Her mother, Susan White Morrissey, will step back from day-to-day operation of the cashmere brand but will remain as an adviser and co-owner.
Catherine Morrissey, daughter of cofounder Susan White Morrissey and president of the company for the past eight years, has been elevated to chief executive officer, succeeding her mother.
White Morrissey will continue to be the co-owner and an adviser but will no longer be in charge of the day-to-day operations of the business.
White & Warren was founded by White Morrissey and Barbara Warren in 1997 as an accessible cashmere brand for women. Warren exited the business in 2010 and Catherine Morrissey, who was working at Calvin Klein at the time, made the decision to join the family business shortly after.
“I had been at Calvin for five years,” Morrissey said, in design and merchandising. But when her father, Kevin Morrissey, executive vice president and general merchandise manager of menswear for Macy’s, died suddenly in 2010, her life and career path changed.
“It was not until that point that this had been a consideration for me at all,” she recalled. “But I saw that my mom needed me on some level in the business.”
Catherine Morrissey was convinced that White & Warren needed a merchant to help it grow and the person who had been in that role had recently left. So she told her mother: “I would consider doing it. Let’s give this a shot. It feels like the right opportunity.”
Joining White & Warren had been something the Morrisseys had long talked about quietly as a family, she said, “but there was never any pressure for me to join.
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