A successful career does not always begin with a detailed plan, an advanced degree, or an executive position.
Sometimes it begins with necessity, an entry-level job, and the determination to keep moving forward.
During our BMG 205 Customer Experience course at Washtenaw Community College, our instructor introduced us to an episode of the Candid with Candidates podcast featuring Larree Renda, retired Executive Vice President of Safeway.
Renda began working at Safeway as a grocery bagger when she was only 16 years old. What started as a way to support herself while completing high school developed into an extraordinary 40-year career in retail leadership.
Her story offers meaningful lessons about resilience, continuous learning, courage, community impact, family responsibilities, and the value of remaining open to opportunities that were never part of the original plan.
From an Entry-Level Job to Executive Leadership
Renda joined Safeway in 1974 and advanced through its retail operations before moving into corporate leadership.
According to a Safeway filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, she joined the corporate team in 1991 as Vice President of Retail. She later progressed through increasingly senior roles and became Executive Vice President.
During her career, she helped oversee major business functions that included:
- Retail operations
- Human resources
- Manufacturing
- Distribution
- Labor relations
- Public affairs
- Government relations
- Quality assurance
- Communications
This was not a career built through one dramatic promotion. It was created through years of learning, accepting greater responsibility, developing relationships, and proving that she could lead through increasingly complicated situations.
Her journey demonstrates that an entry-level position does not determine the highest level a person can eventually reach.
Lesson One: Curiosity Creates Opportunities
One of the strongest themes in Renda’s story is curiosity.
Curious professionals do not limit themselves to the tasks included in their current job descriptions. They ask questions, study how the organization works, and try to understand how different departments affect one another.
A curious employee may ask:
- Why is this process completed this way?
- What problem is this department trying to solve?
- How does the company generate revenue?
- What do customers need that we are not providing?
- What skills would prepare me for greater responsibility?
- What can I learn from someone with more experience?
Curiosity helps people develop knowledge beyond their original positions. That broader understanding becomes especially important in leadership, where decisions frequently affect several departments at once.
For entrepreneurs, curiosity is equally valuable. Business owners must study customers, competitors, finances, technology, marketing, operations, and changes within their industries.
A person does not need to know everything before beginning. That person must be willing to continue learning.
Lesson Two: Courage Separates Leaders From Managers
Renda identifies courage as an important quality that separates strong leaders from those who remain stuck.
Leadership often requires someone to step into an unfamiliar role before feeling completely prepared. It may involve making a difficult decision, speaking honestly, accepting responsibility, or pursuing an opportunity without knowing exactly how everything will turn out.
Courage does not mean the absence of fear. It means acting responsibly despite uncertainty.
In business, courageous leadership can include:
- Admitting that a strategy is not working
- Asking for help before a problem becomes a crisis
- Addressing an employee-performance issue
- Defending an ethical decision
- Learning a completely new business function
- Applying for an opportunity that feels out of reach
- Taking responsibility when a decision produces a poor result
- Making necessary changes without abandoning the organization’s values
Renda’s career required her to enter departments and situations that were outside her previous experience. Instead of treating unfamiliarity as proof that she did not belong, she treated it as an opportunity to learn.
Lesson Three: A Career Does Not Have to Follow a Straight Line
Renda did not follow a traditional executive path. She did not begin her career with a college degree and a carefully planned route into corporate leadership.
She developed her abilities through experience, observation, relationships, and continuous learning.
This lesson is important because many capable people believe their careers are over when life interrupts the original plan. Health problems, caregiving responsibilities, financial challenges, layoffs, family needs, and unexpected opportunities can all change a person’s direction.
A changed path is not necessarily a failed path.
Leadership skills can be developed through many experiences:
- Military service
- Parenting and caregiving
- Customer service
- Volunteer work
- Community involvement
- Technical education
- Office management
- Entrepreneurship
- Returning to college
- Managing personal hardship
The important question is not whether every experience fits neatly on a traditional career ladder. It is whether the person can recognize, strengthen, and apply the skills each experience created.
Donnetta’s Perspective: Experience Does Not Expire
Renda’s story strongly connects with Donnetta’s return to college and entrepreneurship.
Donnetta served in the United States Air Force and later worked for approximately 30 years in office management. After her professional career ended and significant health challenges changed her daily life, she could have assumed that her years of leadership were behind her.
Instead, she returned to college after more than four decades and helped establish Dee & Dee Brown LLC as a veteran-owned mother-daughter business.
Donnetta’s biggest takeaway is that experience does not expire merely because a person’s job title or physical abilities change.
Organization, discipline, communication, customer service, problem-solving, and relationship-building can be carried into a new chapter. Returning to school does not erase earlier experience. It adds current knowledge to the foundation already created.
Like Renda, Donnetta’s path shows that leadership growth can continue through every season of life.
Dominique’s Perspective: Different Experiences Can Build One Strong Leader
Dominique’s career journey has also been nontraditional.
Her mechanical engineering education developed analytical thinking, technical knowledge, and systematic problem-solving. Caregiving strengthened her patience, flexibility, advocacy, and ability to respond when plans change unexpectedly. Building Dee & Dee Brown LLC has added experience in e-commerce, customer service, inventory, marketing, technology, and business development.
