Boardroom Beauty (Lydia Drakeford)

The Black Beauty Club Co-Founders, Tomi Talabi & Asmeret Berhe-Lumax, give us the build to their current success in co-founding an international black beauty community. The Black Beauty Club is a community born from the pandemic, originating on the Clubhouse app. It has since flourished into in-real-life events and forums as well as an active online community. The purpose of The BBC community activations are to "drive insightful thought leadership & cultural conversations around the Black Beauty space". Topics discussed are alway timely, relevant, and often requested by their members. Engagement and trust have been paramount factors to the growth and advancement of the organization. With a mission "to galvanize and quantify our economic and cultural impact as businesses and consumers to drive a stronger ecosystem", Co-Founders Tomi & Asmeret have become subject matter experts in the unique opportunities within the black beauty space including: the state of funding, community engagement, representation in brand leadership, and culture.

Tune in Tomi & Asmeret their insights & thought leadership surrounding black beauty topics (community, founder funding, corporate representation, brand failures, and more) as well as the evolution and mission story behind The Black Beauty Club!

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Toni Payne has joined Topicals as their new Head of Influencer Marketing & Brand Strategy after spending her career in fashion, bringing the Coach brand back to life and previously in music, working alongside artists like Doja Cat, SZA, Solange Knowles at RCA & Interscope Records. Toni is bringing a fresh perspective to the beauty industry with her diverse experiences and robust network.

Tune into this episode for:

💄Toni’s beauty debut from fashion & music

🤝🏾Building a transferable community

🤳🏾Marketing Chat: Influencer, Virtual Reality, Branding

💅🏾Top shelf & style inspo

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Lauren's work, expertise and skincare products have been seen on billboards, award shows, the world’s most iconic publications, movies and television series. Napier’s career includes working with some of the world’s most influential people in entertainment, politics, sports and music including a Bond, a Beatle, an American president, feminist icons and 4 EGOT winners.

After years as a celebrity makeup artist, in 2014, Lauren Napier pioneered Black beauty in the luxury retail space by launching an eponymous skincare brand that revolutionized skincare on the go. Lauren Napier Beauty sold in prestige retailers including Net-A-Porter, Harvey Nichols, Colette Paris, Mecca Australia, Bloomingdale's, Anthropologie, JCrew, Revolve and more.

In today's episode we reflect on her founder journey and learnings, her new ventures, the state of funding in the black beauty space, and the exciting shift in narratives around beauty being led by Gen Z!

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Tori Douglas is a manager of Global Digital Experiences at LVMH for the Fresh Beauty brand driving the business through innovation of digital touch points between the consumer and the brand. In this episode she shares her industry perspectives, what she has learned working in the Corporate Beauty landscape , her passions for connecting people, and the ways in which she is leaning into her Masters in Cosmetics & Fragrance Market at FIT to uplift herself and others. 

She shares her favorite products from Fresh Beauty which you can be find on our instagram page @boardroombeautypod!

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Eden Zeilo, a Brand Marketing Leader & Beauty Executive has worked amongst the industry’s best from Shea Moisture to Black Opal and Fashion Fair to bring brands to life both globally and domestically. Here's what we discussed:

💄 Her career journey from Harvard MBA to former Marketing VP at Black Opal to her next high-impact opportunity

🏆 Best Beauty Marketing Activations - I grilled her on what brands are leading the way!

🖤 Essence Fest Beautycon & Shea Moisture's Activation

🧘‍♀️ Importance of Sabbaticals and time off for sustained career growth

💡Insights on Career Progression and Profressional Development

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Yarden Horwitz is the Co-founder of Spate, the artificial intelligence platform for identifying top trends in beauty. Over 150 beauty brands rely on the Spate platform to make critical business decisions in marketing and product development, including Estée Lauder, L’Oréal, P&G, Olaplex, Amika, Hero Cosmetics, and more. 

In this episode, Yarden tells about about the data and insights that are evolving from the New Face of Beauty. The New Face of Beauty describes the consumer's evolution from 2020 to 2023. They are demanding low maintenance, convenient solutions, they are investing in top dollar beauty treatments and they have an appetite to stand out amongst the crowd of trend followers.

