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What probably does not come up when you’re sending your boss the budget request to attend that conference in Copenhagen is that what you most hope to get out of the conference is a job somewhere else. But lanyards can make excellent lassos, and in a surprisingly candid panel at the recent Lead Summit conference in New York, retail executives discussed how connections made at industry gatherings have helped lift them out of some grim professional circumstances.
“This is obviously a slightly different panel than normal,” moderator Dominick Miserandino, CEO of Retail Tech Media Nexus, said at the beginning of the packed session. “We’re not discussing sales numbers…We’re coming to the reality that people, believe it or not, sometimes go to conferences to find a new role.”
And so began a panel free of buzzwords—not a single “AI” or “omnichannel” was uttered once over the next 30 minutes—where panelists sounded not like their LinkedIn profiles but rather very much like themselves.
“What’s important with networking is just recognizing that we’re all humans, and it’s about building relationships and getting to know people,” said Elizabeth Drori, CMO of shoe brand Kizik. Instead of just scanning one another’s badges, she extolled the virtues of schmoozing and asking ice-breaking questions: “Who are you? What did you take away from that event? What are you choosing for lunch?” (Andy. This article. The kale caesar salad.)
A shoe shine and a smile: Drori recalled how her last role, as CMO and GM of e-commerce at shoe brand Sperry, ended when parent company Wolverine World Wide sold the brand to Authentic Brands Group in 2024.
“We all lost our jobs, like the entire company,” Drori said. “When something like that happens, it’s pretty traumatic, but you also realize we’re all in this together…You have to have a little faith and a little community.”
Drori, who—fittingly for a shoe exec—eventually landed on her feet, and even hired some of her former Sperry colleagues at Kizik, came away from the experience with a new appreciation for the value of giving others in your network a boost, a boost you might need soon enough.
“I would encourage people to really relate to other people in difficult moments, when they’re looking for a job or they’re looking for help,” Drori said. And when the situation is reversed, she added, “I would encourage you not to be shy and to tell everyone you know if you’re looking for something, because you never know who knows someone.”
“I was at Barneys—RIP—till the very end,” added Danielle DiMaiolo Rendini, who’d worked in retail operations and project management at the luxury department store retailers until it closed in 2020, and today is head of retail at American Girl.
Rendini recalled that she was on maternity leave when the company filed for bankruptcy in 2019, so she was “coming back to work as a new mom, trying to figure out what my identity even was and what that meant, and navigating my career and family.”
When she returned to work she found herself “trying to do my role, and also taking on other roles as it was nearing the end, but also you can’t spend any money,” she said. Stressful, surely, but “what got me through it was realizing that it’s going to come to an end, there’s going to be opportunities. I’ve created a career for myself, I’ve created a network. Something will come—I’m just going to have to be a little bit patient.”
Soul proprietor: Miserandino, the moderator and a consummate networker, noted he had more than 31,000 followers on LinkedIn.
“Anyone here wants to meet someone, you connect with me and if I know them…I will connect you,” Miserandino said.
And while conferences are often consumed with learning new skills and demonstrating your competence to others, he said that when he interviews job candidates, he’s often sussing out just whether someone seems like a good egg.
“I like to interview people based on who they are more than the skill set,” Miserandino said. “I can teach you how to use Google Sheets, I can teach you how to use social media. But can I trust you? If I can trust the person, if I feel they’re a good soul, I’m with them…at that point.”