Carla Vernón is the Chief Executive Officer and Board Director of The Honest Company (NASDAQ: HNST). Carla is widely recognized for her track record of strengthening business models, driving category-leading innovation, scaling brands and inspiring team culture. As the first Afro Latina CEO of a U.S. publicly traded company and transformational business leader, Carla’s role as CEO reflects the diversity of Honest’s consumers and the game-changing role that the Honest brand plays across its categories. Leveraging her prior leadership roles, she is poised to take Honest into its next chapter, with boundary-breaking innovation rooted in the company’s legacy as a pioneer in the clean and conscious category.
Prior to joining Honest, Carla was the Vice President of Consumables Categories at Amazon.com where she led double-digit topline growth in Amazon’s $200 billion online store for categories including: baby care, household products, food, beverages, health and wellness, and beauty. She was instrumental in transforming the shopping experience, product selection, and seasonal merchandising strategy across Amazon’s beauty stores. Before her role at Amazon, Carla was at General Mills where she served as a Corporate Officer and Division President. She drove some of the company’s most iconic brands like Cheerios, Nature Valley, and Lucky Charms to record growth. As the Division President of the Triple Bottom Line Operating Unit, Carla guided General Mills to become the second-largest branded maker of natural and organic food in North America, and the industry leader in regenerative agriculture and organic farming.
Carla holds a bachelor’s degree in Ecology from Princeton University, where she serves as a Trustee of the University and is a co-founder of the Princeton Tiger Sisters, a network of 1,250 female Princeton alumnae and students from the African American diaspora. Carla received her MBA at the University of Texas, McCombs School of Business where she was a Consortium Fellow and is a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute.