Yarden also tells us about her startup journey and road from Google's Trendspotting team to co-founding Spate.

In 2016, she was named the Future Voice of Fashion by the Business of Fashion. Yarden sits on the NewBeauty Brain Trust board, which is exclusive to highly regarded experts in the beauty industry. She was named one of the most influential female leaders of 2022 by Entrepreneur Magazine.

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This week, we meet Boardroom Beauty No. 7, Nicole Matthews, a leader in E-Commerce & Acquisition at Dermalogica. Nicole joined the brand over 8 years ago as a true marketer where she has helped launch the brand in Sephora, led key partnerships across retail and media, and grown their direct channel. 

In this episode we are chatting about our favorite Dermalogica products & services, Dermalogica’s innovation both internal and external (including ChatGBT), and the challenges she is solving for in her role. 

Dermalogica is a brand that is rooted in education, provides personalized and inclusive skincare, and a human touch with their professional services. As their Partner Manager at Google, I’ve had the pleasure of working across their org chart from their marketing and creative teams, all the way up to meeting their CEO. In this I’ve have witnessed what makes them a winning brand and am excited to share in today’s episode!

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Meet Simedar Jackson! The founder of Of Other Worlds Skincare👽🛸, a clinically conscious skincare brand for the skin-curious. Simedar is creating a universe in which beauty is ungoverned via the skincare experience by empowering via education, innovating with empathy and expertise, and co-creating alongside community. Of Other Worlds has been incredibly successful in their early stages, winning Glossier’s 2023 grant, joining Sephora’s Accelerator and more!

Tune in to hear Simedar’s journey as we discuss:

💫Founder journey and learnings

💫Transcending industry boundaries

💫A new approach to inclusion in beauty

💫Winning Grants & Founder Recs

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Kewanna (KiKi) Donaldson has been Glossier’s Senior Manager of Brand & Product Marketing at Glossier since the pandemic, a very pivotal and critical time for the brand. With her leadership, she’s supported major brand initiatives from the expansion of their brick & mortar presence, bringing product innovation to life, and sustaining the strength of their core via reanimation. KiKi’s background in sports and hospitality taught her what experiential excellence entails. She is a people-first marketer storyteller and committed to the mission. In this episode, we explore the brilliant  mind of KiKi as she shares her career and personal beauty journey. In this episode we discuss: 

✨Her life as a Product & Brand Marketer

✨Inclusion via retail expansion 

✨What good leadership looks like 

✨Glossier’s goal to become a 100-year-old brand

✨Showing up authentically at work 

✨Her Top Shelf & what beauty means to her

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Hannah Harris is a Los Angeles-based marketer, creator, and advocate known for her work at the intersection of beauty, culture, and community. Currently working in Brand Marketing at Summer Fridays, her beauty aareer started in 2020 when Hannah founded Brown Girl Hands, turning an online community addressing the lack of diversity on our social media feeds into a content studio working with Glossier, Merit, Summer Fridays, Allure, Sephora, and Essie, you name it. The youngest honoree on Glossy's "Top 50 Fashion and Beauty Changemakers" list in 2020, Harris was a finalist for the Fashion Scholarship Fund and Chairman's Award in 2021 and was named to Ulta Beauty's "MUSE 100" and received the inaugural CFDA x Coach Dream It Real Scholarship in 2022. She has been profiled in British Vogue, Elle UK, The Cut, and Nylon, among other publications. Harris also serves on the Equity Committee for the Fashion Scholarship Fund, an organization that oversees Virgil Abloh's Post-Modern Scholarship, of which she was an inaugural recipient.

In this episode Hannah share's the making of Brown Girl Hands and her perspectives on inclusion via brand, content marketing, and community.

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Tatiana Pile joins Boardroom Beauty Podcast to give us a debrief on all of the industry buzz. As a Managing Editor at Glossy, her role is to cover the evolving nature of the beauty and wellness industry at their intersection of business, tech, and pop-culture. 

