WHERE BRAINS MEET BEAUTY

While our guest, Kristen Wiley, was working full-time at an SEO and content marketing agency, she was pursuing her influencer interest on the side, blogging on food and crafts. As the agency started getting requests for influencer marketing from clients, they turned to Kristen who was the only one within the relatively small firm with influencer experience…or really any professional social media e...

When our guest, Jane Larkworthy, brand consultant and Beauty Editor-at-Large for The Cut, was a young intern and then a full-time member of the beauty staff at Glamour magazine, she dared to inquire of her new boss if she could try her hand at writing. It didn’t go well. This unenlightened woman cut Jane down with a stinging response that echoed in her head for years and kept her from sticking her...

For Amy Shecter, CEO of Glamsquad, the handshake is full of meaning. She has observed throughout her career—working with major brands such as Lady Foot Locker, Diesel, Donna Karan, Cole Haan and Tory Burch—how much is revealed in the way someone shakes hands…and how it’s something that boys are raised to know about but girls are not. She observes, “How you shake a hand indicates how you feel about...

Our first WBMB guest who has a college degree in scent, Erika Shumate acknowledges that she was probably destined to become a perfumer. As a child she was always fascinated by and sensitive to smells and science, reminiscing that “I was the kid in 7th and 8th grade to go to the state science fair and try to get the blue ribbon. I was always doing experiments in my basement.” Loving how perfumery c...

Who would have ever started a business on the idea of rethinking toothpaste, a taken-for-granted product that has barely changed in decades? Well, that’s exactly what our guests, Julian and Cody Levine, Co-Founders of Twice, are doing. But they’re doing much more than just creating a fabulous tasting, good-for-you toothpaste without questionable ingredients. Inspired by their dentist dad’s work in...

It’s safe to say that Asha Coco, VP of Sales and Business Development at Givaudan, is the only WBMB guest who has been a Rockette. She acknowledges how lucky she was to have found her two passions—dance and fragrance—early in life. The challenge was choosing between them. She tried to pursue them both for as long as she could but finally came to that proverbial fork in the road—a job offer from Cl...

After 12+ years in marketing positions for various Estée Lauder brands, Maura Cannon Dick needed a break. After the birth of her second child, she took it. Treasuring the time for her family and herself, she also knew when she was ready she to get back to the beauty world. But this time she wanted to do it on her own terms. Through thorough networking, thoughtful skill sharpening and a unique abil...

From the time she first leafed through her mother’s magazines as a child, Alison Engstrom knew she wanted to be part of the world of magazine publishing. But it was a series of unsatisfying jobs and a life-changing medical diagnosis that enabled her to take the leap and make her dream a reality. Alison shared with us how she changed her attitude and developed the confidence to start Rose & Ivy...

Rochelle Weitzner, CEO and Founder of Pause Well-Aging, spent years as a C-level executive improving the bottom line of brands dedicated to the idea of anti-aging. Until one day, she experienced her first hot flash, and realized the beauty industry’s attitude as literally anti-age left her, and millions of women her age, underserved if not outright ignored. So at 50, she started a brand made for m...

Growing up with two ill parents, Dr. Patricia Wexler decided she wanted to be a doctor at the age of 5, and it was a goal she never wavered on. Or as she put it, “I’ve been pre-med my whole life.” In this episode, the legendary cosmetic dermatologist takes us through the history of her incredible career, from opening her own office while 7 months pregnant to her evolution as a product developer an...

In this episode, hear the story of Camille McDonald, a multi-decade beauty industry veteran who came up during the peak of Christie Brinkley’s popularity and most recently retired as President of Brand Merchandising at Bath and Body Works. Well, “retired” is a word we’ll use loosely here, because her idea of retirement has been diversifying her knowledge base from fragrance to skincare, and embark...

During her time working in advertising, Georgina Gooley, Founder of Billie, discovered a pointless double standard in consumer goods: Women were being charged more for inferior products when it came to shave products, aka The Pink Tax. Her response was Billie, a better shave product for women at better prices. In creating this company, she’s aligned both a social mission and for-profit business. #...

Essence Grant, Beauty Director at BuzzFeed, didn’t have a specific dream job in mind back when she was in college. She just knew somewhere at the intersection of beauty, media and entertainment, she’d be okay. So when an opportunity to write about New York’s Fashion Week came her way, she went for it. (Though it did involve skipping class.) With pluck and grit, that first job led to another and to...

