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Until four years ago, Chris Robins' life read like a quintessential Wisconsin experience: Raised in Green Bay, she was a competitive figure skater as a teen, paid her way through the University of Wisconsin-Madison by teaching private skating lessons, and was recruited on campus for a job at one of the state's best-known companies: SC Johnson, where she managed marketing campaigns for high-profile consumer products such as Aveeno skin care, Glade air fresheners, Raid insecticides and Ziploc bags.
But after nearly two decades at the place that advertises itself as "a family company," Ms. Robins went west for a stint in management at Philips Electronics and Philips Oral Healthcare near Seattle. In August, she became CEO of Pittsburgh startup BodyMedia, which makes wearable devices that track health and weight management.
Question: You handled major brands at SC Johnson. Which was the most fun to work on?
Answer: Raid. Interestingly enough, it's a great brand equity. It was a product invented by the fourth generation of the Johnson family and I took it over pretty much at its 40-year low. It was a privilege having a brand one of the family members had invented.
Job: CEO, BodyMedia Inc.
Age: 43
Hometown: Green Bay, Wis.
Education: Bachelor's, marketing and finance, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1988; master's of business administration, Marquette University, 1994.
Career: 1988-2005: SC Johnson, Racine, Wisc., variety of positions in finance and marketing; 2005-09: vice president of marketing, Philips Electronics, and president and chief executive, Philips Oral Healthcare, Snoqualmie, Wash.; August 2009-present: CEO, BodyMedia Inc.
Question: How did you revive the brand name?
Answer: We worked on a stream of innovation ... and things in the area of sustainability. They are polar opposites: an insecticide and its impact on the environment and consumers -- how to do that in a sustainable way in packaging, in the product and how we marketed it.
I was able to pilot some things like a program of education in the inner cities. A lot of asthma is driven by cockroach droppings in the home so you see a higher prevalence of childhood asthma in cities like Miami and Washington, D.C. We did a program with the schools to educate families about proper care and screening for asthma. That was soft branding and more about the education with Raid as the sponsor.
Question: What did you do at Philips?
Answer: I took a position as vice president, marketing, for Philips Electronics. About 14 months later, the chief executive who brought me in was moved to another business. So I ended up running Philips Oral Healthcare, which makes the Sonicare toothbrush. There was manufacturing, research and development on site, a dental clinic and marketing support. It was a fully integrated business with about 225 people reporting to me.
Question: And now you're at a startup with much less name recognition. How's the transition?
Answer: It's a change but a change I wanted. I purposely wanted to step out of big, corporate America. I'd spent 20-plus years with two huge multinationals. I wanted to do something more independently run and operated. (We have about 45 employees here).
There are certain pluses and strengths of working for those corporations, but they also have their own agendas, which is not necessarily in concert with driving the business and having success.
What I also wanted -- and one of the things I came to learn working on Sonicare -- is that working on a business that has impact and a meaningful place in consumers' lives and is something they care about, was a true pleasure.
Raid and Glade are great brands, but they're more commodity products. I went to Sonicare thinking, "It's just a toothbrush. How sexy is that?" But I came to realize very quickly that for the consumers who use it, it really has meaningful impact. I wanted to find another business with that emotional connection with consumers.
Question: Describe how your product works.
Answer: There is the arm band, which is the brains of the system and must be worn on a certain place on the arm to get accuracy. Its sensors measure [steps] like a pedometer and additional things like skin temperature and the rate at which heat dissipates from your body. Thousands of bits of data are picked up every minute.
Then you download it to a Web site where you can also put in information about [what food you ate]. And it gives you a really nice summary of calories, steps, activity level. It will calculate for you what your target activity levels should be. Very easily and graphically you can see how you did for the day.
Question: You appear to be in excellent shape. Have you tried it?
Answer: I wear it [rolls up sleeve of her blouse to show where it's fastened to her arm]. I love the awareness. When I first started to use it -- and maybe this is what convinced me of the power of it -- I didn't necessarily think I needed to lose weight. I was a competitive figure skater for 25 years.
But I wanted to see how it worked and to play with the online stuff. And all of a sudden it became this motivational thing. I ended up losing five to six pounds in a month and thought, "This is kind of cool."
Question: You're getting some marketing mileage with the product being worn by contestants on NBC's reality TV show "The Biggest Loser." Where can everyday consumers get it and how much does it cost?
Answer: The version on "The Biggest Loser" is called bodybugg and isn't worn during sleep like the version called GoWear fit that's been sold since November 2008. Consumers can get it through our Web site, www.bodymedia.com, and others: Amazon.com, drugstore.com, CVS.com.
Question: Describe your management style.
Answer: I'm a very strategic, externally focused person. The more I drive that through an organization, the better decisions we make and the more independent the employees and the teams can work.
There are three C's: The customer, the consumer and the competition, and those are the things we need to be focused on -- externally, not internally. I don't care what role in the organization you have, you need to understand those three parameters at some level.
Another thing about my style, I'm about people. I grew up at SC Johnson, which is a family-owned company. The philosophy there really worked for me: If you take care of the people, the people take care of the business.
Question: You seem to hold a real affinity for the culture at SC Johnson. Was it tough to leave there?
Answer: It was. Seventeen years: I was a lifer in their eyes. I was very well integrated into the company, the family, the community. But I just realized I had some things I wanted to learn in my career. The reason I went to Philips is that I really wanted to learn about global business. SC Johnson is present in 80 countries in the world. But they don't manage their brands and their businesses globally. Philips, on the other hand, does.
Question: Have you had a mentor during your career?
Answer: In a conceptual way, Sam Johnson. He passed away in 2002. As a business leader, he was a very intelligent, very wealthy man. But as an everyday employee, I wasn't just a number. He would sit down in the cafeteria with us. He would want to know if something was going on in our families or our lives. I didn't even think he knew my name, and he'd come in and see me.
It just taught you what being a business leader was about. He was the fourth generation to run the business. His son, Fisk, is the fifth generation. He's the one you see in the commercials.
Question: What does your family think about moving across the country from the Seattle area?
Answer: My husband is Canadian, from Ontario, and used to come to Pittsburgh when he was single with his buddies to golf and go to Penguins' games. He still plays hockey and has already scoped out where all the ice rinks are. The presence of hockey is so much better than in Seattle. This is like coming back to Milwaukee for us.
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