In this episode with Tatiana we discuss: 

• The challenges of being an underrepresented beauty editor in the trade publication space 
• Fenty’s expansion into the hair care category and celebrity beauty brands 
• Beauty’s commitment (and lack thereof) to heritage months 
• Beauty’s return to Youtube after Jackie Aina’s first GRWM in two years
• The opportunity for beauty to lean into sports marketing 

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Milan Crawford joins the Boardroom Beauty Podcast as the Head of Social for Shea Moisture. Her recent work has entailed leading up highly visible activations for the brand as they continue to bring innovative products that solve the unique needs of their targeted clientele and much more. In this episode Milan shares where her personal passions align with her professional career, her perspective and expertise on all things social and creator-led content, and much more. Tune into this episode to hear her shed light on the following:

• The challenges and responsibility that comes with her role as a purpose driven marketer
• The process of bringing the new Bond Repair Collection to market
• The impact of insights-driven strategies in product development and the importance of addressing the specific needs of the target audience.
• The mission of Shea Moisture to serve the black community and the focus on inclusivity and education in natural hair care
• The important role the community plays in telling the Shea Moisture brand story
• Empowering content creators through long-lasting partnerships

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Yasmin Zeinab, the founder of ABI AMÉ, discusses the development of her innovative hero product, Summer Skin, which she launched her brand with just last year after conducting extensive market research in over 1,000 conversations with prospective customers to identify pain points and create solutions, centering her customer from the inception of the brand. Our conversation lightly touches on the importance of timing in the market and the growth potential of body care as well as where there was white space to advance the way we are caring for the skin on our bodies in the same way we care for the skin on our face.

Yasmin is Parisian and has gained an engaged skincare community on TikTok with her educational content on Parisian skincare. In this episode, she shares her recommendations for must-buy Parisian pharmacy finds as we discussed our favorite French pharmacy skincare products and the differences between the French and American beauty markets, for example, importance of word-of-mouth recommendations in the French market and the regulatory differences in sunscreen formulations between the US and EU. Yasmin shares her short-term focus on strengthening relationships with the ABI AMÉ community and staying true to their product development philosophy. In the long term, she hopes to expand retail availability and sees Sephora and Credo as ideal partners.

Learn more about ABI AMÉ on their Website, Instagram, and TikTok page!

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Daisy Boateng, a British-Ghanaian, new girl-mom, fashionista, author, and founder of The Step Up Sorority is a L’Oreal veteran. She has 14 years under her belt working in Paris, London, Melbourne, and New York City in brand management, digital, and now communications, Her track record for success and delivering strategic solutions at brands like Maybelline, NYX Cosmetics, Essie, and L’Oreal Paris has given her endless insight to share with The Boardroom Beauty Podcast. In this episode she shares everything from tips to navigating big beauty giant, L’Oreal to giving us a sneak peak of what she’s been working on in her role. 

Topics discussed include: 

• Finding a unique selling point early in your career and leaning into that for personal branding
• Her global role, translating brand objectives across markets
• Creating brand awareness strategies for culturally relevancy
• The trade offs between being a marketing generalists vs. specialist 
• Transitioning back to work post-maternity leave and mothering via inspiration
• Building supportive networks and communities to uplift and serve women of color at work.

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In this episode of Boardroom Beauty, we collaborated with Too Smart for This Podcast by Alexis Barber, the founder of TOO Collective, a wellness brand. Because August is Black Business Month, we decided to have a chat with two of our favorite black beauty founders to give us the real on their current state of being in a world where DEI is under attack and access to capital is very limited.

Desiree Verdejo is the founder of Hyper Skin, a vegan, clean, and cruelty free skincare line focused on melanated skin by treating hyperpigmentation. The lawyer-turned-beauty entrepreneur launched her brand and has had tremendous success via international retailer, Sephora.

