Carla Vernón

The CEO Leading The Honest Company’s Swift Turnaround

When Carla Vernón took over CEO of The Honest Company in January 2023, she had her work cut out for her. Sales were struggling and the company’s stock had been steadily declining since its IPO in 2021. A veteran in consumer packaged goods with experience at General Mills and Amazon, Vernón became the first Afro-Latina CEO of a publicly traded company in the United States when she took the top job at The Honest Company, where she quickly instituted a turnaround plan. Vernón assembled a diverse executive team of experts from General Mills, Mattel, Estée Lauder, and Clorox and instituted a “stores, doors, aisles, shelves” retail distribution strategy aimed at breaking into new stores, as well as getting more products on the shelves with existing partners. Investors are pleased by Vernón’s progress: The stock began climbing again in 2024. In its February earnings call, the company announced that its revenue climbed by 10% in 2024 to $378 million, marking its highest-ever annual revenue.

By Audrey Goodson Kingo