Business and Family Can Go Together: Lessons from Aimee Watters and Lauren Hobart

As much as we enjoy coaching and supporting change leaders, we equally love learning from them. We’re excited to introduce you to several inspiring change leaders in our community and share some of the lessons we’ve learned from them.

As of this year, only 7.5% of Fortune 500 companies CEOs are women. There’s mounting evidence that gender diversity in leadership has measurable ramifications for corporate decision-making, including reducing risk-taking and increasing investment in research and development. And we continue to learn more. One of the things we love about two leaders at DICK’S Sporting Goods is that they bring both an unbelievably incisive business acumen to the table—but also a recognition of the multidimensional ways that they connect with their business and its focus on sports.

You may have caught the DICK’S Sporting Goods’ Mothers Day television ad featuring several female executives and their children. The ad includes Aimee Watters, Executive Director of The DICK’S Sporting Goods Foundation—which supports access to youth sports through its philanthropy program Sports Matters in all 50 states—and Lauren Hobart, the President and CEO of DICK’S Sporting Goods, Inc. These aren’t actors; they’re real moms who are raising kids while leading organizations.

We admire Aimee and Lauren because they are relentlessly rigorous in their approach to doing good business while also being fundamentally committed to recognizing and doing right by people who often have many responsibilities beyond the walls of their workplaces. They’ve shown us first hand that these two things are not dichotomous, but work together to support enduring success that their thousands of teammates across the country can be proud of.

One of Outside Angle’s founding values is “family”—a commitment to making space for ourselves and our team to spend rich time with the people they’re closest to without the distraction of work. In honor of our role models at DICK’S Sporting Goods, we’re explicitly adopting “Family” as our fourth value as a public reflection of our on-going commitment.