Karen Young is the founder of Oui the People, a body care line striving to elevate the standards and experiences of the body care category with the mission to have everyone feel seen within their self care routine.She has bee very vocal in recent months and gone viral for her video stating that "many of your favorite black beauty brands may close down this year" due to lack of capital. In a recent press article in Entrepreneur magazine, Karen said, "There's a marked recession within a recession that Black women founders in particular are facing," says Young. "The clawback of the capital has been visible and painful for many of us."

For part 2 of this episode, head over to the Too Smart for This Podcast!

Learn more about these founders and their businesses in the links below:

Desiree Verdejo on IG | Hyper Skin on IG | Shop Hyper Skin

Karen Young on LI | Oui the People on IG | Shop Oui the People

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Happy Black Owned Business month from myself and this week’s Boardroom Beauty, Dionna Chambers, Head of Programming and Development at Thirteen Lune.

In this episode, we are in person at Soho Works in LA discussing:

💅🏾A day in the life of Dionna

💄Dioanna’s favorite black owned products sold at Thirteen Lune

🖤Thirteen Lune’s mission to support the discovery of black & brown beauty founders

🛍️The new flagship in LA on Beautyrow in Larchmont

💰Recommendations for Winning in Retail

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Brooke Hill, Ex-Googler and Wharton MBA, is the CEO & Co-Founder of Swella Beauty.

Braids have a rich history and a reputation for their protective nature. Unfortunately, along with these protective hairstyles are the common challenges associated with achieving them: increased pricing, long hours in the chair, lack of included services like hair washing and, sometimes, safety considerations, since many braiders require clients to travel to their home.

With Swella, Brooke and her Co-Founder, Zanbria Asante, are on a mission to address these concerns. The idea for the concept emerged nearly a year ago, when Brooke Hill hosted a five-week pop-up salon in Philadelphia that made $9,000 in revenue and served 30 customers. Success from this “braid cafe” combined with a $25,000 grant from the 2021 Visible Hands Accelerator was the impetus for the launch of the Swella brand—the now Atlanta-based storefront for which Hill is a cofounder. Swella opened last year and offers customers a full-service, luxurious yet affordable braiding experience. They have ambitions to scale and become the new standard for the space!

Description Source: Sweet July

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In our first episode of Boardroom Beauty we talk to Chanel Tyler (@buymeChanel) who is the Global Lead of Beauty Creators and Content Partnership from 9-5 and a beloved content creator aka "The Glow Expert" in the luxury skincare category from 5-9. She takes us back to her genesis in the beauty industry post-MBA and describes where she found her opportunity to be a change maker that would contribute to the larger advancement of representation in beauty.

We talk about all things form Youtube's Beautyfest, her passion projects she pioneered for longterm impact at Estee Lauder, and her journey to becoming a successful skincare influencer with a cult-like following! Chanel also shares an important message to brands on how to better approach the black female consumer with benefits and efficacy communication that is relevant to her specific skincare needs.

Join the Boardroom Beauty community on IG @boardroombeautypod

List on Apple & Spotify

Email: hi@boardroombeautypodcast.com

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Nicole Clay is a recent Harvard Business School grad who Co-Founded Hue. Hue is an #AI tech solution that is solving for the friction that exists for beauty consumers of underrepresented communities. Too often, when shopping for beauty products, diverse consumers do not see their unique beauty attributes represented by brands. Hue technology match consumers with Hue Twins™, real people who share the same skin tone, skin type, purchase history or beauty preferences. Hue Twins™ creates authentic photo and video reviews so users can see how products work for real people like them! This gives a frictionless, human touch to the online shopping journey.

Hue is an Elle Future of Beauty Award Winner and has already launched with Credo Beauty, Lawless, Exa Beauty with more retailer partners to come.

Tune in to hear about Nicole’s beauty-boomerang from L’oreal to Harvard and back into beauty, but this time, in tech! I so enjoyed hearing about her startup journey as well as how and why her team is solving for challenges in representation in beauty. Her and her team even made the 2022 Forbes 30 under 30 list!

