Women & Allies — Meet Verena Butt d’Espous, the voice of BlaBlaCar
Welcome to Women & Allies at BlaBlaCar; interviews of our team about allyship, support, and growth of the women we work with.
Hi, I’m Shannon. From my first day as Head of Program here, I noticed the women at BlaBlaCar were utterly inspirational — so much so that I had to rope many of them into a monthly post to share their knowledge, and they were kind enough to agree.
I had the pleasure of getting to know our first interviewee during BlaBlaCar’s Impact Day. Verena struck me as someone full of verve, sharp observations, and a keen intellect. Obviously, we had to interview her, and she didn’t disappoint.
I’m excited to share with you her insights and advice, and I look forward to many more of these posts in the months to come!
Tell me a little about yourself (what do you do, what’s your role)?
I’ve been working in the sustainability space since 2003. I was convinced early on that economic development was self-destructive without more consideration for our human and natural resources. I therefore chose to apply my “productive time” to solutions that helped create a more sustainable world, starting my career at an ethical activist investment fund, then working in environmental finance, and finally joining BlaBlaCar in 2014.
Today I run BlaBlaCar’s Communications, which includes two teams that provide a face to our company: the Community Relations team (our stellar customer service) and the Communications team (that build and relay loud and clear our messages in the media across our markets).
I also witnessed the evolution of BlaBlaCar’s governance as we grew from a smaller start-up into a more mature and structured company, growing with the rest of the executive team in a pretty unique spirit of mutual trust and respect.
What would you tell yourself earlier in your career to steer in the right direction?
Surround yourself with smart, kind and driven people. Because that will inspire you to go the extra-mile, and empower you to give the best you have.
Are there any moments or experiences in your career that were catalysts for you?
Meeting Fred Mazzella at INSEAD. When I met Fred in 2007, he was literally obsessed with carpooling. At the time the website counted 50k members and only a few people dared to believe carpooling could be anything else than a small niche. When I joined the company in 2014, the community counted 10 million members, and the team, one hundred employees. It was humbling to see how he, his co-founders Francis Nappez and Nicolas Brusson, and the rest of the team went from an idea that the world was not yet ready to hear, to having enabled behavioral change at such a scale. And it was only the beginning ;) Today we count more than 100 million members.
More generally, doing an MBA at INSEAD was a phenomenal catalyst. This programme is built on the belief that business can be a force for good, and that a multicultural prism is key to building responses to the world’s challenges. I met phenomenal friends and professors, and developed a rich network of doers and shakers across the world. Anything I have achieved since is one way or another linked to going to INSEAD.
Tell me about a time when you felt supported here at BlaBlaCar, or supported another female on our staff.
I feel constantly supported, because we work in an environment where we collectively understand that we are stronger together, and therefore need to support each other. Humility, vulnerability, recognising one’s mistakes and immediately thinking together about what we learn from them, recognising when we need help, taking time to propose one’s help to others, all those are part of our daily life at BlaBlaCar, and clearly explains why I’m so attached to working here.
I can give a specific example of feeling supported at a time where I felt vulnerable. When I announced to our co-Founder & CEO Nico Brusson that I was pregnant with my third child, I was concerned about not being available for the team, in particular as two colleagues who could have replaced me in my absence had just announced that they were expecting children too. Yet Nico’s reaction could not have been more positive. The news was welcomed by a warm smile, possibly a joke on what size family I was aiming for :) and a reassuring message: “The average age of our team is 32 years old, so we need to learn how to live with parental leaves”. And he added “It’s a healthy test for teams too, and an opportunity for some to try new responsibilities. Take the time you need, and we look forward to having you back afterwards”.
I reflected on how BlaBlaCar created a parent-friendly work environment in this article to share practices that other companies could consider.
What do you think companies can do to bring more support to women in the workplace?
Making sure fathers are given the space to be parents too, with measures such as paternity leave. Because equality at work is directly related to equality at home. If men are truly considered as parents in the same way women are, and given the space to be so, then there is no more stigma on women as the only gender needing to juggle work with childcare.
At BlaBlaCar second parents (whatever their gender) benefit from a one month parental leave, and beyond that many of C-level and VPs are parents of young children — so they get the challenge of juggling both and that makes BlaBlaCar a very safe environment for parents.
What advice would you give to women in your field?
I think communications can sometimes be underestimated, and seen simply as a way to do nice window dressing. The power of good communications however is to anticipate an audience’s needs and reactions to craft a compelling message that will embark and create followership. On top of that, the process to get there requires asking fundamental questions that can often lead to identifying blind spots and building a more robust strategy.
Many women already choose this field, but may don’t always dare to deploy the full strategic dimension it deserves, often because other leaders in the company might not be conscious of its potential. So I would encourage them to trust the power of strong communications, and the key role it can play in a company’s success. They should use their empathy to bond with their different audiences as a communicator (customers, media, employees, etc.), get what messages will make a difference, be articulated to evangelize their peers, and influence the company strategy to successfully embark its stakeholders.
I have been fortunate to evolve in a company founded by great communicators. That’s not the case everywhere however, so to grow in this field a woman either needs to select a company where leaders are sensitive to communications, or develop a strong ability to convince and evangelize so that they create the space to deploy their role’s full potential.
Do you have any role models, mentors, or influencers? How did they impact you?
All people who are brave enough to redefine the realm of what’s possible. Remember that when someone tells you something is impossible, they speak about their own limitations, not yours ;-).
Do you have a motto that you live by or quote that inspires you?
I love the 7 habits of highly effective people — I’m not really a fan of life-advice books, but this one offers some actionable advice by focusing on what will really create the conditions for you to be at your best. Reading it was quite eye-opening and I’ve been applying its principles ever since discovering them.
As a reminder, they include:
- Be Proactive
- Begin with the End in Mind
- Put First Things First
- Think Win/Win
- Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood
- Synergize
- Sharpen the Saw
I’d like to insist on one in particular that helps create better interactions:
“Think win-win”: it means having the courage to seek mutual benefit from all human interactions instead of envisaging relationships as zero-sum games with winners on the one side and losers on the other. It also means not feeling threatened by someone whom you believe is better than you, but think instead of what you can learn from them and how you can grow by exchanging with them. By changing your perspective, you’ll change the relationship, and give it a real chance for win-win.
Thank you Verena for all these wonderful insights, and stay tuned for more of these articles in our monthly posts.
