Marci Sapers has had quite the career, with 25 years of brand building, strategic planning and training experience. The former vice president of marketing excellence at Gillette is now the advisor for huge organizations such as Samsung, P&G, Staples and Keurig.
The Daily Free Press: What first sparked your interest in the business field?
MS: Growing up, my stepfather was an entrepreneur. He started his own company, and he was an engineer. He invented some solar panels, and I remember he brought over investors. I sat in the back of the room when he met with them, and I thought that was really neat. At the end of the meeting, he ended up getting investments in the company, and I thought that was so cool. Then when I went to Duke [University], they didn’t have an undergrad in business, so I studied economics. I went to work as a financial analyst, but it all started under that living room meeting with my stepfather.
FreeP: Can you talk about your career path until this point?
MS: I got a job working for General Foods as a financial planner coming out of undergrad. While I was there, I met a mentor who really took me under his wing and was in marketing. I thought, ‘Gosh, that’s a lot more interesting than what I’m doing. I decided to go back to business school, and I got my MBA at Wharton [School of the University of Pennsylvania]. After Wharton, I wanted to be in the Boston area, and I went right to work for Gillette. The career path there was pretty standard in terms of working your way up. I definitely chose to do some atypical stuff just for lifestyle reasons. My husband was working out of New York all week, and I was working full time. I wanted to work part time and go off track with marketing strategy or corporate philanthropy, and work four days a week, and one of those four days were at my house, so I was kind of able to carve out work balance, but most of my career was in marketing.
FreeP: What happened with Gillette when you started doing your own consulting?
MS: When Proctor and Gamble bought Gillette [in 2005], a large amount of the executives were told they had two years to decide whether or not they want to stay and work at P&G, and work your way up there, or if you leave within two years, you get a package. The package was pretty attractive. At that point, my kids were in middle and high school. My husband had a business here. I knew I couldn’t move to Cincinnati, and I had no desire to move there. I ended up working there one day short of two years, and I said, ‘Okay, now I’ll take my package and run, I’ll try to make it on my own. If I can’t make it on my own, I’ll come back and try to work for another company in Boston.’ I ended up getting my first job within a month of leaving, but it’s been up and down since then, but enough that I’m still at it eight years later.
FreeP: What was your experience trying to make it on your own after being in a job with such security?
MS: I was the one with a more risk-free career. I was working for a big corporation. I had the 401k. I had the insurance. When I went out on my own, I was scared, but I got a job quickly, and after eight years, I’ve been working with one big client, Samsung. I’ve done pretty well with them, so I’ve had that stability for all this time. Even when I wasn’t doing as much work with them, it wasn’t enough that I’ve ever wanted to go back to having a fixed job. I’ve gotten lucky in that I haven’t had to compromise what I was looking for, which was balance in working on my own. I have flexibility, so I’m really lucky that it worked out. Samsung is based in Korea, and honestly, they have sent me around the world. I’m heading to Singapore next Friday. I get back after a week. Then a week later, I’m going to Dubai for a week. I get back a week later, then I’m going to London. I’m providing training for marketers around the world, and it’s been great. This is one of the best jobs I think I could have gotten.
FreeP: What would you say has been your most fulfilling experience in your career?
MS: I’ve had a lot. It’s been some of the business experiences, and it’s been some of the personal experiences. When I was at Gillette, I was part of this team called FAFT, Fast Action Forcing Team. We had to come up with as many new products as we could in one year. Personally, when I was at Gillette, we started this mentoring group for women. We would have these luncheons where women would get together and talk about issues we faced, like having to achieve balance. There was a strong boys network at Gillette, so it was a way for women to get together, bond and help each other out. That was fulfilling.
FreeP: What challenges do you feel you’ve faced in your field?
MS: The balance. Like I said, there was a couple-year period where my husband was working out of New York almost all week long. At that point, my kids were in kindergarten and second grade. It’s really tough after being back after a full day at the office, and granted, I had great help, and it’s like this for any job, but it’s just exhausting. You want to have the energy to make the kids feel like their parent is around.
FreeP: As a woman, do you feel you’ve been treated equally in your career experiences?
MS: There were definite moments in my career where I felt like it was a disadvantage being a woman. I’m an avid tennis player, and there was a group of men that played tennis twice a week in the mornings. At one point, they asked a peer of mine, who is my age, who started at the same time as me, to play with them, and I knew he wasn’t as good as me. They asked him to play in the league, and here he was networking with the president and the vice president. We were pretty low level at that point, but he started playing with them, and after six months, I went to one of the guys who ran it. He was a lawyer, and I said how this was really discriminatory, you’re not letting women do this. I knew he had no desire to let me play. It was very, ‘Oh, here’s a woman. We have to play with her,’ and he was a little concerned I might make an issue of it. I ended up playing, and it was great because I was better than most of the men who played. At one point, I was playing, and I hit overhead the country manager who was running all of Europe. I hit him pretty hard. He loved that there was a woman that was so aggressive, and would just go up to the point and not be concerned. From that point on, every time I saw a superior, he was my biggest advocate. There was definitely that networking that happened outside the office. At sales meetings, men would play golf together, and the women would get a choice to go to the spa or go shopping, and that definitely happened, but I didn’t like that. I pushed pretty often. It ended up being funny though because when I hit him, I was thinking, ‘Oh no, what did I do?’ I was hitting as hard as I could and at the feet of my opponent and I was really concerned, but he loved it. It was really funny. It became a joke around the office.
FreeP: What do you see for the future of women in business?
MS: When I was in the corporate environment, I really thought the numbers were going to grow eventually. It just hasn’t happened as quickly as I really thought it would. It’s tough for women. We have kids and a lot do drop out. I think the numbers have improved in terms of the number of women in senior positions, but I just think it’s going to be slower than anyone imaged. I think women tend to be great team players and at collaborating, but I think ultimately they will influence the culture by making the corporate environment more collaborative and team-oriented. It just takes a long time for those changes to happen.
FreeP: Do you think there’s some hesitation for women to choose this kind of field?
MS: Speaking from my own experience, that wasn’t part of my thought process. I just liked it. I thought I could make a difference. If you look at the number of women in colleges, there are more women. If you look at the number of women getting their MBA’s, there are certainly a lot. I don’t think they’re concerned about it. I just think they let life get in the way.
FreeP: What advice would you give to BU students or anybody interested in going into this field?
MS: One of the things my stepfather told me, and I think is true, is that you have to follow your passion. You spend a lot of time in a work environment and put up with a lot of crap, but if you love what you do, you’ll stick with it. I really felt like I was helping the world, even though Gillette was selling shampoo and razors. You’re making quality of life better by providing a good product. Go into a field where you feel like you can make a difference, where you enjoy the product you’re working with and enjoying what you’re doing. That makes it a lot easier to spend the number of hours. There were a lot of times in my career I had to keep my mouth shut. There was a lot happening around me that I didn’t agree with, and it wasn’t going to be productive for me to open my mouth. You got to know when to speak up because obviously I spoke up a lot. You have to figure out a way to make it work for yourself.