These responsibilities may not look like one conventional career path. Together, however, they create a distinctive leadership foundation.
Dominique’s takeaway is that career development does not always mean moving upward within one department. It can also mean expanding across several areas until a person understands how the entire operation works.
Cross-functional experience becomes especially valuable for entrepreneurs and executives because they cannot evaluate one part of the business without considering how it affects the others.
Lesson Four: Relationships Help Careers Grow
Renda’s story also demonstrates the importance of developing strong professional relationships.
People are more likely to recommend someone for a new opportunity when they have observed that person’s reliability, judgment, willingness to learn, and ability to work with others.
Networking should not be reduced to collecting names or asking strangers for jobs. Meaningful professional relationships develop through consistent behavior.
People build strong networks when they:
- Keep their commitments
- Treat others respectfully
- Ask thoughtful questions
- Share useful information
- Accept constructive feedback
- Recognize other people’s contributions
- Stay in contact without always requesting something
- Help others succeed
For Dee & Dee Brown LLC, this means building genuine relationships with instructors, advisers, veteran-business organizations, the WCC Entrepreneurship Center, financial counselors, customers, and other entrepreneurs.
Not every conversation will lead immediately to money or a business opportunity. Some relationships produce knowledge, encouragement, accountability, or an introduction that becomes valuable later.
Lesson Five: Business Leadership Can Strengthen Communities
One of Renda’s most significant contributions was her leadership involving the Safeway Foundation.
What began as an effort to strengthen community engagement grew into a major charitable initiative. The Foundation supported causes that included food banks, education, health services, cancer research, and organizations serving people with disabilities.
The initiative also helped expand charitable giving through customer participation at the point of sale.
This part of her story shows that a business can pursue financial performance while also creating meaningful community impact.
Community involvement can:
- Strengthen trust
- Connect employees with a shared purpose
- Help customers participate in important causes
- Address needs in communities where the company operates
- Create a legacy beyond sales and profit
A small business may not have the resources of Safeway, but it can still contribute. It may support a local event, promote another entrepreneur, donate appropriate products, share useful information, volunteer, or use its platform to bring attention to a community need.
The size of the contribution may differ, but the principle remains the same: business leadership should consider who benefits from the company’s success.
Lesson Six: Leadership and Family Responsibilities Can Coexist
Renda also discusses balancing executive responsibilities with raising a family.
There is no perfect formula for this balance. Leadership can create time pressures, travel demands, emotional stress, and difficult choices. Family responsibilities do not disappear when someone receives a promotion.
This reality is especially important for women, who have often been expected to carry professional responsibilities while also managing a disproportionate share of caregiving and household work.
Strong leadership requires perspective. A title is important, but it is not a person’s entire identity.
For our mother-daughter business, family and work are closely connected. Dominique is both Donnetta’s caregiver and business partner. That creates strengths, but it also requires boundaries, honest communication, and realistic expectations.
Sustainable success cannot be built by ignoring health, caregiving, or family relationships. The business must develop systems that support the people responsible for operating it.
Applying Renda’s Lessons to Dee & Dee Brown LLC
Larree Renda’s career provides several actions we can apply to our own business journey:
Remain Curious
We will continue learning about customer experience, digital marketing, business finances, government contracting, e-commerce, and technology.
Accept Unfamiliar Challenges
We will not limit ourselves to the areas in which we already feel completely comfortable. Growth requires us to learn new systems and enter new environments.
Use Every Experience
Military service, office management, engineering, caregiving, college, resale, and community involvement all contribute to our business capabilities.
Develop Genuine Relationships
We will continue building connections with advisers, mentors, customers, veteran organizations, and fellow entrepreneurs.
Create Community Impact
As Dee & Dee Brown LLC grows, we want our work to support and encourage veterans, returning students, caregivers, women entrepreneurs, and people rebuilding after difficult circumstances.
Practice Courage
We will make decisions, ask for opportunities, address weaknesses, and continue developing our business even when the complete path is not yet visible.
Our Final Takeaway
Larree Renda’s journey from grocery bagger to Executive Vice President demonstrates that leadership potential is not determined by someone’s first job, educational route, age, or original circumstances.
A meaningful career can be built through curiosity, courage, resilience, relationships, continuous learning, and a willingness to step into the unknown.
Her story also reminds us that leadership is not measured only by how far someone rises. It is measured by the people developed, communities strengthened, and opportunities created along the way.
At Dee & Dee Brown LLC, our own path has not unfolded in a straight line. We are combining two generations of experience while continuing our education and building a business through changing circumstances.
We may not know exactly where every step will lead. However, Renda’s story confirms something we strongly believe:
A nontraditional beginning does not prevent an extraordinary outcome.
Listen to Season 2, Episode 6 of Candid with Candidates: How Larree Renda Built a 40-Year Career at Safeway—From Store Associate to EVP.
Explore additional interviews on the official Candid with Candidates podcast page.
About Dee & Dee Brown LLC: Dee & Dee Brown LLC is a veteran-owned mother-daughter business focused on e-commerce, entrepreneurship, education, digital content, and creating opportunities through resilience and lifelong learning.
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