Penelope (Penny) Wright sums up her journey to becoming a leader in the manufacturing industry in three words: “anything but conventional.” It all started during a ski trip when she met her husband, Jim Wright.
Soon after, the couple married on Christmas Day and moved to Spain, where Jim was stationed at Torrejon Air Force Base. Penny opened a gallery near Madrid, selling Spanish furniture, rugs, paintings, and handcrafted decorative pieces. “My weekends were spent traveling across Spain, sourcing unique items to expand my collection,” she recalled. After Jim’s retirement, they moved to the island of Mallorca and then later relocated to South America, living in Puerto Varas, Chile, and Bariloche, Argentina.
While they were in Chile, Penny and Jim made a pivotal decision: “We decided to move to Mexico and open a leather cut-and-sew plant.” They started with just eight associates, but after a few years, they sold the business to Ethan Allen, staying on to run the plant and oversee its expansion. Today, their team has more than 1,200 associates.
Penny’s multicultural experiences and deep respect for the Mexican workforce have shaped her leadership style. The plant provides free transportation for its associates from local ranches, offers complimentary meals, and maintains on-site medical staff. They prioritize their associates’ health, offering breast cancer screenings, cervical cancer prevention exams, vision exams, discounted glasses, and vaccinations. “When people are treated with dignity and respect,” she says, “extraordinary things can be achieved.”
Ethan Allen Silao goes beyond being a workplace—it’s a community. Penny emphasizes the cultural integration of the plant, celebrating Mexican holidays such as Day of the Dead, Mexican Independence Day, and the Virgin of Guadalupe Day with special meals and decorations. Associates participate in local blood drives and prioritize community outreach, distributing toys and gifts to children and seniors during the holidays. She takes great pride in the fact that a significant percentage of the administrative staff are women, underscoring the inclusive and supportive environment she has fostered.
For Penny, leadership is about flexibility, trust, innovation, and clear communication. “I’m proud to be a part of Ethan Allen Silao, and I’m dedicated to ensuring the well-being of the associates who have helped the plant thrive.”
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social conscience
promoting fairness and equal opportunity
Gender Equality
At Ethan Allen, we work every day to capitalize on the talents of women, promoting them to leadership positions in both our retail network and in our corporate management. Women-run businesses are also the driving forces behind many of our category offerings.
Our Company
71%
of the leaders in our retail network, including regional, territory, market, and Design Center leaders, are women
6%
increase in the number of women in manufacturing leadership
65%
of the leaders at our corporate headquarters are women
Meet Some of Our Leaders
Ethan Allen Headquarters
Ethan Allen Silao
Ethan Allen Retail
Joann Thoms’s career at Ethan Allen has been driven by one question: “What can I do to move the company forward?” The answers may have changed through the years, but they’ve never steered her wrong as her career has moved forward from architectural planning to product development to data management, all the way to being the project manager behind Ethan Allen’s 3D Room Planner and EA inHome® app.
A company like Ethan Allen is a natural fit for Joann, whose father made furniture in Germany before she was born. Her parents immigrated to the U.S., and Joann studied graphic arts and drafting before landing a role on Ethan Allen’s Store Planning team.
It was in Store Planning, in the world of CADs and 3D rendering, that Joann and her then supervisor advocated for developing a digital floor planner for Ethan Allen designers. “I see a need within the company for improvements,” she explains, “and I ask myself, ‘What can I do to make other people’s jobs easier?’ whether that’s through harnessing technology, finding efficiencies, or improving processes.”
From Store Planning, she moved into product development, managing projects from sketch to engineering to sample, and beyond. In the process, she recognized the importance of establishing a “single source of truth” for each product, which everyone in the company could access when they needed product information. Building a product inventory database led naturally back into the world of 3D when Ethan Allen decided to add 360° imagery to its website and asked Joann to manage the project.
Joann’s combination of artistic training, engineering know-how, and data management savvy makes her the perfect fit for overseeing the creation of, deployment of, and ongoing improvements to Ethan Allen’s digital tools. What makes her a widely admired leader are the close working relationships on the team she leads.
Although managing people can be far more complex than navigating technology’s ins and outs, Joann says the key is to give people a chance to do the things they’re passionate about and to always challenge them to grow themselves. “You have to find what makes them want to come to work, balancing that with what needs to get done, and help them appreciate how they’re contributing and making a difference.”
Penelope (Penny) Wright sums up her journey to becoming a leader in the manufacturing industry in three words: “anything but conventional.” It all started during a ski trip when she met her husband, Jim Wright.
Soon after, the couple married on Christmas Day and moved to Spain, where Jim was stationed at Torrejon Air Force Base. Penny opened a gallery near Madrid, selling Spanish furniture, rugs, paintings, and handcrafted decorative pieces. “My weekends were spent traveling across Spain, sourcing unique items to expand my collection,” she recalled. After Jim’s retirement, they moved to the island of Mallorca and then later relocated to South America, living in Puerto Varas, Chile, and Bariloche, Argentina.
While they were in Chile, Penny and Jim made a pivotal decision: “We decided to move to Mexico and open a leather cut-and-sew plant.” They started with just eight associates, but after a few years, they sold the business to Ethan Allen, staying on to run the plant and oversee its expansion. Today, their team has more than 1,200 associates.
