The Leadership Chronicles

BUILT TO BE POURED (AUDIO)

Sarah Kauss started S'well with $30,000 of her own savings, an optimistic two-page business plan she wrote at a spa in Arizona, and the conviction that a water bottle could be about more than hydration. She had no marketing budget, no manufacturing experience, and no playbook. What she had was a restless curiosity, an HBS network she knew how to use, and a product that people picked up, shared, and told stories about without being asked. Fifteen years later, S'well had displaced more than four billion single-use plastic bottles, landed in Starbucks locations around the world, and crossed $100 million in annual revenue. Sarah and Sherri sit down with Sarah Kauss, MBA 2003, to talk about the winding road from CPA to founder, the lessons hypergrowth teaches you whether you are ready or not, and what it actually feels like to sell the company you spent a decade building.
 
Guest Introduction:
Sarah Kauss is Managing Partner at Avignon Partners, where she invests in and advises brands across retail, tech, and wellness. She is the founder and former CEO of S'well, one of the earliest lifestyle sustainability brands, and one of the most recognizable consumer products of the last two decades. She bootstrapped the company on $30,000 of her own savings and grew it to over $100 million in annual revenue. S'well helped displace more than four billion single-use plastic bottles, and the original bottle was named one of 25 designs that helped shape the world by Architectural Digest. Sarah held the CEO role for ten years before selling the company in 2022. She is a member of the 2018 Class of Henry Crown Fellows and the 2020 Class of Braddock Scholars within the Aspen Global Leadership Network. She earned a BS in accounting from the University of Colorado Boulder and an MBA from Harvard Business School, class of 2003. 
 
Key Takeaways:
Restlessness is not a flaw. It is a signal. Sarah spent years at EY watching her clients build things while she crunched their numbers, and that discomfort eventually pointed her toward the right door.
The gift of time is underrated. Sarah used her HBS years to go to every presentation, every speaker, every happy hour. She did not know what she wanted. She knew she needed to see everything before she decided.
An idea worth building starts with a problem you cannot stop thinking about. The water bottle concept was not a business calculation. It was a hike on a hot day colliding with a dense book about the water crisis and a conviction that she was the person who should solve it.
Your network is your first team. Sarah did not have a manufacturing partner, a web team, or a marketing budget. She had Section J. She called classmates who knew what she didn't, and they showed up.
Organic growth is still the most powerful kind. S'well never spent money on marketing in its early years. The story was so aligned with the product that customers became the marketing engine on their own.
Hire for where you are going, not where you have been. The hardest lesson from hypergrowth was learning to up-hire ahead of the moment, not after it had already passed.
Motherhood changed the math. Becoming a mom made Sarah a sharper decision maker. She says no to things now that her younger self would have taken without blinking, because her time is shared with someone else.
Selling a company you built is its own chapter. The day after the sale, Sarah showed up to her HBS 20th reunion and did not know how to introduce herself. Identity and business are harder to separate than you expect.
 
Chapter Markers:
00:00 Introduction & Welcome
02:19 Early Life & Identity Formation
07:34 The Road to HBS
13:43 The Arizona Epiphany & Birth of S'well 18:40 Hypergrowth — $10M to $100M
25:20 Motherhood & What Changed
29:19 Knowing When to Sell
32:14 Life After S'well
34:05 Rapid Fire
 
Keywords:
Sarah Kauss, S'well bottle, women founders, bootstrapped startup, sustainable business, purpose driven brand, women entrepreneurs, consumer products, HBS women, Harvard Business School, women in business, female CEO, startup growth, brand building, sustainability entrepreneur, leadership podcast, women leadership, entrepreneurship lessons, hypergrowth strategy, founder story, product design, women investors, Leadership Chronicles podcast, HBSWA, scaling a business, bootstrapping to exit, selling your company, founder identity, female founders, entrepreneurship and motherhood, purpose driven company, consumer brand strategy, Henry Crown Fellows, Aspen Institute, social impact business, women in leadership, career reinvention, female entrepreneurship, organic growth, retail strategy, Target partnership, Starbucks partnership, Howard Schultz, women executives, startup founder podcast

Becoming You (VIDEO)

Suzy Welch has lived a life that refuses to follow a straight line. From a feral, tie-dye childhood with artist parents to the Harvard Crimson, from a bulletproof vest on the Miami crime desk to the editor's chair at Harvard Business Review, from a very public scandal to the greatest love of her life, Suzy has built something rare — a career that keeps becoming something new without ever losing the thread of who she is. In this episode, Sarah and Sherri sit down with the NYU Stern professor, three-time New York Times bestselling author, and creator of the Becoming You methodology to talk about courage, reinvention, grief, and what it actually takes to stop living someone else's life and start building your own.
 
Guest Introduction:
Suzy Welch is an award-winning NYU Stern School of Business professor, acclaimed researcher, and three-time New York Times best-selling author, most recently with “Becoming You: A Proven Method for Crafting Your Authentic Life and Career,” which is also a #1 bestseller on Amazon.
 
A graduate of Harvard University and Harvard Business School, Dr. Welch is a frequent guest of the Today Show and an op-ed contributor to the Wall Street Journal. She serves on the boards of public and private companies and is the Director of the NYU | Stern Initiative on Purpose and Flourishing.
 
