WHERE BRAINS MEET BEAUTY

Starting her career in advertising, Wende Zomnir, Founding Partner of Urban Decay Cosmetics, figured out pretty early that writing cat food copy was not going to cut it for her. A serendipitous call connected her to the partner with whom she would launch Urban Decay, the ultra-disruptive brand that took the girly, sugary makeup of 25 years ago and turned it on its head, offering looks for women wh...

In our episode with Emily Culp, CEO of Cover FX, this beauty heavyweight shares her leadership style which is much more people-centric than that of many of her C-suite peers. For Emily, empowering her team by creating a business environment built on respect, diversity, transparency and humanity is where the fun is. She also loves shepherding an amazing brand that reflects some of these same values...

There’s enough wisdom in our podcast with Stephanie Kramer, SVP Global Marketing and Product Innovation at SkinCeuticals, to fill four episodes. The heart of our conversation is about surviving and thriving within the massive, regimented corporate culture. Stephanie calls herself an interpreneur for the way she has carved out a sweet spot, figuring out how to use the resources, get the projects, f...

One day when she was on set, doing makeup for one celebrity or another, Rea Ann Silva became frustrated by the angled edges of the only makeup sponges available, which left tiny ridges and streaks picked up by the newest HD cameras. “Hmm,” she thought, and grabbed a scissors to snip and soften the shape for a totally smooth application. The rest is history…or at least the key to Beautyblender, her...

While he might look like a serial entrepreneur, Dr. Marc Ronert never set out to be one.  He just wanted to accomplish a few things in the beauty and wellness space and each of them became a different enterprise. These include Image, a science-based skincare line created with his wife, his authorship of an amazing book on aging, “Age Later,” written during a sabbatical boldly taken as Image was bl...

Early on in her work with her nutrition patients, Tanya Zuckerbrot, CEO and Founder of F-Factor, discovered an essential truth: traditional diets don’t work because dieters feel deprived and hungry. She knew that the key to weight loss and wellness lay in a program that offered freedom, flexibility, plenty of fuel, room for dining out and having a cocktail, and a smarter, not longer, exercise rout...

Launching her business, Fur, at about the same time she was having a baby, Laura Schubert harnessed her background as a strategic management consultant to figure out how she could do it all. She developed a system she calls “ruthless prioritization” which involves constantly asking herself if what she is working on is the most pressing thing she should be working on. It sounds simple but it’s not—...

It truly bothered Kirsten Kjaer Weis when, as a professional makeup artist, models would point to the conventional brands in her makeup kit and say, “Oh don’t use that, it makes me break out,” or “That one is so drying.” She also knew that women crave beautiful packaging. In the early 2000s, there were virtually no makeup lines that combined healthy formulas with stylish colors and luxurious packa...

The first thing we spoke about in my conversation with our Base Beauty publicist, Morgan Krause, is how fast she talks…even faster than I do, which is saying something. For the reboot of our original super-sonic session, Morgan consciously tried to slow down, which she realizes was a really helpful exercise for her. Morgan shared how she found her way to New York and to Base Beauty through her wor...

Hair industry veteran John Costanza knows his stuff. A marketer in his salad days, his first job in beauty was with Joico, going from salon to salon in his native Toronto to build relationships for the brand with the salon owners and stylists. His story is one with lots of twists and turns and a steady rise to the C-suite. While always anchoring his career decisions with his dedication to his fami...

Victoria Watts had a lot of skin concerns and none of the products she tried were addressing them. So in true entrepreneurial style, she decided to make her own, mixing, blending and formulating in her kitchen. That’s how Victorialand Beauty was born. She launched with products that truly improved her hyperpigmentation and the overall look of her skin, using natural botanicals and essential oils t...

When Jodi sat down with ClaireBrzozowski, Base Beauty’s Coordinator for Paid Influencer Programs and Social Media, it was cool to hear what was behind some of the career decisions she has made. Switching from a major in psychology to one in communications and media arts, Claire was aware of the connections between the two disciplines, observing how much psychology goes into effective social media...

From a performer who did her own makeup to the Chanel beauty counter in San Francisco’s elegant I. Magnin, to running her own brow and facial salon in Maine and New York and developing her own skincare line, makeup artist Jessica Johnson has learned a lot in her 30 years in beauty. She emphasizes the “artist” in makeup artist, working with a living canvas (that moves and sweats and sometimes sags!...

