Greater Purpose Leading Change Values & Purpose

A Passion to Serve

Manish Chandra

05.16.22

An important element of transformational leadership is the desire to give back. That’s what drives Manish Chandra everyday in his role as CEO of Poshmark. Here, he shares his passion for serving his employees, his customers, and the greater community.

Summary:

An important element of transformational leadership is the desire to give back. That’s what drives Manish Chandra everyday in his role as CEO of Poshmark. Here, he shares his passion for serving his employees, his customers, and the greater community.

Thuy

And as you tell this story about Poshmark, and you have so many great experiences under your belt now, to this day, what would you say is the purpose, the why of what you do? And how do you assess alignment between that and your actions every day as a leader?
Manish_Chandra

Manish Chandra

I think it’s a really good question. And I think one of the ways I think about it is who do you serve right every day. And so, for me, when I look at my customers, it’s our community, it’s a community of sellers, it’s our community of shoppers, but really a community of sellers who are bringing sustainability to market, who are really taking stuff that would have gone into landfill and turning into recirculation, etc. It’s people trying to earn a living, it’s women trying to stay home, raise families, and earn a living, it’s people finding careers. We’ve seen the social environmental impact of what we do. And that’s ultimately what gets us excited and sort of serving them and hearing from them and working for them.
But then as you look at different constituencies today, you know, it’s our employees. And the last few years have been traumatic for anybody, our sellers and our employees. So, working and serving for them is important. And as we took the company public last year, we added another major constituency, which is the constituency of the public investor, which is not only are the investors that I had from the private days, but then you add to it, you know, could be any consumer, could be you, could be anybody who’s an investor in our company, so we have to also serve for them and create value.
So ultimately, you have to think about these different constituencies, but what inspires us is the ability to serve our community and give them both economic and environmental empowerment. And that’s what keeps me going on this journey here 11 years later.