Learn more about Hue at https://www.poweredbyhue.com/

Follow Hue on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/poweredbyhue/

Follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/boardroombeautypod/

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Brooke DeVard started the Naked Beauty Podcast 8 years ago when she couldn't find the depth of conversations she wanted to hear in beauty. With Naked Beauty she hosted guests from across the industry and has built an engaged community of Beauty Enthusiasts ranging from consumers to seasoned professionals. She has spent a bulk of her traditional career in marketing within Fashion, Media, and Tech before becoming a full time entrepreneur, content creator, and industry thought-leader in beauty. Brooke is thriving in the swim lane she has created for herself. In this episode, She joins Boardroom Beauty to share how she did it.

Join us as we discuss:

• A milestone of a Naked Beauty episode with Alicia Keys and celebrity beauty lines
• Her career influences and sources of inspiration
• What she gained from Corporate America
• Pivoting from years as a corporate marketer to full time entrepreneur

• The behind the scenes of building her brand

• Her hopes and dreams for the future of Naked Beauty

Brooke can be found at @brookedevard and @nakedbeautyplanet

This episode was produced in partnership with Moyo Media!

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Meet Roya Shariat✨, the woman behind Glossier's Social Impact and Brand Partnerships such as their WNBA partnership and their Grant Program that invests in Black beauty entrepreneurs to address legacies of inequity, exclusion, and barriers to fundraising.

In this episode, we sit down with Roya Shariat✨ to chat: 

🏀Shooting her shot in her career 

🤝🏾Social Impact & Partnerships at Glossier

💖Rundown of Glossier’s 2023 Grantees 

🗝️Advice for future Glossier Grant applicants 

Learn more about this year's Glossier Grantees here

Learn more about Mamaan & Me here

Follow Roya on IG here

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Delanique Millwood, the CEO of Clear Skin, is now also the CEO & Founder of Skintellect. Skintellect is a carefully curated marketplace selling nothing but the best with the purpose of Amplifying Black Beauty Brands. Delanique has taken an editorial approach to social commerce, marrying storytelling, education, and e-commerce for a seamless experience. With Skintellect, beauty shoppers are connected back to the African diaspora with access to the richness of the continent via beauty products.

Delanique's background as the Co-Founder of Bond Official, a research consultant for luxury skincare brands such as La Mer, recipient of UCLA's Cosmetic Sciences certificate and a content creator make her more than ready to make a lasting impact in this space.

Tune into this episode with Delanique for:

✨Her introducing of Skintellect.co

✨Her top shelf

✨Her background and founder journey

✨Her approach to amplifying black beauty

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Shari Familian is the Executive Director of Go-To-Market, Marketing at La Mer, one of The Estée Lauder Co.’s most coveted brands by those in the know; Often known as the OG of prestige since the 90s but still loved by many today. While Shari has successfully climbed the corporate ladder, she hasn’t forgotten to lift others on her way up. 

In this episode GEMS were dropped on:

💎Her journey to her boardroom seat

💎Her “why” behind beauty 

💎Championing DEI

💎Inclusive Brand Marketing 

💎Power through authenticity

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Camille Darby is the Global VP of Brand Marketing at Condé Nast, covering publications across beauty, fashion, lifestyle, etc. she leverages her love of storytelling. She is the master of honing a craft and passion as a transferable skillset to obtain the opportunities that give her space to showcase her talents. She is as wise as she is stylish! 

Over conversation covers: 

🪩Our Renaissance Tour experiences 

✨Her career journey to Global VP of Marketing, Condé Nast

💅🏾Black beauty & fashion brand shoutouts

🪮Curlfest ’23 Recap 

👩🏾‍💻Shifting editorial landscape via digital, AI, and social media

💖Tips on bringing your true self to your career

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Meet Saba Bokhari! Saba is a Senior Manager of Advocacy, Influencer Marketing and Social Commerce at L'oreal✨ where she inspires, educates and supports brands like Redken and Kerastase to keep innovating!

Tune into this episode for our chit chat about:

🛣️Her career journey & curated role

🤝🏾The creator economy & creator partnerships

🛍Social Commerce in Beauty

💖Career inspo & advice

💄Product recommendations

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