Penny’s multicultural experiences and deep respect for the Mexican workforce have shaped her leadership style. The plant provides free transportation for its associates from local ranches, offers complimentary meals, and maintains on-site medical staff. They prioritize their associates’ health, offering breast cancer screenings, cervical cancer prevention exams, vision exams, discounted glasses, and vaccinations. “When people are treated with dignity and respect,” she says, “extraordinary things can be achieved.”
Ethan Allen Silao goes beyond being a workplace—it’s a community. Penny emphasizes the cultural integration of the plant, celebrating Mexican holidays such as Day of the Dead, Mexican Independence Day, and the Virgin of Guadalupe Day with special meals and decorations. Associates participate in local blood drives and prioritize community outreach, distributing toys and gifts to children and seniors during the holidays. She takes great pride in the fact that a significant percentage of the administrative staff are women, underscoring the inclusive and supportive environment she has fostered.
For Penny, leadership is about flexibility, trust, innovation, and clear communication. “I’m proud to be a part of Ethan Allen Silao, and I’m dedicated to ensuring the well-being of the associates who have helped the plant thrive.”
For Laura Hoeppner, being an educator has always been a calling; she even started her career as a public school teacher. “I realized that teaching high school students wasn’t the best for me,” she recalled, “but I knew I wanted to lead and focus on developing people.” She started at Ethan Allen in 2020 following 25 years of multi-unit management for another home décor retailer. A resident of Alabama, she stewards Design Centers throughout the Southeast. “My parents always had Ethan Allen furniture, including custom drapery—even my grandparents had it. My sister still has every piece of EA furniture that we ever had.”
Laura’s daily mission is “to motivate, inspire, and make the business profitable.” She starts each day by asking herself, “Who am I going to call today? A leader? A designer? What do I need to celebrate?” Spending the day in an office isn’t Laura’s style; most days, she’s in one of the Design Centers in her region. “I make myself approachable and never get lost in the title I have.”
When initiating conversations with those she leads, Laura keeps curiosity at the forefront, asking questions to make sure she understands each individual’s perspective and always assuming a positive intent on their part. She gets to know each person, so she can figure out how to help them have what she calls a-ha moments. “Telling an adult, a consummate professional who’s had their own business what to do—not gonna happen.”
One of Laura’s major initiatives is recruiting a workforce for her region that reflects the area’s demographics and invites younger clients to experience Ethan Allen for the first time, challenging perceptions that Ethan Allen is “too traditional for me.” She says that technologies like Floorplanner, digital moodboards, and the fabric-to-frame upholstery viewer are key. “It helps clients realize that what they see can be made more modern and one of a kind.”
Going forward, Laura’s mission is to empower not only the company’s interior designers but also Design Center Leaders, giving them tools to further develop their associates and offering better assessments to identify emerging leaders. Her advice to women in leadership: “Don’t be afraid to demonstrate professional courage and have a voice. At the same time, start every day with the expectation that you have something to learn.”
People First
We’re on a mission to improve the lives of our associates and their families by offering exemplary working conditions, competitive benefits, and enhanced quality of life.
ON-SITE MEDICAL CARE & MORE
2-time winner
Great Places to Work® Mexico Certification
Many of the 1,200 associates in our in Silao, Guanajuato, Mexico, workshops live in small villages within 25 miles of our plant. To make it possible for them to come to work, we provide free transportation, and we offer two low-cost meals per day in our workshops.
Our free onsite medical clinic is staffed by a doctor and a team of experienced nurses. We provide a free pharmacy stocked with over-the-counter medications for issues like influenza, stomach bugs, or muscle pain. In addition to offering onsite medical care, we partner with a local physician to provide free medical care for every associate’s family member.
To maintain a healthy balance between work and family life, our associates enjoy a five-day work week and work 6% fewer weekly hours than the government requires. We also offer twice the annual bonus given by competing plants.
These are just some of the reasons our Silao workshops have twice been honored with Great Places to Work® Mexico certification. Silao has also been recognized as Empresa Socialmente Responsable (Environmentally and Social Responsible) by the government of Mexico.
More than 80%
of associates have received free care
More than 500 associates craft wood furniture in our Choloma, Cortes, Honduras, workshops, where they receive free onsite access to medical care. The clinic provides health information, including educational lectures, performs lab tests, and sponsors seasonal health initiatives, like flu vaccine clinics. During the COVID-19 pandemic, our clinic set up a separate entrance for associates who had symptoms and oversaw the implementation of precautions in the workplace, like social distancing and masking.
Ethan Allen Honduras also sponsors a free health fair every year. Awarded “Best Health Fair” for several consecutive years by the Medical Enterprise System of Honduras’s Institute of Social Security, each health fair offers a free breakfast along with a range of free consultations with medical specialists, like pediatricians, nutritionists, orthopedists, and gynecologists.
During the event, associates and their families receive medical services like eye exams and vaccines, all free of charge. More than 200 consultative visits take place at our health fairs each year, including almost 100 free dental procedures performed by a team of more than 20 dentists.