We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Leeatt Rothschild. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Leeatt below.

Hi Leeatt, thanks for joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

It was a typical cold winter day in Chicago and I was in the middle of my job as a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) consultant. Our office was riddled with the classic corporate holiday gifts – tins of popcorn, boxes of food, and more. All of them were amazing, but as a CSR consultant responsible for helping executives effectively invest dollars to do good, I felt these gifts were missing an opportunity. Here I was surrounded by this transaction of appreciation and gratitude and it was devoid of any social impact. I wondered – what if I could create a better gift? A gift where social impact is integrated into its core and elevates the exchange of giving thanks to something more meaningful. A gift that would be inspiring to both the recipient and the giver and ultimately be more effective for the companies that send them.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My life has been a dance between the world of social impact and business. A few stops along the way include: being a Peace Corps volunteer in Paraguay, working in Marketing Consulting, and advising Chief Sustainability Officers and Marketing Execs how to maximize the ROI of their CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) budgets.

It was during this time, as a CSR consultant, that I had the idea to start Packed with Purpose, a better gifting company. One that embeds social impact into the daily act of gift-giving.

Packed with Purpose is a Certified Woman-Owned business that embeds social and environmental impact into the everyday act of gift giving. Since its launch in 2017, our distinctively curated gift boxes have delighted recipients, showcased company values, and strengthened relationships with employees, clients, prospects, families and friends.

Our thoughtful, hand-selected and sustainable gifts source products from over 140 purpose-driven organizations that positively impact more than 750,000 lives across 33 states and 16 countries. From preserving the environment, to investing in women & diverse-owned businesses, to employing adults with barriers to employment, these gifts transform lives and communities.

Packed with Purpose gifts provide recipients a unique gifting experience unlike any other. A dedicated Gift Concierge team ensures a seamless ordering process, including personalization and customization, backed by an “Always Make it Right” pledge.

We help the nation’s leading brands send the right gift with the right message at the right time to strengthen relationships and collectively amplify their social and environmental impact.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

For the Packed with Purpose indiegogo campaign, our inaugural holiday gifting season, we had an amazing Impact Partner make granola for our gifts, with hundreds of bags of granola were being sent to our fulfillment center to ensure our orders shipped on schedule. At the time, I had just given birth to my twin boys who had been stuck in the NICU for 6 weeks, when suddenly I started getting calls from the team (while I’m in the NICU!) that something was wrong and all of the granola had arrived hard as rock.

In an effort to meet our condensed timeline, our Impact Partner had packaged the granola while it was still warm and because of that, it had hardened as opposed to staying in a loose granola format. As soon as the fulfillment team saw this, they immediately let me know.

This set off a myriad of problem-solving actions. We worked closely with our Impact Partner to rectify the now unusable bags of granola – and they were able to create new bags sent in record time allowing us to meet our gift send deadline.

Since this was our first holiday season it was just a taste of the ripple effect of when one thing goes wrong during our peak sales period. I’ve since learned that everything is interconnected in my business and we are only as good as our team, and our ability to creatively problem-solve during the most challenging circumstances.

Any advice for managing a team?

I had employees from the very beginning and through that hiring process in the early days of Packed with Purpose, I knew that hiring for mission alignment would be very important. There are many people who are good at marketing, or operations – but finding people that are uniquely interested in applying their skills to a mission-forward business was imperative for the future of Packed with Purpose.
The first few employees were joining a startup environment, so I had to hire self-starters given how amorphous everything is at the beginning of launching a business. It was critically important to hire individuals who could be thinking at all times about the dual objectives of mission alignment and defining the business. We needed employees who were self-starters that did not need their hands held as we approached every key decision.

As we have grown, and our first employees who are still here became so important to the culture, we went on a journey to create core values to create foundational elements by which future hires could be assessed. These were the backbone markers to determine whether someone would be an ideal fit or not. These core values would ensure that I would continue to hire employees that were aligned with the company’s purpose – the way we operate, and allow individuals to take their own abilities and thrive at Packed with Purpose.

To do this we first surveyed the team and asked them to identify 3 current staff members who most exemplified Packed with Purpose Values. We then asked for examples of this in the same survey. Then the Leadership team literally highlighted the same ideas that came up again and again. This whole process ensured our values were built from the ground up. There were debates about language – because words are important – but I am so proud of where we landed and we currently use these values in our review process and anytime we interview new candidates.

We build a culture of appreciation to maintain morale across the organization, embedding it easily into the work day. How Packed with Purpose does this is with our shout outs.

It’s every day and it’s part of the culture to shout out to a colleague on slack, in a meeting or even on LinkedIn. It’s a small gesture that makes someone feel good about their contribution and there is very little barrier for anyone to participate.

The key is to make it easy, accessible and commonplace to share appreciation, whether with a shout out like us, sending a gift (we like this one!), a personal note, or using something more codified like an employee award.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://packedwithpurpose.gifts/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/packedwpurpose/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/packedwpurpose.gifts
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/packed-with-purpose
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/packedwpurpose
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@packedwithpurpose462