No imposter syndrome for this CEO

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. By almost every measure, The Honest Company, known for its clean products, is a relatively small player in an enormous ecosystem. With 2025 revenue of $371.3 million and a market capitalization of about $540 million, it is a fraction of the size of Amazon ($717 billion in 2025 sales and $2.87 trillion in market cap) or even General Mills ($19.5 billion in revenue and more than $21 billion in market value)—the two companies where Carla Vernón worked before joining Honest as chief executive officer and board director in 2023. Small but mighty But Vernón doesn’t run Honest like a small business, and she is unabashed about having earned her place alongside other public company CEOs. “CEOs of public companies are all executing our responsibilities against the same exact framework in service of the shareholde…