Jennifer Gootman is truly a pioneer. Her career trajectory makes sense in retrospect, with the pieces of the puzzle coming together to land at her current role at West Elm as the Vice President of Social Consciousness & Innovation. But along the way, Gootman was in the pursuit of one thing: fulfillment.

Always mindful of her needs both personally and professionally, creating a career narrative that made sense to anyone else was never a priority. Instead, Gootman refused to be put in a box. She makes career transitions look easy—because of an unwavering confidence in her ability to do good work, as long as she's doing work for a company she believes in. A company that follows her ideals. 

And it's that drive, that unique commitment to self, to morals, that pushed Gootman to do something (almost) unheard of. She pitched the creation of a role to her dream company. It was a little risky, and it took time, but it turns out, West Elm needed her. And Gootman was happy to take on the challenge. Gootman's career has crossed paths with the corporate and nonprofit worlds, and her roles have seamlessly intertwined her passion along with her skills. 

I mean even when people ask me now, "Do you want to work corporate or nonprofit?" I feel like there's less of a difference in corporate form than in type and size of organization. Throughout my career, I’ve worked for small agile organizations—they were nonprofits, they were mission-oriented. I think sometimes the startup world may have more to do with a small nonprofit. And then, you can have large bureaucratic nonprofits that are more like corporations. Sometimes it's more about the style of business than the corporate form.

I've always been quite entrepreneurial. My first real job? I'd gone to visit a Cherokee reservation in North Carolina and was gifted a 2x4 with some nails in it. And that sparked my interest in jewelry making, and I expanded from there. I started ordering wholesale supplies from New York from catalogs, and made a line of jewelry to sell at craft fairs. I was running this little jewelry business from middle school on into high school, and I gave it up after I went to college. But I revisited it in the early 2000s.

And today, I still make jewelry. For true fulfillment [in my career,] I had to integrate that creative side of myself.

On Her Career Trajectory

In retrospect, my career path makes a lot of sense—but it wasn't necessarily kind of a linear or laid out path when it was happening. Right after college, I had the amazing opportunity to write for Let's Go travel guide, to explore the world and have that cultural immersion in other cultures—which I think served me well later in life [and] throughout my career. Now, I work on a very global team.

Then I stayed in Spain for two years. I immersed myself in another culture and then [went back to] New York. I'm really passionate about working in the arts, and always wanted to have a something that I ideologically believed in—so I started working for a nonprofit art gallery in Manhattan. I focused on communications and publication—how to pick our work for media, how to collaborate with writers and artists and publications for the gallery.

[But] I felt removed from the social justice issues that I care about. So I went to work for a nonprofit policy organization and think tank that focuses on economic development and workforce development. That really exposed me to the idea of how you can—with targeted programs—make investments that improve workers' lives, improve the economy, and really make a change.

On Her Decision to Transition to West Elm

I [was working at an] organization that works with groups of women artisans all over the world and helps them access external markets. I used every bit of my career and experience there. I would help design and develop products, manage the placements and ordering process with the artisan businesses, handle inventory management, customs importing, manage the website, etc. I got a feeling for every side of the business.

After about three years there, I realized that to grow my job, I had to grow the whole company. But what if you could make small incremental changes, you know, with a large company—imagine opportunity. Around that time, I had known the West Elm team for about a year because of our shared work in the artisan sector. So I pitched the job to my contacts there, and started the initial conversations around what it would be like to transition. I never thought, "I want to work in the corporate sector." It was more, "What's the company that's the right fit? And where is the opportunity to really have my ideals come to life?"

On Pitching Her Own Job Title

The position didn't exist. I was connected to my now boss, and said, "I'd love to work here, here are the skills that I bring." And he thought it was interesting, but said, "We have very specific departments, and your experience doesn't fit in any of those departments specifically."

They were just about to make their first public commitment to their 20 percent handcrafted goal—and I think they started to realize how tricky the world of nonprofit and government organizations can be to navigate, and [how hard it is] to make a public goal as a publicly traded company. So he called me back a few days later and said he asked, "What do you think of managing this and making sure that we meet our commitments to 20 percent handcrafted?" I said, "Yeah, that's my dream job."

I wrote the description the next day and sent it to him. It took about eight months for it to come to fruition, actually, which is an important part [to say] because it was this dream opportunity, but there was also a lot of risk for me. I had to turn down other offers, I had to wait. But I knew that it was the right opportunity for me.

On What a Vice President of Social Consciousness & Innovation Actually Does

In short, I think about my job as helping West Elm use purchasing power and supply chains to make a positive impact across the globe—and offering our customers opportunities to shop their values, as well, by really having these effective programs in our supply chain.

The purview of all of my work is West Elm's commitment to craft. From our global artisan partnerships across the globe—how we work with global artists groups and our local makers—to our work with fair trade. We were the first home retailer to join the fair trade factory program, and today we have 15 factories certified and 12,000 workers receiving premiums. And then sustainability—we have targets around responsibly sourced cotton, responsibly sourced wood. How are we thinking authentically about sustainability as a company that makes products?

Then I have some other Williams-Sonoma Inc. roles that you think really help support our larger work. I manage our global social compliance...our factory code of conduct and standards, and then how we monitor that across all of our factories. For that work, I manage a team in Asia.

On Her Favorite Part of Her Job

Working with people. I know that sounds broad. But [my favorite part of my job] is when I get to travel to factories, to artisan communities where we work—really being able to see how products are made and connect with the people making them.

I see it as my responsibility to bring transparency back to customers in the broader public. It's absolutely unbelievable how raw materials are harvested, and how products come to life. And if we can tell those stories better, consumers will assign the value to products that will justify the kind of changes in communities where they're produced that a lot of people want.

Fundamentally, it's about building businesses to thrive and create employment opportunities in the communities where they operate.

On Social Responsibility

Yeah, I don't love the term social responsibility. I think it's sometimes too absolute.

The truth is, having a more responsible supply chain or more responsible business is made up of lots of small actions. And one thing that I really love about my work is that nothing is black and white. It's all gray space. I think I have limited bandwidth. I'm just one person. But if I could choose anything for my legacy, it would be, "How do you impact other people to make small shifts in their lives?"

Now, five years into my job, I'm really proud that I have partners in our distribution centers and in stores and in other parts of the organization who are just as passionate about recyclability and landfill diversion is I am. It's going to take all parts of the organization to lift it to a higher place.

On Finding a Fulfilling Career

For me, you know, what works is to ask yourself what your passions are outside of work. What are you inclined to do? Even in your free time? And those [answers] may be key to find any more fulfilling paths. For example, my jewelry making—I knew that I loved to do that and I wanted to integrate something more creative into my career. I didn't decide to pursue jewelry full-time, but it was a clue to me that like I needed a career that was more creatively inclined. That's a perfect fit for someone like me.

Try to be attuned to your every day, and when you're happiest at work. It's really more about the little things than something grandiose, in the end. For me, I love my job. But there are times I have to shift my mindset or make an effort to prioritize things that I get a lot of fulfillment and energy out of, and it really energizes me to put effort into my work.