Retailer Hall of Fame 2024: Gina Drosos

Editor’s Note: National Jeweler selected Gina Drosos for induction into the Retailer Hall of Fame and conducted this interview prior to her announcement that she would retire in November. This story first appeared in the print edition of the 2024 Retailer Hall of Fame. Click here to see the full issue.

People often wonder what it takes to be an effective leader or how to raise successful children.

For Signet Jewelers CEO Gina Drosos, her childhood summers spent taking educational trips with her family helped build her foundation for both.

The Atlanta native is the daughter of two former schoolteachers, so education was a big priority, she recalls, even during summer break.

“Every vacation we took as children had to start with something educational. Then my brother and I would beg to go to the beach for a few days afterwards. If we could find a Revolutionary War battlefield near the ocean, that was a big score,” Drosos says.

Her father, a teacher-turned-lawyer who rose to become a deputy attorney general in Georgia, was a source of inspiration and helped guide her career path.

“He was in public service for his whole career. I had a high affection for what he did. I thought he really made a difference in the world, and I valued that,” she says.

Drosos wanted to follow in her father’s footsteps and become a lawyer, so he recommended she study business before heading to law school. It was there that a vacation would shape her life, again.

As a junior at the University of Georgia, she and her roommate couldn’t afford a spring break trip so they connected with a boat captain in Florida and chartered eight sailboats to the Bahamas.

They then sold spots on the boats to their classmates, while Drosos and her roommate sailed for free.

It was then that Drosos caught what she described as “the business bug.”

“This whole entrepreneurial idea of, ‘Wow, you can create something from nothing in the world of business’ really caught me.”

Drosos applied to business schools instead of law schools, earning admission to the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business.

“I’ve loved the idea of doing something with your career that you think can make a difference in the world, like my dad did. But I love doing it from a business angle,” she says.

The Business Bug
The “business bug” drew Drosos to Procter & Gamble in 1987 after she graduated from Wharton. She stayed there for 25 years.

At P&G, she led multifunctional teams, so while she was honing her marketing skills, she was also learning about other facets of the business, including research and development, finance, manufacturing, and the supply chain.

“When you work in a consumer-oriented business, like jewelry is, then having a background where you always start with the customer first, where you really try to dissect their experience and their needs and their desires, really helps,” says Drosos.

By 2011, she had worked her way up to group president of P&G’s Global Beauty Care division, overseeing a $12 billion portfolio that included some of the most well-known brands on the market.

Her time with the consumer products giant gave her a strong foundation for her current role.

“It was really that same idea of bringing together a multifunctional team to create a vision to wow consumers,” says Drosos.

It was around that time that an executive recruiter reached out to her about a board position at Signet Jewelers, laying the groundwork for the next step in her career.

After speaking with the recruiter, Drosos says she had the feeling Signet’s board would be somewhere she could contribute and learn. She could share her expertise in branding, marketing, and consumer understanding while learning more about retail.

Jamie Singleton, Signet’s group president and chief consumer officer, first met Drosos at a board meeting.

“I found her to be the most straightforward, curious, smart, and insightful person in the room, but very down-to-earth and relatable, and incredibly interested in the business,” she recalls.

For Drosos, it was the people on Signet’s board who were the main selling point.

“It’s a group of really smart, talented people who are also genuinely nice and interested and engaged, people who really care. I could see that, and I thought, ‘Wow, that’s the kind of company I’d like to be part of,’” says Drosos.

She joined the board as an independent director in 2012.

Leading Signet
When she first began serving on Signet’s board, Drosos was still running P&G’s global beauty division.

The team at P&G had decided it would make more sense for Drosos to be located in Singapore, but with her children in seventh and eighth grade at the time, she decided moving abroad was not the best choice for her family.

“It’s one of those great work-life balance decisions that working moms have to make,” she says.

Drosos left P&G, taking on a role at startup biotechnology company Assurex Health in 2013.

The company created “GeneSight,” a genetic test to predict a patient’s response to neuropsychiatric medication. It’s used by healthcare professionals to provide care for patients living with depression and other mental health disorders.

Over a four-year period, the company grew twelvefold and was exploring an initial public offering when Myriad Genetics made an offer of its own to the tune of $410 million.

Drosos led the transition and felt she accomplished what she could at Assurex Health.

Around this time, the then-CEO of Signet Jewelers, Mark Light, found himself in the hot seat due to public controversies and the company’s poor performance—the company would later say he retired due to “health reasons”—and so, as the Signet board began its CEO search, a few directors turned their attention to Drosos.

“I was really proud that they asked and to be considered. I didn’t know if I would be selected among the candidates, but I did know there was a tremendous opportunity to lead our company in a great forward direction,” she says.

Drosos got that opportunity. After five years on Signet’s board, she was named the jewelry retailer’s new CEO in August 2017, the first woman to lead the business.

Transformation Ahead
As Signet’s new CEO, Drosos saw the need for a holistic transformation, but she wanted input from her team on exactly how it would work.

Signet, at that time, was in a sales slump. In the quarter prior to Drosos’ appointment, the retailer reported that sales were down 11 percent year-over-year.

