DANIELLE EVANS

ACCOUNT MANAGER, NESTLÉ

BY SAMANTHA BROOKS

Growing up in South Pasadena, Danielle Evans spent her high school summers working at 21 Choices and the Gap on Colorado. After graduating from Harvard-Westlake, she attended Stanford University, where she majored in communications. She then worked as a buyer at Robinsons-May and later earned a business degree at USC. Now an Account Manager at Nestlé, she works from home in La Cañada Flintridge, where she lives with her husband, Ben, and twin 4-year-olds.

You’ve been at Nestlé for most of your career. Did you ever imaging staying at one place for so long?

I’ve been able to change roles over the years and work on different sides of the business. Years ago, I was in a supply chain role I didn’t love, and after a meeting, a senior leader in sales pulled me aside and said, “Your personality seems to fit better in marketing or sales. I want you to do a rotation on my team.” I took her up on it, and that’s when I began to feel passionately about consumer-packaged goods—recipe development, shopper behavior, market-pricing dynamics, packaging communication.

Describe a typical Monday.

My son is the family’s alarm clock every day around 6 a.m., and once my kids are awake, their energy is 10 out of 10. We’re in the car around 8:00 for drop-off at a neighborhood preschool. Then I’m back home to start my workday around 8:30 in a quiet house. My kids get out of school at 3 p.m., so our nanny, Vania, picks them up and takes them to their after-school activity, the park, or Descanso Gardens, and brings them home around 4:00. I’m fortunate I can multitask baking a sheet-pan dinner while wrapping up my workday emails. We all sit around the kitchen island for dinner around 5:30 p.m., and the kids are full of energy and chatter. They wind down for bed around 8:30 p.m., so Ben and I have just enough time to decide what to stream before I inevitably fall asleep. I’m lucky if I make it to 10:00.

How did you decide to go back to work after having kids?

My maternity leave was seven months long, which was fortunate. I did not think about work until around month six when I started to feel the urge to use my professional skills again. Because I’m able to work from home, I can see my kids playing in the yard from my office and can visit them between meetings, which reduces the dreaded mom guilt.

How do you find a balance?

Finding time for myself is the hardest for me because it’s the easiest to back burner, but lately I’ve been taking two hours on Sunday afternoons for myself. I always feel better afterward.