Emily Boschwitz
Welcome to With Grace. This week, we feature Emily Boschwitz, Co-Founder and CMO of POCA. Emily is foundational to some of the most culturally relevant brands of the last decade, serving as VP of Marketing at Hims & Hers, SVP of Marketing at Cameo, and VP of Growth at Vanta. Earlier this year, she co-founded POCA, a fiber-boosted sweetener brand born from the idea that a little treat should feel good in every sense. Emily is a builder at her core, someone who has spent her career turning products into communities and brands into movements. Her perspective: "Always be giving. Make the introduction. Share the idea. Help the person who can't do anything for you right now."
What’s a game-changer for you right now?
I have a few interns on my team who are currently in college, and their eagerness to learn has been such a game changer. They ask questions the rest of us have stopped asking. There’s something incredibly energizing about being around people who aren’t constrained by “how it’s always been done.” It reminds me that experience is valuable, but so is having absolutely no baggage.
What’s a daily ritual you swear by?
I have two young kids and a very demanding work schedule, and I’ve learned that if I don’t create rituals with them, time just happens to us. We go to school together as a family, we eat dinner together, and we play one game every night before bed. They cherish those rituals, but honestly, I might cherish them even more. They create these milestones throughout my day that I absolutely can’t wait for.
What’s something new you’re trying?
I’ve been leading teams for the last decade. Now I’m a founder, and I’m learning how to create my own momentum. There’s a big difference between walking into an organization with infrastructure, resources and an existing cadence, and waking up every day knowing that if something is going to move, you have to move it. I’m learning to be much more comfortable creating energy from nothing.
What’s a habit or routine that’s been crucial for your success?
I believe in focus management over time management. There is never enough time in the day, especially if you’re ambitious about both your work and your life. So I’ve stopped trying to optimize every hour and started asking: Where is my best attention going? Protecting my focus has become much more important than protecting my calendar.
What’s a trend in consumer behavior that excites you right now?
Fiber! We talk endlessly about protein, but as a population, we generally get far closer to enough protein than we do fiber. What excites me is that food science has advanced enough that adding fiber doesn’t have to mean sacrificing taste or experience. It’s one of the reasons we added a good source of fiber to POCA. The best consumer innovation happens when people don’t have to choose between what they want and what’s good for them.
How do you see AI evolving in your industry over the next five years?
I think we’re going to see a new kind of functional marketing expertise. The differentiator won’t just be which AI software your company buys, everyone will have access to similar tools. It will be the proprietary workflows individual marketers build around themselves. You’ll hire someone because they have developed a way of researching consumers, building creative, analyzing performance or finding insights that makes them 10x more effective. The workflow itself becomes part of the talent.
What’s a key quality or trait you believe is essential for leaders?
Knowing you don’t have all the answers, and realizing you never will. The job isn’t to be the smartest person at the table. It’s to bring the right people to the table, create the conditions for them to be great, and have enough humility to change your mind when someone sees something you don’t.
What motivates you to keep pushing forward in your work?
People. I love building things, but what really motivates me is seeing what happens when something you create becomes meaningful in someone else’s life. A product becomes part of someone’s routine. A brand creates a community. Someone on your team realizes they’re capable of more than they thought. Marketing is ultimately about people, and I never want to get so obsessed with growth that I forget that.
How do you approach decision-making in high-stakes scenarios?
I try to separate decisions that are truly irreversible from ones that just feel irreversible. Most decisions can be changed. For those, I’d rather make the best decision we can with the information we have and keep moving. For the few that are genuinely hard to unwind, I slow down, get people around the table who see the problem differently than I do, and listen. Speed matters, but ego is expensive.
What are you reading right now?
I love staying close to the beat of culture, so I read less from one definitive source and more from a collection of people who are constantly noticing things. My Substack rotation includes Emily Sundberg, Tom’s Marketing Ideas, The Trend Report and The New Consumer. I’m also constantly listening to podcasts like Operators, Founders, DTC Pod, Female Founder World, Aspire and Marketing Against the Grain. I love people who make me notice something I would have otherwise walked right past.
What’s a brand you admire right now, and why?
Kindred, which I’ve been lucky enough to work with recently. We need more brands that are interested in creating real human experiences and connection, not just acquiring customers. We’re living in a world where convenience is increasingly abundant but genuine connection can feel scarce. Brands that can create reasons for people to actually be together are incredibly powerful. For me, that human connection is what matters most.
What makes a brand authentic to you?
Solving a specific problem for a specific customer. Authentic brands aren’t trying to be everything to everyone. Your product may ultimately work for millions of people, but your brand needs to start with an almost obsessive understanding of somebody. Who are they? What do they need? What frustrates them? What do they wish existed? Specificity creates authenticity. Ironically, the brands that try hardest to appeal to everyone are usually the ones nobody feels were made for them.
What’s something you had to learn firsthand to truly understand?
Always be giving. Careers can feel transactional if you let them, who can help me, what can I get, what’s the ROI of this relationship? I’ve learned that the better question is usually, What can I give? Make the introduction. Share the idea. Help the person who can’t do anything for you right now. People remember how you make them feel.
How can someone make you extremely happy?
Push yourself to do something you don’t think you can do. There is almost nothing I love more than watching someone surprise themselves. Apply for the thing. Start the company. Raise your hand. Make the scary call. Run the race. I don’t even care if it works. Watching someone expand their own idea of what they’re capable of makes me incredibly happy.
