, the unequal distribution of household and caretaking duties has clearly taken its toll, with 42 percent of women reporting high rates of burnout compared with 35 percent of men. Our Great Attrition research shows the impact on women of color may be even more acute. While 35 percent of White women said they were planning to leave their job in the next 3-6 months, the rate jumped to 46 percent for women of color, suggesting that organizations must take a more nuanced approach in their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) efforts.”
While the job losses for women at the start of the pandemic were huge, adding up to 1.1 million women leaving the labor force from February 2020 to January 2022, accounting for 63 percent of all jobs lost, according to SHRM, the recovery of jobs for women is encouraging, though not completely to the levels of pre-COVID.
“While the job losses for women at the start of the #pandemic were huge, the recovery of jobs for women is encouraging, though not completely to the levels of pre-COVID. #jobloss”
The National Women’s Law Center reports that “the recent Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data showed 397,000 women ages 20 and over joined the labor force last month, meaning they are now either working or looking for work. Women’s labor force participation rate is now 58.3%. This is one percentage point below women’s pre-pandemic rate of 59.3%, with 656,000 fewer women in the labor force in May 2022 than in February 2020.”
The NWLC reports that in May, “Women made up 46.4% of these gains, gaining 181,000 jobs. This marks 17 consecutive months of job growth for women but still leaves women down a net 723,000 jobs since February 2020. Women’s jobs now make up 88.0% of the 822,000 net jobs lost in the pandemic.”
And because of the pandemic’s impact on the work, home, social and personal lives of everyone, many pivoted to new careers, new roles and new fields and concentrations, that perhaps they had not considered or were only aspirational.
“And because of the pandemic’s impact on the work, home, social and personal lives of everyone, many pivoted to new careers, new roles and new fields and concentrations. #workforce #careerchange”
Graham’s pivot away from her lifelong career of fashion, retail and branding, she says, was a good one.
“The pandemic made us all know how important human connection is. And celebrations. So this felt so right.”
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