When People are Employees and Employees are People - Stories Series #7

I love Chico, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it a hundred more times. One of the many things I love is how we support our small businesses. You can find ChicoBag products everywhere downtown and throughout the city. A number of products in Made in Chico, Colliers, and Bird in Hand welcome local customers. Chico is a community, not just a city, and businesses like ChicoBag make it what it is. And women like Sierra Brodleit make companies like ChicoBag what they are. Sierra has had such a journey and has an amazing calm and enthralling character with lots of dimension to offer. Her story has had ups and downs like any other and she gives us not only wonderfully deep insight but a place to find comfort and solidarity in our dreams and struggles for she too has been through them. 

To really get to know people you have to understand where they come from. Sierra grew up in Magalia, a short thirty-minute drive northeast of Chico. Magalia is a rural town where it often snows and where a drive to work is quaint and scenic. When she was young she wanted to be a nurse. She grew up with 3 sisters, one is older and the other two are younger. Her older sister was a nurse and Sierra enjoyed chemistry and biology but she hated needles and blood, which would make a healthcare career difficult wouldn't it? In high school, she did College Connection, a hybrid high school and college senior year, and was involved in student government. During that time a teacher and mentor suggested she pursue a business degree in college. And it simply made sense, so that’s the direction she went. But beyond business, she wanted to be taught what she could not teach herself so she chose finance. 

There weren’t many women in the finance program at the time and her college experience as a whole rang a similar tune. There weren’t many opportunities for participation and clubs to build a group of similar students to Sierra, at the time there was nothing specifically made to make women feel more seen and included. She was a part of the finance club and SEED, a social club for entrepreneurs learning about sustainability in Chico. SEED did a lot, including touring local businesses and doing sustainability audits for them. She worked for a real estate team in Paradise before she came to Chico State and for the first two years of college, she worked full-time. It was hard but she did it because it was a real job that paid well and as a young adult that doesn’t come around often. Her final semesters forced her to trade the full-time job for a part-time role at the Business Success Center for students on campus. From there she was recommended by her boss for a job at ChicoBag and her career as it is now began.

Sierra explains her everyday duties as the president of ChicoBag, which include a lot of meetings and lots of talking. In being president she is essentially head of the ship, she is strategizing, planning for growth, and evaluating results. Her job is to not only make sure the company functions as it is today but that it knows what is coming next and has its priorities straight. Currently, ChicoBag is lean on staff which means that Sierra steps in wherever she is needed. She interacts with the partners of the business, such as their factories and the foundations they donate money to. There is an owner above Sierra but she is essentially on the ground running the company. With her degree in finance, she likes to make financial models and forecasts for the company. I asked her what the hardest part of her career was and her answer was more personal and more communal than I expected. 

In 2018 Butte County had one of the hardest Novembers until that point and since that point. The Camp Fire tore through Paradise and neighboring communities including Magalia and left many people without homes, cars, schools, hospitals, without anything. To this day it is the deadliest wildfire in California history. As an employer, Sierra faced many different reactions. Some people plunged head first into work, needing a distraction from the fire and its aftermath, others needed time, a lot of time, with their families to recover. I remember the fire well and how it impacted me and the people around me. Life stopped for two weeks and was never the same after that. Companies like ChicoBag aren’t just for profit and presidents like Sierra aren’t just bosses. ChicoBag is in the sustainability business because it values people and so does Sierra. It is so easy to look at an employee by their stats, how well they do their job, how long they have been at the company, how many people they oversee, and how many hours it takes them to respond to an email. But the Camp Fire forced Sierra and other employers to look at their employees differently. Where do they live, what is their family like, what kind of support do they need? And out of this Sierra gained a wonderful piece of wisdom that she shared with me. 

People go through life as a part of a company, every individual, lives a life both as an employee and as a person. The things that happen in the world affect them and therefore the company. It can’t just be about money when it is made up of people with lives and struggles. In the time around the fire the whole community was going through something, this time helped Sierra learn when to push and when to pull back. Entire families lived in the ChicoBag office and people had to rely on each other. Two years later the whole world saw a similar challenge that brought us together emotionally but not physically. The pandemic also taught Sierra how employees’ lives come first and sometimes affect how they can perform at work and how it is her job to keep not only the business afloat but the people who make it up.  

The act in itself of becoming president of ChicoBag was both the hardest and best part of Sierra’s career. It was never her goal, it just kind of happened. She was outgrowing ChicoBag, she had moved up and experienced the company in a number of different roles. Once she became president her first task was transforming the supply chain through which the company operated. She questioned everything, “What kind of impact are we having, what isn’t working, are we cutting any corners?” The questions weren’t easy to ask and the answers weren’t easy to hear but Sierra and the whole company took the opportunity to grow and partner with companies that have similar values. This process gave her a more holistic view of business and sustainability.

In addition to being an amazing businesswoman, Sierra is also a mom to her 7-year-old daughter. She told me that she is doing things a lot differently in terms of work-life balance than she thought she would be. She schedules everything and blocks out time on her calendar. The best advice she had to give though when it comes to work and life, is to schedule according to your natural inclination to work. Sierra is an early person through and through, she starts her day early and ends up taking a “lunch” at 9 am and going for a jog then she grinds and gets some more work done through the afternoon. She used to feel bad about taking time off but now she knows it's necessary. She prioritizes things that only happen once, like school field trips. She believes that as long as you get the job done you should be able to work on your own schedule. She also makes time for her marriage, intentional time. Her husband has his own business as well and they both make the effort to have coffee together every morning and it's been a key to their marriage. “Life is so much harder when it’s falling apart, take the time now to make sure that doesn’t happen”

We all know that a job is so much more than the job description. There are so many other skills and abilities you need to have to thrive in a successful career. Sierra believes that trusting your intuition will always get you where you need to go. She tries to lean into her gut feelings and believe in herself. “Confidence and self-assurance go a long way”. Trust yourself over all else, what people think you are is only true if you decide to believe them. Part of a job is the workplace as well. Sierra has first-hand experience being a young female high-level executive which comes with its own battles. The hardest thing she has struggled with is just being ignored. She became a manager at 24 years old and had to hire people decades older than her, she recalls time and time again when people would treat her like their daughter when in reality she was in a higher position than them. ChicoBag is a great place to be though, it's very progressive and she has most definitely found her way. Early in her career, she had an experience where a man was offered more money for the same position. He was on his way out and she was taking his position, they had a conversation about compensation, and though he had years more experience in the job the difference between what he made and what she was being offered wasn’t justifiable. She told me that people do these things because they can get away with it, “Don’t let them get away with it” she said. You have to know how many cards to show and when to play coy but never be afraid to ask questions. In the end, however, Sierra prefers when someone tells her no, when someone doubts her and underestimates who she is. It gives her the chance and drive to be even better and prove everyone wrong. She stresses the importance of finding and relying on your community and support system. She believes in communication, confidence, confidants, and coaching. These four things can get you through any professional struggle when applied correctly. 

Through all of Sierra’s experiences, triumphs, and tribulations so far, she has learned a lot and her advice is, “Don’t take life so seriously and live in the moment”. Her boss years ago gave her a book called A New Earth and it changed her perspective on life and how to go with the flow and rise above. Her experiences at ChicoBag make her a wonderful inspiration and role model for younger women and I hope you all took something away and realize the struggles at the top and understand you too can get there and no one should stop you. 

Join me next month for a thrilling June Speaker!