Happy New Year, everyone. Welcome to Boss Files. I'm Poppy Harlow. The first full week of 2020, a new decade, a presidential election ahead, and we're seeing more business leaders taking a stand on social issues, among them fashion designer Eileen Fisher. She sees her brand as a platform and her employees are encouraging her to stand up on all sorts

of issues like climate change.

I think we're actually a platform.

I think it's really, really important for businesses to, you know, to speak to certain issues.

In a different time, you would think that government would be holding those kinds of things,

but it's a different time right now. So it's sort of requiring us to step up more.

She's a leading voice on environmental sustainability in the fashion industry,

reselling and recycling garments in an effort to help curb climate change.

The namesake brand has been impacted by the U.S.-China trade war, so we dive into that.

She talks about having to rescale her production there.

Also, and this is fascinating to me, her take on profit sharing.

She owns 60% of her company.

Her employees own the rest.

I think it's good for morale and for people feeling like they're really part of this company.

And people speak up more when they see things that don't feel right or people wasting money over there.

They really feel it's theirs too. You know, they're a part of it.

Plus, her advice for all of us parents out

there what she wishes she'd done differently as a mother I think to put down the work

that's what I didn't do when my kids were young I would you work too much I work too much

I would bring the reports home or you know study, study things, think about things, you know.

Do you regret it? I do.

And how Eileen Fisher uses meditation to guide her work and her life, what she learned from her own mother who struggled with depression.

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