A brand-driven growth driver and growth-driven brand builder, Joanna's innate knack for storytelling makes her the best chef in town when it comes to developing a brand's secret sauce.
Having spent the better part of the past twelve years honing her craft and building brands from the ground-up, Joanna now finds herself a proud alumnus of unicorns like Airbnb, Maia Active, and Shopbop by Amazon. Her career has taken her all over the world, which suits her adventurous nature just fine - as a certified globetrotter, she's travelled to over 50 countries and has called a whole littany of cities home, including Shanghai, San Francisco, London, and most recently Singapore.
That list grows longer still as Jo makes her way to Hong Kong, where she's come on board as the newest and first female member of Wristcheck's C-Suite team. With a decade's worth of brand-building experience under her belt and her infectious laughter to boot, she's ready to take Wristcheck to the next chapter in a global scale.
Your career has taken you across Asia and in the arms of many high-growth marketplaces - from cutting your teeth at AirBnB to most recently departing as ShopBop by Amazon's Head of APAC E-comm and Marketing. What is it that ultimately endeared you to join us at Wristcheck?
My introduction to Wristcheck was actually through our COO Henek! Ten years ago, we started our startup adventure in Airbnb, sharing the mission to introduce a new way (back then) to explore the world from Sillicon Valley to Asia. His leadership has made a profound impact on me, and I was super excited when he introduced Wristcheck to me. We've always been exploring the potential of reuniting, and Wristcheck is the destiny that makes this come true!
Throughout my career, I've had the fortune to work alongside inspiring founders and brands to shape their companies and turn them into unicorns in their respective industries. My job was essentially to distill their vision and broadcast it in a way that resonated and impacted people most. With Wristcheck, when I got to know the founders and everyone at the company on a deeper level, the vision spoke to me on another level. It was so obvious to me that this was going to be my next mission, and I couldn't wait to dive in and accomplish new feats with this amazing team. So here I am!
You're joining Wristcheck as our CMO and the first woman on our C-Suite team, but it's no secret that the watch space skews heavily male. What's your POV on this?
Watches, with their complex mechanations and technical flair, have traditionally been thought of as a space built and designed mostly for men. But if you actually look at the history of the watch world, there have been so many women who've contributed game-changing accomplishments – women like Jacqueline Dimier, who designed the women's version of the Royal Oak in 1976, or Annegret Flesicher, the mastermind who designed and engineered A. Lange & Söhne's iconic Datograph movement.
Today, women are at the forefront of the world's top watch maisons - just look at Olivia Crouan, Chief Brand Officer of Audemars Piguet, or Carole Forestier-Kasapi, the Movements Director in Tag Heuer. At home here in Wristcheck, over 40% of our leadership positions are held by women, and that's where the groundwork starts. There are also so many amazing women watch collectors out there that are to be featured more.
"Women & Watches" has become one of Wristhceck top initiatives. We are on a mission to champion women's voices in this industry to hopefully gradually change the male-dominating perspective. We're empowered to open up the industry to more diverse experiences and perspectives, and it's our hope that we can create a truly welcoming and inclusive watch community for anyone journeying down the rabbit hole.
The watch world of tomorrow is for everyone - now we just need to build it!
You spend a lot of time working on Wristcheck stuff (which we actively discourage, just putting that out there). Outside of that, how do you spend your time?
I used to be quite the explorer and have been to over 50 countries - as a proud Airbnb alum, I am naturaly an avid reviewer on the site and have accumulated over a hundred reviews there!
With how busy work gets nowadays, I don't often get the chance to retreat into my gallivanting ways. When I do need an escape from everything, I always find myself turning to a nice home-cooked meal. Cooking is a form of meditation for me (mostly because I'm horrible at actual meditation. My brain refuses to be quiet). Even with cooking, I'm constantly in exploration mode - whether that's throwing together a passion fruit salad dressing for a sweltering summer day or whipping up a traditional onion-based chicken soup for a biting winter night. I try not to place too many limitations on myself and just let fresh seasonal ingredients inspire me to put something together. 9 out of 10 times, the results are delicious. We won't discuss the tenth try. When I get one of those days where even cooking doesn't cut it, I throw myself into nature. Hiking, fishing, cycling... anything that allows me to embrace the very foundation of what this earth has to offer generally has a pretty high success rate in perking me right up.