With a nod to Mother’s Day, this week’s episode features Lauren and Rachel Piskin, the mother-daughter team behind ChaiseFitness. Lauren, a former competitive ice skater and Rachel, a former professional ballet dancer, developed their own fitness method combining pilates and resistance equipment as a response to health issues Rachel sustained as a dancer. The two describe the dynamics of mixing fa...

When Tina Hedges, Founder of LOLI Beauty, began the process of raising money for her company, she had already ticked off a lot of boxes. Proof of concept. Glowing press. Years of experience in the beauty industry. So she didn’t expect the response she got from the prominent venture capitalists she pitched: You’re over 40, therefore too old. You’re not pitching tech, so we’re not interested. And by...

Nancy McKay spent the bulk of her career faithful to one company, but the experiences that made her successful didn’t all come directly on the job. During her 28 years as an Estee Lauder executive, she used lessons gleaned from her life outside of beauty: Her college debate team, an earlier aspiration towards politics, and a chance encounter with tennis great Andre Agassi. As the current CEO of Ba...

Rachel Roff always knew she wanted to be an esthetician. So four days after graduating from college, she was back in the classroom, but this time at esthetic school. During her time there, she noticed how limited treatment options were for people of color. Her efforts to change what she saw as outright prejudice led her to found Urban Skin Solutions Med Spa and later Urban Skin Rx Skincare, both f...

When Blair James, Owner and Co-Founder of Bondi Sands, was a kid, he wanted to be a basketball player, Formula One race car driver, or a brand creator. While the first two didn’t quite pan out, his instinctual understanding of how people connect with brands has paid off. Bondi Sands is not only a self-tanning brand with global distribution, but the market leader on social media. In this episode, h...

Rita Hazan, a celebrity colorist, product innovator and salon owner, has been in business for 20 years strong. Hear how she’s managed to keep innovating and stay relevant even as trends and fads cycle faster and faster through the consumer experience. Consider this episode a masterclass in career longevity.   #wherebrainsmeetbeauty @wherebrainsmeetbeautypodcast wherebrainsmeetbeauty.com  

This week’s guest, Beth Russell, Founder of House of Potentia, sits down to talk about her mission to encourage personal change through perfumery. With a background in pyschology, she created House of Potenia with the idea of “olafactive induction”, or as she says, “Using scent as an agent of change and a reminder of how you want to feel.” Get a deeper look inside her brand and its purpose, and ge...

This week’s guest, Beth Russell, Founder of House of Potenia, sits down to talk about her mission to encourage personal change through perfumery. With a background in pyschology, she created House of Potenia with the idea of “olafactive induction”, or as she says, “Using scent as an agent of change and a reminder of how you want to feel.” Get a deeper look inside her brand and its purpose, and get...

For decades, legendary makeup artist and cosmetics mogul Trish McEvoy has led her namesake brand with one focus: The customer. From making pro-quality brushes accessible to consumers to innovating the iconic Makeup Planner, she’s changed the landscape of beauty to the advantage of women everywhere. Hear how she’s managed to maintain the independence of her brand in a marketplace noisy with investo...

Sometimes a career finds you and not the other way around. That’s what happened for Eloise Cheung, a hairstylist who has clocked in over two decades of editorial, advertising, and red carpet jobs. In college, she majored in engineering for a year before dropping out; that move led to a series of fortuitous breaks which would eventually cumulate into the job she loves now. Hear how she went from Ch...

Back in 1992, Laura Slatkin and her husband Harry both had lucrative Wall Street careers on the rise. But their entrepreneurial spirits got the better of them, and that year they left the safety of a steady paycheck to open a home-fragrance shop. This eventually lead to Laura founding NEST Fragrances. In this episode, she recalls the challenges of creating what’s essentially today’s home fragrance...

If you’ve ever looked into the perfume-making process, you probably know there’s someone called a “nose” involved… as in a job title, not a body part. Andrea Bifulco is herself familiar with these mystical wizards of scent, having stumbled on a career in fragrance development thanks to a fateful temp job at Estée Lauder. Now currently the founder of Nose University, an educational olfactive progra...