On February 1, my group and I went to Zara Terez, located in midtown, to interview their president, Allison Grover. Allison isn’t only the president of Zara Terez, but also a parent of some kids at LREI. She has been the president of Zara Terez for about a year, and before that she worked at Goldman Sachs. Zara Terez sells printed leggings as well as backpacks among other things.
As president, Allison’s job is to make sure the public knows about their clothes, so if a celebrity posts a picture of themselves wearing Zara Terez leggings on Instagram, she’ll make sure their company is mentioned, in order to sell more, as well as managing budgets. Most of Allison’s job requires a computer, which is helpful because it makes her schedule more flexible, allowing her to spend tim at home with her kids, while still being able to accomplish work. While she was still working at Goldman Sachs, Allison was going to have a child, and wanted to leave, but during a dinner, the leggings that Allison had previously bought for her daughter (leggings which Allison said she was in love with) were brought up, and Allison went to work for Zara Terez as the head of business and operations. Then the president, Zara got pregnant and Allison was elevated. She told us about how balancing her work life and home life is easier, because she is in a higher position, she doesn’t have a set 9-5 day, and that doesn’t work for her family. Instead, there’s a full expectation that she’ll get her work done, so she set priorities, which she believes is a key to balancing her home and work life, but because she has a flexible schedule, balancing her home life and work life may also include taking conference calls on weekends.
Allison spoke to us a little about her experience at Goldman Sachs, because she was one of the only women on her floor, and she mentioned the feeling of being the “little girl” in the room surrounded by a bunch of men. She also said she wasn’t surprised when the topic of gender discrimination came up, and she thinks it’s a big problem, “The fact that it’s a [social justice] topic for you guys shows that we haven’t solved the problem,” (Allison Grover, president of Zara Terez). She said one of the reasons that women may be undervalued is because, “We as a society are still grasping with the idea that women have children.” Allison explained this way of thinking by going on and explaining that once a woman has a child, she steps off the career track, which may lead to other believing they don’t care as much about work. But Allison doesn’t believe that we haven’t not accomplished anything, which she shows when she stated, “If Hillary gets elected I think it’ll be something that shows we’ve come a long way.” Allison explained to us that at Zara Terez, she wasn’t discriminated against because of her gender, and as she walked us around the space, my group and I could only count around 3 men in a group of 20 women. Allison had a different perspective compared to some of the other women we had interviewed, which was in a way, refreshing.
