Bozoma Saint John Is Her Own Champion

Bozoma Saint John bets on herself.The multi-hyphenate expertise has held prime advertising posts at Pepsi, Apple, Uber, and Netflix—all earlier than publishing a memoir, becoming a member of the solid of The Actual Housewives of Beverly Hills, launching her personal line of wigs, and most not too long ago, teaming with Jimmy Fallon to co-host the brand new advertising competitors collection On Model. All through all of it, the 48-year-old expertise has been guided by her personal instinct and bravado—nobody else’s.  “I don’t know that I’ve had many advocates in my profession anyway,” she informed a packed room at Brandweek 2025 in Atlanta on Monday. “Being a Black girl on this enterprise, there aren’t very many areas the place I rely upon different folks to champion me. I’ve had to determine my very own championing.”One second that outlined her capability to take action got here in mid-2017, when Travis Kalanick, founding father of Uber, was pressured by the corporate’s board to resign from his submit as CEO after a collection of scandals. Kalanick had simply employed Saint John as chief model officer.She discovered herself within the sudden place of main a model with no chief. Although Kalanick’s departure rattled the enterprise, Saint John was decided to establish a path ahead for the beleaguered rideshare app. She acknowledged that Uber didn’t have a tech downside, however a model downside. It was her job to “[get] into the beat of the model, and what was hurting” it, as she put it. “No one had a plan. There was nothing occurring apart from no matter I dreamed up.”Below Saint John’s management, the model repositioned itself with a marketing campaign starring the then-newly appointed CEO Dara Khosrowshahi promising to steer the corporate in a greater route. The model slowly however certainly made strides.Overcoming tragedy to make a brand new startSaint John’s self-assuredness has been a theme all through her skilled life—and in her private life, too. In 2013, she misplaced her husband of 10 years, Peter Saint John, to most cancers. Nonetheless within the throes of grief, Saint John determined to rearrange her life, quitting her job as head of music and leisure advertising at PepsiCo and leaving New York for the west coast. “My husband had been useless for 4 months once I resigned and moved throughout the nation from New York to Los Angeles to begin working for Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre” at Beats, she mentioned. “Everybody thought I’d misplaced my thoughts. However the fact of the matter is that I wanted to do it for myself. Individuals didn’t perceive what I used to be coping with, they usually thought that the reply was in hiding and laying down. And I don’t fault anyone who desires to do this once you endure a loss like that, however for me, I wanted to get again up. So I needed to go.”Then within the spring of 2014, Beats was acquired by Apple. Earlier than lengthy, Saint John discovered herself sitting within the tech big’s headquarters in Cupertino. “Tim [Cook] mentioned, ‘Effectively, you must really simply run iTunes in Apple Music,’” she recalled. “And I used to be like, ‘Oh, shit.’”Identical to that, her life was off in a brand new route once more—thanks largely to her unwavering belief in her personal instinct.“There are such a lot of myths about what it takes to be a frontrunner,” she mentioned. “Generally it’s misunderstood that it’s important to have a transparent path with a purpose to turn into a frontrunner, with a purpose to rise to the highest once more, and once more, and once more. What I wish to present is the truth that I’m human, and that horrible issues have occurred in my life, and I’ve discovered methods to navigate these tragedies and that loss and grief with a purpose to not simply survive, however to thrive.”She added: “The adage is, ‘Search for the sunshine on the finish of the tunnel.’ That sounds so silly. It’s a lot better to have a lightweight in your particular person,” she mentioned. “That manner, you’ll be able to go searching, see what’s coming, eliminate monsters, all that stuff. I’ve had far more success being my very own gentle, my very own champion, my very own advocate, than looking for it in any individual else.”