Recently, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dana Veeder, former Deputy Chief Ethical Compliance Officer and Head of Global Integrity and Commercial Law at Gap Inc. We spoke about entering a company like Gap as an outsider to fashion, navigating the legal and supply side of the pandemic, and her journey to launching a travel photography brand after retirement.
Dexter Slinn: Let’s begin with the start of your career! What made you pursue a legal career?
Dana Veeder: Ah, that’s a great question. I graduated from college with an English major, thinking that I would go into advertising or PR, thinking I wanted to do something a little bit creative. My first job out of college was as an editor at a company called Business Wire. The more I got involved in that work, the more I realized it probably wasn’t the right fit for me, and I started thinking about what I want to do, and law school just kind of kept rising to the top. I then got a job at a law firm as I was studying for the LSAT, and it stuck. So that’s how I got into law, and then the career sort of unfolded from there.
DS: You mentioned going for a creative career. Is that why you ended up at Gap doing legal work?
DV: No, that was probably really more about work-life balance. I started after law school at a downtown law firm doing commercial litigation. I actually really enjoyed life; I enjoyed law school. But it was just more [than] work that I wanted my life to be about. And you know, with law firms, you paid your dues, you worked hard. Your goal was to get to the partnership. That dynamic was definitely changing by the time that I got into law. In the early to mid-90s, law firms started laying off partners that weren’t bringing in the same amount of money or lost a client, so it wasn’t sort of the “gentleman’s profession” it was in the old days. That’s a horrible term that I just used, but it was the term in use at the time in that industry, and part of the reason that it was changing.
So, as I started seeing how my career could play out, I realized that I wanted more life outside the office. In-house legal was a path that appealed to me because you were still primarily legal but had one sole client. I started out at Netscape, I was there for a year, and we got bought out by AOL. Then, I ended up at Gap, and I was there for 22 years. They were a company that resonated with me. I liked their products, I liked what they stood for, and it just ended up being a really good fit.
DS: How was it being at a fashion company working outside of the fashion part?
DV: I was never seeking fashion out, right? I wasn’t even seeking retail out. It was just that Gap was a company hiring around the time that I was looking for a job. For me, I really enjoyed the policy, managing the litigation, developing the strategy, and executing against it. Then, once I got in, I just sort of started collecting more and more types of work. I took on product safety, I took on sustainability, I took on human rights, I took on compliance. So, the longer I was there, the more I showed an ability to manage different teams.
What I liked best about being an in-house attorney was the ability to focus on just one client and learn how to hone my skills. Over the years, I worked with so many different organizations around the company I ended up leading some work groups. In my position, you just become embedded into the business, which then makes you a better attorney because you understand the business you have. It’s really more about being proactive and trying to prevent problems, and then, once the problems arise, figuring out the best way to solve them. The best lawyers in-house aren’t necessarily the best lawyers at a law firm; it’s those people who can figure out how to do what we need to do from a legal perspective without unnecessarily hindering the business. It’s that kind of work, but it was easy, and it was fun because there were new things coming all the time.
DS: You mentioned working in sustainability and compliance. Is that what made you want to join the Bangladesh worker rights group?
DV: Gap was one of the founding members of the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety and has always had a board seat in that organization. Around the time that I started to take on more of the supply chain human rights compliance work, our board seat came up, so they asked me to fulfill it. And, of course, I said yes, and then a few years later to be able to be on the board actually running that organization was hugely gratifying. It was just a different level of execution and detail, figuring out how to resolve issues on the ground as we’re trying to change that industry.
DS: What was a day in the life like working there?
DV: There was no day in the life. I mean, honestly, the first thing I would do is grab my Blackberry because I had to manage my international teams as well as domestic. I guess a high-level day in the life would be in the office. Getting in somewhere between eight and nine, lots of meetings, lots of Zoom calls, again, given the international teams. I would try to get home at seven, but sometimes, I would have calls in the evening, especially since I managed internal investigations. So it just kind of depended on the day, and I would walk into the office thinking I knew what I was going to do that day, but it was never the same. Because I was in crisis management, you’re constantly prioritizing. So when something comes in that requires urgent attention, everything might change.
DS: While you were working at Gap, did you ever consider a career change to a different position in the company?
DV: I never wanted to leave legal, but I worked with other teams. I was sort of the legal person, sitting in on their meetings, advising their leaders, and trying to be proactive from a legal perspective. But then I actually did take on our compliance program, and then I took on our supplier sustainability program, which technically sat outside legal until that point. And again, it was fascinating because it’s just an opportunity to better understand the issues that those business groups are wrestling with. And again, the better we understand what those issues are, the more strategic our support of them can be.
DS: Something you mentioned earlier was just the nonstop workload. Is that part of the reason why you chose to retire from Gap?
DV: It is absolutely part of the reason. And honestly, If COVID hadn’t happened, I would probably still be at Gap. I really enjoyed the work. It was the right place for me to be for a long time. But [during] COVID, for Gap and for a lot of other companies, our suppliers and factories were shut down. We were still obviously expected to do whatever we could to turn a profit. We can’t keep the business as is however, so we were quickly pivoting. We were figuring out, all right, how do we make masks? What can we disclose about those masks? How do we do it better than other people are doing? How do we shift to almost entirely online business? What store can we open? Are we the type of business that is allowed to be open?
Things were coming fast and furious, and the supply chain was upside down because the factories and countries around the world were dealing with COVID differently. All of that is a long way of saying there are just no breaks in the day. That was just how that was. About a year and a half of that existence, and I just, I just burnt out. It was just too much. When I realized that I could step away, it just felt like it was the time to do that.
DS: You’re definitely making up for being stuck inside because now you’re running a wildly successful travel Instagram. What made you want to start doing that?
DV: You know, I didn’t set out to do that. I’ve enjoyed taking pictures for a long time, and during COVID, all you could do was go for walks and find things to do outside. So we were doing a lot of that, and it was just a surreal time to be in San Francisco. I started trying to capture that and posting it for friends and family to see. I was enjoying finding different ways to capture San Francisco from a local perspective, from my perspective. When I stopped working, I just had a lot more time to be outside doing cool things, and I created @415UrbanAdventures as a place to post those photos. I loved having a place where I could just sort of park those photos and create a portfolio of what I was doing, and then it took off far bigger than I expected.
So I just continue to have fun with that, and then I’ll keep doing that until something else captures my attention or until it stops being as rewarding and fun as it is now. But it wasn’t a plan. I wasn’t going to stop working at Gap and then focus here. I knew I wanted to spend more time with photography, so I took some editing courses just to start to get better at it and hone my skills. But I didn’t set out to have a website like I do now.
DS: Do you think that if Gap ever asked you back in more of an advisory role, you would ever go back?
DV: You know, never say never. Right now I really don’t have any desire to go back into a corporate environment. Organically, I’d have the conversation, if it was something that I believed in. If I thought that I could add value and it wasn’t full-time, I would certainly consider it. If something was offered and if I was passionate about what they were doing, believed in what they were doing, and felt that I could add value and do good, I would always consider it. I’m not really seeking anything else out right now that could very well change. I’m always open to what comes my way. I think that sometimes things come to you for a reason.
Words by Dexter Slinn
Special thanks to Dana Veeder for interviewing with us
Graphics by Aubrey Layer