Key Takeaways:
Reinvention is not a crisis. It is a skill Suzy has practiced across every chapter of her life, and it has always led somewhere worth going.
The absence of a plan is not the same as the absence of potential. Suzy had no roadmap, no career conversations growing up, and still found her way to some of the most influential rooms in the world.
Courage rarely looks like courage in the moment. Most of the bold moves Suzy made felt like the only option available, not a calculated leap.
Knowing what you are not is just as clarifying as knowing what you are. Walking away from journalism because she couldn't ask a grieving mother how she felt was not weakness — it was self-knowledge.
The work you do inside a great partnership compounds in ways you cannot predict. Suzy and Jack taught each other things no classroom or boardroom ever could, and that exchange shaped everything that came after.
Grief has no efficient path through it. Suzy did not navigate loss gracefully at first, and saying that out loud matters more than any polished version of the story would.
Your values are not a soft concept. They are the operating system beneath every decision, and when your life is out of alignment with them, you feel it before you can name it.
The methodology that helps others find their way often comes from the season where you had to find your own. Becoming You was born directly out of Suzy's hardest chapter.
 
Chapter Markers:
00:00 Introduction & Welcome 01:48 Suzy's Feral Childhood & Creative Upbringing
04:17 Discovering a Different World at Exeter
06:44 Harvard, Lacrosse, and a Career Nobody Planned
07:51 Landing on the Miami Crime Desk
10:22 Why She Walked Away from Journalism
14:00 The Harvard Business Review Years
20:18 The Scandal, the Story, and Meeting Jack Welch
24:48 Building a Life and a Business Together
27:52 Navigating Grief After Jack's Passing
30:43 The Becoming You Methodology is Born
31:54 Teaching at NYU Stern and the Waitlist That Said Everything
36:00 Values, Authenticity, and Living on Purpose
41:34 The Values Bridge Assessment & Resources
42:35 Lightning Round & Closing Reflections
 
Keywords:
leadership development, women in leadership, career reinvention, life purpose, authentic leadership, personal growth, executive coaching, women executives, Harvard Business School, NYU Stern, Suzy Welch, Becoming You, values alignment, career transitions, female founders, women entrepreneurs, life after loss, grief and resilience, purpose driven career, nonlinear career path, leadership podcast, business leadership, executive women, career development, self discovery, finding your purpose, women in business, leadership chronicles, reinvention after 50, career courage, thought leadership, personal brand, professional development

Becoming You (AUDIO)

Suzy Welch has lived a life that refuses to follow a straight line. From a feral, tie-dye childhood with artist parents to the Harvard Crimson, from a bulletproof vest on the Miami crime desk to the editor's chair at Harvard Business Review, from a very public scandal to the greatest love of her life, Suzy has built something rare — a career that keeps becoming something new without ever losing the thread of who she is. In this episode, Sarah and Sherri sit down with the NYU Stern professor, three-time New York Times bestselling author, and creator of the Becoming You methodology to talk about courage, reinvention, grief, and what it actually takes to stop living someone else's life and start building your own.
 
Guest Introduction:
Suzy Welch is an award-winning NYU Stern School of Business professor, acclaimed researcher, and three-time New York Times best-selling author, most recently with “Becoming You: A Proven Method for Crafting Your Authentic Life and Career,” which is also a #1 bestseller on Amazon.
 
A graduate of Harvard University and Harvard Business School, Dr. Welch is a frequent guest of the Today Show and an op-ed contributor to the Wall Street Journal. She serves on the boards of public and private companies and is the Director of the NYU | Stern Initiative on Purpose and Flourishing.
 
Key Takeaways:
Reinvention is not a crisis. It is a skill Suzy has practiced across every chapter of her life, and it has always led somewhere worth going.
The absence of a plan is not the same as the absence of potential. Suzy had no roadmap, no career conversations growing up, and still found her way to some of the most influential rooms in the world.
Courage rarely looks like courage in the moment. Most of the bold moves Suzy made felt like the only option available, not a calculated leap.
Knowing what you are not is just as clarifying as knowing what you are. Walking away from journalism because she couldn't ask a grieving mother how she felt was not weakness — it was self-knowledge.
The work you do inside a great partnership compounds in ways you cannot predict. Suzy and Jack taught each other things no classroom or boardroom ever could, and that exchange shaped everything that came after.
Grief has no efficient path through it. Suzy did not navigate loss gracefully at first, and saying that out loud matters more than any polished version of the story would.
Your values are not a soft concept. They are the operating system beneath every decision, and when your life is out of alignment with them, you feel it before you can name it.
The methodology that helps others find their way often comes from the season where you had to find your own. Becoming You was born directly out of Suzy's hardest chapter.
 
Chapter Markers:
00:00 Introduction & Welcome 01:48 Suzy's Feral Childhood & Creative Upbringing
04:17 Discovering a Different World at Exeter
06:44 Harvard, Lacrosse, and a Career Nobody Planned
07:51 Landing on the Miami Crime Desk
10:22 Why She Walked Away from Journalism
14:00 The Harvard Business Review Years
20:18 The Scandal, the Story, and Meeting Jack Welch
24:48 Building a Life and a Business Together
27:52 Navigating Grief After Jack's Passing
30:43 The Becoming You Methodology is Born
31:54 Teaching at NYU Stern and the Waitlist That Said Everything
36:00 Values, Authenticity, and Living on Purpose
41:34 The Values Bridge Assessment & Resources
42:35 Lightning Round & Closing Reflections
 
Keywords:
leadership development, women in leadership, career reinvention, life purpose, authentic leadership, personal growth, executive coaching, women executives, Harvard Business School, NYU Stern, Suzy Welch, Becoming You, values alignment, career transitions, female founders, women entrepreneurs, life after loss, grief and resilience, purpose driven career, nonlinear career path, leadership podcast, business leadership, executive women, career development, self discovery, finding your purpose, women in business, leadership chronicles, reinvention after 50, career courage, thought leadership, personal brand, professional development