Introducing: Tiana Conley, VP of Global Chocolate

Mixed Asian Media - September 13, 2023

By Jalen Jones

Tiana Conley gives Mixed Asian Media a rundown of what it’s like being the vice president of global portfolio strategy for everyone’s favorite candy company, Mars.

*This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

As the vice president of global portfolio strategy for Mars, what exactly do you do for your work, and what does your day-to-day look like?

I go by “VP of global chocolate” — that's probably a good starting point. The first explanation is reporting to the chief growth officer. I'm responsible for thinking about the growth strategies, and the global portfolio of chocolate brands at Mars — brands like Snickers, Twix, Dove or Galaxy, the namesake Mars, Milky Way — you get the idea. 

As you think about different growth levers, there's different ways that you can drive growth. One way is by bringing people into your brand — thinking about the communication and identity of your brand, and the equity of your brand. It can also be when we're doing packaging restages and refreshing the identity of the brand. We’ve just recently done this for Dove Galaxy, repositioning the brand from a traditional branch to a purpose-led brand that's really about female empowerment, fueled by sustainable cocoa. 

Another way you can drive growth is through innovation. There's the obviously treasured and true core Snickers product, for example — don't worry, we're not messing with the formula — but it's important, as innovation is part of the lifeblood of growth strategy for your product.

How do you go about finding ways to innovate these products that people are so attached to and might not want to see change?

You don't want to stray too far from what the brand is about. A good example would be how for chocolate, there's different types of chocolate. Some people, like me, love white chocolate. Well, a regular Snickers is not white chocolate, so we would bring a product like Snickers white, which is just simply the same Snickers you know, but with white chocolate. We're not asking people to walk away from the core proposition, but maybe either create excitement or introduce new ideas that bring other people along into the brand.

So exciting!

The best part is sampling. I'm not gonna lie; it could be that 100% of my diet today has been mini Snickers. [laughs]

How did you get your start in this field?

So, I’m a marketer by trade, but an engineer by training. My undergraduate degree was in chemical engineering. I really didn't know that marketing existed as a profession when I was young. I just was always oriented to math and science. So when one of my high-school teachers was like, “You're good at math and science. You should go to school for chemical engineering.” I'm like, “Great!” And that literally is how I picked my major. It wasn't until I got into my first job, and my first company was Procter & Gamble, where I was working in research and development as a research and design engineer. 

One of the aspects of my job was to work on demonstrations. I was literally going out to Walmart and buying a whole bunch of clothes or doing stain tests, seeing what was removed the most or which one preserved the color the longest, that sort of thing. As an engineer I got to attend shoots, and then I got to meet marketers and people in the ad world. Talking to them, I was like, “I'd like to try that.” So pretty early on, I'm like, “I think I'd really like to do that instead of engineering,” to my boss, and he goes, “Great. You can go on a broadening assignment.” And that basically was a fancy way of saying, “You can try out marketing, and if you suck at it, then you can come back here without getting fired.” It ended up sticking! It was not on purpose, but something I discovered through my work.

How would you say your experience as a Black and Asian woman has impacted your journey in the corporate world?

Oh, really dramatically. I’ll start with the fact that I'm a first-generation college grad, and also the child of an immigrant — my mom's an immigrant from the Philippines. I had to rely on the great values that my parents gave me, which, by the way, were very helpful. Secondly, I did experience a lot of bias throughout my career as a result of my various identities, whether it was because I was Black or Asian. In terms of being Asian — whether people appreciate or didn't appreciate whether I was Asian, because they don't perceive me as such. And definitely being a woman, and also a parent. Experiencing things as a mom, and as a single mom, has had an impact. On the whole, it definitely built in a lot of resilience. It's helped me understand and reflect on what circumstances helped me be at my best.

Are there ways that you try to give back and help fellow Black and Asian women achieve similar success in the world of business?

Yes. I don't know that I can ever pay it forward enough. But I certainly try by being an active mentor and a good leader, coach, and advocate for people, both in organizations I'm in as well as ones I'm not directly a member of. I also try to influence things at the more systemic level to ensure that within my control, processes, systems, and policies are unbiased. 

And not just professionally — it's really important for me to be a good community member. I do work with a couple of nonprofits here in Chicago and sit on the board for North Lawndale Employment Network, which works with people that are either in poverty or have been formerly incarcerated. I work with another organization called Ladies of Virtue, which works with at-risk Black girls to partner them with mentoring and resources for their education.

I feel like it can be pretty lonely when you're the only person with your identity in an entire company or team. This can especially be true for Blasians, where it seems there’s just not as many of us, numbers-wise. What advice do you have for coping with these types of hardships?

First, I'll just acknowledge that it is lonely. It's really hard to find your people, and I really, really, really struggled with that growing up, with not feeling like I had a place to belong. I remember realizing as a child how a fierce sense of my self-esteem had to come from inside, and I did not really seek validation from other people because I knew that validation was not coming from anyone else. So, I guess what I would say is that you have to really work on your self-love first, and please make sure that you are whole inside. 

Secondly, you have to look for and find your community, and a lot of times people aren't going to look exactly like you. Sometimes it might be people that are marginalized in other ways that don't have a community either, and those are a lot of people that I gravitated to that are now my close friends. I found a lot of solidarity in that.

What is the best part about working for Mars?

You mean besides eating candy all the time? [laughs]

Mars has these core values, and the one that resonates with me the most is called mutuality. The idea behind mutuality is that your success is my success. That's something that I personally believe in, and I think fits with my collective mindset. I've probably not had a workplace where I've had such a good fit on our values system before. People are genuinely invested in your success from the day you walk in the door. It makes a material difference in a way that's really positive.

I knew that I wanted to do something meaningful and successful and have an impact on the world. The more that I've grown up and matured, and especially now that I'm a mother myself, it's a privilege when you can show up to work every day and not just do the job for the company, but also impact the community in a positive way. That is really something special that I don't take for granted.