Roz Johnson doesn’t consider herself to be traditionally trained in human resources. In her 30-plus year career in retail, she’s held all kinds of positions at various large retailers and brands, including vice president of stores at American Eagle, regional manager at Gap, and senior managing director of operations at Build-A-Bear Workshop, where she’s worked for the last eight years.

For the last two years, she’s been the chief people officer at Build-A-Bear, where, as she says, “We take our work seriously but we don’t take ourselves seriously.”

Last month, Johnson added a new title to her already impressive resume — chief experience officer. Unlike other traditional chief experience officer roles that typically focus on the customer experience — sometimes similar to a chief customer role — with this new title, Johnson assumed responsibility for Build-A-Bear’s global field operations team and Build-A-Bear’s charitable foundation.

She said CEO Sharon Price John wanted to make sure she had someone in this role who could connect the strategic objectives of the organization to what we do around people, and have the people team understand the really critical role that they play in helping the organization deliver on the strategic objectives.

“It’s this idea of all things that involve people, and for us it’s not just internal with our associates, it’s how we show up in our communities,” Johnson said during an exclusive interview with Women in Retail Leadership Circle (WIRLC) at Shoptalk last month. “And it’s about our customers, which we call our guests in our retail space.”

Women in Retail members can watch Johnson’s entire interview with Co-Founder Melissa Campanelli — as well as other interviews with female leaders in retail that occurred in the Women in Retail Pavilion at Shoptalk — on-demand here. Not a member? Apply today!