It was a slow start to the year, said then-CEO Light, as Signet faced headwinds in the overall retail environment coupled with a slowdown in jewelry spending and “company-specific challenges.”

Looking to make changes, Drosos says her first priority as CEO was “to listen to the team, to share that thinking with them in a very broad sense and get the team to help fill in details of the plan and strategy.”

Financially, Drosos felt the business could be taken in new directions to help drive growth. 

“Culturally, it felt like there was an opportunity to really draw out leadership at every level of the organization to encourage diverse thinking, action, and leadership more from the bottom up of the company as opposed to from the top down,” she says.

Within the first six months, Drosos was visiting stores in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada, speaking with store employees and holding meetings with manager- and director-level employees.

“People who are on the front line, they can tell what’s working and not working. Empowering them to bring that forward is something we started at that time, [and] it’s very much part of our culture at Signet today,” she says.

Drosos wanted to know if her employees agreed with her vision and what they thought should be top priority.

“It was amazing how people really came forward with great ideas. I could see that we needed to give more decision-making power to our store leaders,” she says.

After speaking with her employees, she came to understand which areas called for more investment and where the company could save money to fund those investments.

“I think too often, people have an idea in their head, and they’re looking for data to support their hypothesis. That’s really the opposite of what I was doing. I was trying to frame the question very broadly so that I could see whether there were themes emerging from different parts of the organization.”

With data in tow, Drosos worked with her leadership team to form the “Path to Brilliance” turnaround plan, announced in March 2018.

The goal was to improve long-term operational and financial performance internally, but Signet’s external reputation also was in need of repair.

Prior to Drosos’ time as CEO, Signet’s image had taken a hit following years of ongoing arbitration over claims of gender discrimination that fueled a bombshell 2017 report by The Washington Post, a widely publicized scandal involving allegations of stone-swapping at Kay Jewelers, and a class-action lawsuit filed by shareholders in 2016.

(The company reached a $240 million settlement in the shareholder lawsuit in 2020, and a $175 million settlement in the gender discrimination case in 2022.)

There was a lot to tackle, but Drosos had a strong team behind her.

“Gina is a very good partner and a very empowering leader. She has a unique ability to bring out the best in her team,” says Singleton.

“One of the leadership traits that has made her so beloved and so successful is the lack of ego, the lack of concern around whose ideas get implemented, who gets credit, who brings the insight to the table. It’s really a collaborative, productive, and innovation-driven style for leading a team.”

Singleton notes Drosos still visits the stores, particularly when she’s having a difficult day, to spend time with customers and the team.

“That’s [what] feeds her spirit. That passion, that legacy, that’s the hallmark of a special leader.”

Data Reigns Supreme
Teamwork is crucial but Drosos’ secret weapon is data.

As in previous roles, data analysis is key to her decision-making process and, at Signet, analytics have been especially helpful in understanding the bridal market.

The company has identified and tracked a proprietary list of 45 milestones that trace a couple’s journey through four major relationship stages: leading, exclusivity, committed, and engagement.

According to Signet, once couples experience at least 27 of these milestones, like traveling together, it is probable they will get engaged.

Data also has guided Signet’s prediction that engagements, lulled by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, would pick up within three to four years. The company expects to see a five to 10 percent increase in engagements this year.

Chief Financial Officer Joan Hilson, a numbers person by trade, appreciates Drosos’ affinity for data.

Hilson describes her boss as an optimist and a realist at the same time, a leader who balances the company’s creative aspects and consumer messaging with what’s important from a business perspective.

“When I think of the flywheel of leadership, her heart is at the core. Her mind is focused on what we need to deliver results and bring value to our shareholders. But we need to bring our brand forward in a way that is meaningful to our customers,” she says.

A Little Levity
Drosos is a data person without question, but she enjoys the fun side of her job at the jewelry giant.

As a child, Drosos would play in her mom’s jewelry box, layering on multiple pieces at a time long before maximalism was a trend.

“I thought there was such a uniqueness and a craftsmanship and beauty to jewelry. It’s like art,” she says.

As an adult, she’s more thoughtful in her jewelry choices.

At the start of her professional life, she had a few go-to pieces that she’d wear often. “Now that I’ve been at Signet, I appreciate the ability to bring your personal touch and style to how you wear your jewelry. I take more chances with it than I used to,” she says.

Drosos also has a fun annual competition with Chief Consumer Officer Singleton. 

“We have a very wicked football rivalry,” says Singleton, who is a University of Alabama fan while Drosos is a Georgia bulldog through and through. 

They have a standing bet regarding which team will have a better year.

“The loser has to make the winner a really fabulous piece of spectacular team jewelry,” says Singleton.

Football rivalry aside, the two have a supportive professional relationship.

Singleton recalls when she took a leadership role at Kay and there was a long road ahead to get the banner to growth.

“Gina and I were talking one day about it, and she said, ‘All you have to do is get a little bit better every day. And a little step every day toward improvement is going to get us there,’” says Singleton.