When Cheryl Foland was working too hard and running too fast, living up to the Manhattan overachiever standard, she happened to mention to her colleagues in beauty marketing that she thought the company should focus on developing business on the West Coast. “Good idea,” they said, “You go.” So she did, reluctantly becoming bi-coastal for a while, having a crash-and-burn moment, then bouncing back...

Brand builder extraordinaire Allison Slater Ray, President of Memebox, has made an impact everywhere she’s been, from her start learning the ropes of marketing and media buying on the Chanel account at DDB to Sephora in its early days as a brand incubator to her marketing position at IT Cosmetics. But entrepreneurship—the desire to build something from the ground up—is in her DNA so she’s just tak...

The seeds of a business are often sown through a frustrating search for a product or a solution to a problem. Such is the case with Heather Reier, Founder and CEO of Cake Beauty. Well before natural, vegan, cruelty-free beauty was a “thing,” as Heather sought healthy skincare products, the ones she found smelled terrible, had awful packaging and were totally unappealing. She hit the kitchen, start...

Gabrielle Ophals, co-founder of Haven Spa, doesn’t want to step on anyone’s dreams. As someone who took over a tiny spa on Bleecker Street in New York over 20 years ago and has been moving, tending and growing it ever since, she believes in reaching for the stars. She just thinks some aspiring entrepreneurs get caught up in “it-would-be-cool-to-run-my-own-business” thinking without really consider...

When Sue Nabi left her position as worldwide president of L’Oreal and Lancôme to start her Orveda Skincare line, one key question kept popping into her head, a question she had never really thought about in the C suite of one of the world’s largest beauty companies: do millions of Instagram likes actually translate into sales? As she grows Orveda, she’s looking for the answer. She knows one thing:...

If there’s one overarching message or pattern from our incredible array of WBMB guests—and one piece of advice for our listeners—it’s that you never know where your path will lead and you don’t have to panic if where you are at the moment is not your goal. Our guest Bart Kaczanowicz, founder and influencer-in-chief of the skincare blog OMGBart.com is a perfect example of this “you never know” appr...

Base Beauty’s Social Media Manager, Becca spent 16 years of her early life in the high-intensity, ultra-disciplined world of competitive gymnastics. After all those 360s, she made a 180-turn away from that world which became a little too narrow for her expansive interests and easily-bored personality. More twists and turns eventually brought her to us, via a resumé of gigs that are as cool as they...

Julie Wald, Founder, CEO and Chief Wellness Officer of Namaste New York, manages the challenges of running her business…and her life. She speaks about how you approach the inevitable highs and lows—especially the lows which can take the wind out of your sails in a flash, in any business or any situation. Julie has a wise acronym that she could one day make into a cross-stitched sampler (if she eve...

Founder of the eponymous fragrance line and his floral design company in Los Angeles, Eric Buterbaugh sat with host Jodi Katz as part of our Podcast-in-Residence program at Saks Fifth Avenue’s flagship store in New York. In front of a wonderful audience, Eric traced his path toward his passions which can be summed up with F words: fashion, fragrance and flowers. We could also add flamboyant, a wor...

When our guest, Elise Joy, a network news producer, was blindsided by a painful and mean-spirited layoff, she picked herself up and turned it into an opportunity. Actually, it was her two teen-age daughters who helped her write her next chapter. Volunteering at a food pantry, the three of them were shocked to learn that food stamps could not be used for personal hygiene products. The girls put two...

Any entrepreneur, me included, will tell you that your brand is your baby. So when you go to sell it, whether willingly and lucratively or not so much, you’re losing a bit of your soul. Our guest, Dr. Gregory Brown, Founder of RéVive Skincare, has lived through this more than most, as his company was bounced around from owner to owner. Along the way, he faced personal challenges that would have fl...

You never quite know where that BIG IDEA is going to come from. Jacqueline Gutierrez, Founder of Beauty Backer, says it was her inventor’s mindset... which she first recognized as a teenager... that inspired her concept for the beauty-centric crowdfunding platform. When she was all grown up and trying to launch her own beauty business, she experienced the founder’s perpetual stumbling block: lack...