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There are two types of repairs that need to take place when a company experiences a scandal. One is public facing: a mea culpa or an assurance that whatever problem existed is now corrected. The other, often more challenging, occurs within the company: a reassurance to employees that the problems of the past are over and the company culture that drew them to the business is still intact. Driving positive change at a company that is in need of a turnaround takes a deft hand. Two executives who have managed to do this successfully are Carla Vernón, CEO of The Honest Company, and Jessica Berman, Commissioner of the National Women’s Soccer League. Both spoke recently at the 2025 Masters of Scale Summit, discussing how to regain employee trust and reframe strategy after a crisis. Vernón and Berman faced vastly different problems. The Honest Company, founded by actress Jessica Alba, who stepped down in 2024, faced a shareholder revolt. The company’s stock fell 82 percent from its IPO price, and there was increased public scrutiny around the company’s products. Berman came on board following revelations about sexual misconduct and a toxic culture in the NWSL. “The league was really at a crossroads and the crossroads was do we go out of business and potentially restart?” said Berman. “What I heard from the players was, while they lacked confidence in the league … they actually did want the league to succeed. And what they expected was a leader who would show up with vulnerability and humility.” Featured Video An Inc.com Featured Presentation Berman’s not a soccer player or an athlete. Her background, she said, was as a labor lawyer. But having that outsider perspective proved useful in resetting the culture at NWSL. She knew that the key to rebuilding the league was to respect the relationship with the players. “There is no business in professional sports without a constructive, productive relationship with your union and the players,” she said. At Honest Company, Vernón, whose background included large corporations, such as General Mills and Amazon, faced a similar struggle in learning how to best communicate with her new staff. The Honest Company’s employees, she said, tend to be more purpose driven. “66 percent of my employees are millennial or Gen Z, so they’re younger. So I knew that I couldn’t bring the tools … from old corporate America,” she said. Eventually, she realized the trick was to run the company like one she wanted to work for. And as an Afro-Latina woman, that meant one that emphasized diversity, which fit perfectly with the Honest Co. workforce’s values. Rebuilding the culture came down to creating a framework for belonging and including the team in that process. “I get to … [create] a place where our employees can feel seen,” she said. “Our board is diverse and we have employee resource groups, ERGs. But at Honest, everybody is part of every ERG if they want to. We don’t use it as an opportunity to divide and separate. We use it as an opportunity to build allyship, understanding, and also community.” While some companies are shying away from diversity, both Vernón and Berman say they’ve found strength and success in embracing it, both in terms of rebuilding the cultures at their companies and in building the businesses. “We are the embodiment and the combination of the do good, do well model,” says Berman. “We will prove to people that investing in women is good for business by having a successful professional women’s soccer league. … If you close your eyes and think of greatness and soccer in America, you think of women first. It is the only team sport where that is true.” Building that feeling of community within the company has benefits beyond it. Honest Co. customers are incredibly loyal to the brand (though the company’s stock, which has fallen 64 percent year to date, doesn’t reflect that). And NWSL fans feel a connection with the teams today that goes beyond fandom. “The word used—unprompted—most often by our fans when surveyed, what does it mean to be part of the NWSL community is ‘vibes,'” says Berman. “When we unpack that, what they say is that it brings them happiness and joy, that they feel a sense of inclusion and belonging that they don’t feel in other places in their life.”