“That encouragement of her saying, ‘Look, you’ve got this and I’ve got you. We’re in it together,’ that kind of partnership, it’s been the consistent drumbeat of our relationship along the years.”

Calm in the Storm
By the time 2020 rolled around, Drosos had settled into her role, guiding the company along its transformation plan, but the start of the COVID-19 pandemic derailed those plans.

Drosos says she’ll never forget the decision-making process behind closing all Signet’s stores, made before government regulations required them to shut down.

“On the one hand, it was a very easy decision because I wanted to protect, first and foremost, the safety of our people,” she recalls. “On the other hand, it’s uncharted territory to close all of your retail stores when that represents more than 80 percent of your sales.” 

She remembers feeling the pressure of having so many people depending on her to make the right call.

“I don’t know if every CEO feels this way [but] I wake up every morning, and I think, almost 30,000 families are depending on me to make good decisions because their family vacation or the home they’ve just built or the opportunity to send their children to college depend on me making good decisions that support their livelihoods.” 

Amid the chaos, Drosos says the company’s purpose, which is to inspire love, guided her and her team’s decisions.

That love extends to its customers, team, products, and the environment, she says.

“Using our purpose as a guide and our consumer focus helped us to drill down [on] what were the most important things we needed to do to continue to drive our business [during the pandemic],” says Drosos.

Its employees were vital, and so the company implemented pay raises and offered career development opportunities.

One of the most important elements for success was her team, who shared their diverse opinions and expertise, she says. 

“I think that is the job of the CEO—to draw out different opinions to diverge, and then to lead a team to converge, to create a strategy that everyone rallies behind.” 

For CFO Hilson, seeing Drosos take charge during the pandemic was “a fantastic experience in leadership.”

“We very quickly assessed the situation and we rode the boat together and the team jumped on,” says Hilson.

Singleton also recalls Drosos’ unwavering leadership through that challenging time, noting how she, “kept a relentless focus on building and maintaining a strong Signet for our teams to come back to.”

Pressure makes diamonds, Drosos would often say during the early days of the pandemic.
 

With the stores closed, Signet had to equip its teams with tablets and virtual consultation training.

“That’s a hallmark of strong companies, that you don’t go back during the tough times. You continue to invest in what’s important; in our case, our people and advancing our digital capabilities,” says Drosos.

“The other adage I think about is, never waste a crisis,” she says.

“Change is hard for a lot of people and organizations. But when you have a crisis, everybody understands immediately the need to change. If you can drive that in a positive direction, then inertia is gone and the call to action is very clear and the organization starts to move mountains.”

Career Highlights
Successfully guiding the company through a crisis on the scale of COVID-19 was a high point for Drosos, but looking back on her career so far, the Signet CEO says she is most proud of her team.

“I love seeing people achieve things they’re excited about. Therefore, I love developing leaders. I love drawing out diverse points of view,” she says.

“I love forming a strategy with the team and then using my role to break down barriers and move obstacles out of the team’s way so they can push a strategy ahead. That really has been my highlight at Signet,” she says.

The diversity in the organization is another point of pride, says Drosos, noting that women make up 59 percent of her leadership team. 

Nearly 75 percent of those in assistant store manager positions and above as well as 40 percent of Signet’s vice presidents are women.

Singleton says, “She has a heart and a determination for advancing women in business and a belief that you should be able to be a mom and an executive.”

Ethnic and racial diversity also have grown during Drosos’ tenure, which she sees as important to Signet’s business strategy.

According to its “Corporate Citizen and Sustainability” report for fiscal 2024, 37 percent of assistant store managers and above in North America identify as Black, indigenous, or a person of color, while that’s true for 15 percent of those who are a vice president or higher.

“Diversity in our organization helps us be more innovative because we collectively think differently and we see around the corner,” says Drosos.

Signet has eight active business resource groups, including groups for those who belong to the Asian Pacific, Hispanic, Latino, and Black communities, as well as groups for LGBTQ employees, women, and veterans.

Another hallmark of her tenure is Signet’s push into the digital space.

When Drosos started at Signet, e-commerce accounted for about 5 percent of sales, and now it’s more than 20 percent.

“When I first said that to our store teams [about moving into the digital space], they thought I had three heads,” she recalls.

E-commerce is the enemy and it will cannibalize the store business, many told her, but she forged ahead, and the opposite happened.

Having a shopper-friendly website is a foot traffic driver for stores, she says, noting about 75 percent of people who shop at a physical Signet-owned banner looked online first.

Insights like this have played a major role in Drosos’ success, all fueled by her aforementioned affinity for data.

“I believe in the power of data to unlock insight and then focus an organization on what’s most important,” she says. “It’s not hard to get ideas. A lot of companies have great ideas. What’s hard is focusing on the most important ones and really driving those competitive advantages. And I think data helps to do that.”

Above all, though, Drosos is insistent about giving credit to her team.

“It’s a really special thing in a company when management and the board are very aligned,” she says.

“I’m appreciative that from the top all the way through the company, we’re like-minded about how we want to create that unbelievable experience for our customers.”