Jessica Alba leads the 190 employees of the Honest Company—the nontoxic beauty and home goods brand she founded—from a desk smack-dab in the middle of Honest’s light-filled, open-concept Los Angeles headquarters.
That is, when she isn’t on the road, expanding into new markets (Europe) or speaking at a female-entrepreneurship conference on the other side of the world (China). Oh, but that was all pre-pandemic.
These days, she clocks in from a closet at home.
“This is where I take my meetings,” she says during a video chat on a recent Monday. “Total privacy. I don’t need to hear my kids, and they don’t need to hear me.”
To be fair, it’s a pretty sweet closet. She’s curled up in a cushy beige armchair next to large glass doors, wearing violet leggings and a lavender sweatshirt. Doing business, for Jessica, previously meant putting on her game face and, as she puts it, “grinding, grinding, grinding” through nearly every waking moment—even some non-waking ones.
“I often would wake up in the middle of the night with that heart-beating-fast, drenched-in-sweat, three-in-the-morning panic,” she says. “That was something I just accepted. I like to execute with excellence. I remember every small, dumb detail. It all stays in this brain, and it’s really hard to shut off. I think that’s common, especially for women. And it’s just not okay.”
Watch Jessica talk about her skincare routine and her body after having three children:
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