A Q&A With Top Women in Retail Honoree Kat Cole, CEO, AG1

Women in Retail Leadership Circle (WIRLC) recently released its 15th annual Top Women in Retail report. The valuable resource highlights female executives who impressed our Editorial team as well as colleagues from the industry. Kat Cole, CEO, AG1, is one such example. Here’s a sampling of Cole’s interview featured in the report.

Women in Retail Leadership Circle: What inspired you to take on the role at AG1, and how has your shift from leading a global food and beverage portfolio at Focus Brands to heading a health-focused company influenced your leadership approach and perspective?
Kat Cole: I joined AG1 because, as a mom to two young kids, I was inspired by my own passion for nutrition and health and the impact AG1 (then Athletic Greens) had on my energy, gut health, and immune system. I was a customer prior to joining. As a business person I was attracted to the incredible third-party-validated quality of the product, the growing global interest in nutrition, and the opportunity AG1 has as a vetted and trusted leader in its category to be a major part of healthy daily habits and the health ownership movement.

WIRLC: What challenges and opportunities have you encountered while scaling AG1 globally, and how do you tailor your approach for different regions?
KC: For over 15 years, we’ve been laser focused on doing a million things to make one product better, manufacturing a 75-ingredient product to the highest standards in the industry. Our customers rely on AG1 as part of their daily health routine. We do not take that responsibility lightly, yet we hear that they would love to find us in more places and would love to see us make a few additional products.  Looking ahead, we have a huge opportunity to take this transformative brand to the next level by meeting customers where they are with new channels and products, while maintaining our rigor around quality, standards, research and third-party certifications.

WIRLC: AG1 operates in a highly competitive industry. How do you ensure your team remains mission-focused and driven amidst rapid growth?
KC: We ground our hiring, communications and leadership in our mission to empower health ownership and our company values. We’ve built a world-class leadership team over the past few years that ensures the team remains focused on the mission while building capabilities that fuel the vision and mission such as research, quality and a supply chain that underpin both the core business and future growth.

WIRLC: What’s a lesson you learned that changed you as a leader?
KC: One of the lessons I learned early on in my career is that the same approach doesn’t work in every situation or location and the right questions are more important than thinking you have the answers. As I’ve led different teams and opened businesses in different countries, you realize the things that worked a couple countries ago or a couple of months or years ago aren’t always the same playbooks for today’s needs. Answers don’t scale; questions do. Finding the right questions allows me to make better decisions and have more fruitful actions, regardless of the dynamics and situation. 

WIRLC: What legacy do you hope to leave behind, both at AG1 and in the broader business world?
KC: My personal purpose is to help people realize they’re capable of more than they know. I’ve done this through various methods over the decades. That remains constant. Through AG1 and this chapter, that’s not only about impacting the lives of the people I get to work alongside every day and the customers around the world we have the honor of serving, but it’s also about the communities we serve to bend the world’s habits toward healthy choices. Within the supplement world, I will lead the industry in quality, standards, research, and delivering on our mission to empower health to millions of people around the world who choose to start each day with AG1.