Alexandra Wilkis Wilson

Grow Well, Stay Gorgeous

“One of the keys to hyper-growth is to always maintain flexibility. Strategy needs to evolve based on results, and based on testing. Sometimes things work incredibly well that you might not have expected to work as well, and vice versa.”

Hire People, Not Positions

“When we hire people, we explain to them that they need to be flexible. We’ve had many people join Gilt in one professional capacity, and then, as the business has developed, they’ve moved into a completely different area.”

Start-up Stars

“I’m open-minded about hiring in general. We’ve had many hires in our company that could be seen as unconventional. I really look at people’s drive. I think it’s more important to hire someone who’s really driven, and strategic, and smart, and ambitious, and dedicated than to hire someone who might have the exact relevant experience but doesn’t have that fire in their belly. In a start-up, you need employees to have that fire.”

Mentor See, Mentor Do

“I make sure that I mentor the people that I manage, and make sure that they mentor the people that they manage, and so on, from our most junior summer intern, all the way to the top. I think mentoring and developing our employees is important to the core.”

Dress to Impress Yourself

“A lot of women can make the mistake of getting so caught up in trends, whether they read Us Weekly and read about a new color that’s hot for the season, or a new silhouette of a dress. At the end of the day, I think a woman looks most elegant and most chic when she’s wearing something that suits her—her body type, her skin tone, or her personality.”

This Featured Lady was profiled by Sarah Tomlinson, a freelance writer in Los Angeles.

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