“What are your goals?”—a common question in the workplace. At the TJX Companies Inc., merchandise operations manager Dana Hansen’s goal is to ensure her teammates achieve theirs.

Hansen, Fashion Business Management ’16, manages 15 merchandise assistants, five of whom began as interns from FIT. She and her team cover business in Canada and Australia for TJX, which operates TJ Maxx and other major brands like Marshalls. She’s responsible for the onboarding, training, and development of her assistants, who act as liaisons between vendors and TJX buyers. 

Hansen makes it clear she’s there to support her team. “I remind them that I’m an advocate for them,” she says. In challenging situations, she communicates with empathy. “If someone is having a tricky issue, I reassure them that we can work through it together.”

She’s also taken her office’s interns under her wing. Whether an intern reports to Hansen or not, she guides them through onboarding and store visits. She also helps them prepare their final presentations, during which they recap the work they’ve done or even pitch new ideas. 
 
Hansen herself started as an intern at TJX in her senior year at FIT. She was “dead set” on becoming a fashion buyer or planner, so she got a job as a TJX merchandise assistant. But she found she preferred training others. A coworker took notice and offered her a supervisory role in merchandise operations.
 
As a mentor and manager, she finds that understanding others’ perspectives is critical, and she caters to different learning styles. For example, she once had trouble building trust with a buyer. Hansen realized this coworker was very data-driven, so she always made sure to present any new ideas with plenty of proof points. 
 
Hansen’s also not afraid to be candid. “You’re showing teammates you want to help them develop,” she says. “I would be doing them a disservice by not giving feedback.” While it can be tough, she offers constructive criticism promptly rather than putting it off, which she says could lead to colleagues feeling confused or blindsided once the moment has passed.
 
In addition to her job at TJX, Hansen has taken on a new role: professor. This spring, she is teaching FIT’s Senior Internship: Career Planning class, focusing on essentials like resume building, interviewing, and networking, plus insights from her job. 

“It’s the best part of my day to know that I helped with someone’s career,” she says.