NEW YORK — Today, Executive Chairman William P. Lauder and President and Chief Executive Officer Fabrizio Freda of The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. (NYSE:EL) (“ELC”) announced an organizational evolution across its brand portfolio to strategically position the company for long-term, sustainable growth in a fast-paced evolving global landscape.
Effective September 1, 2022, the company’s brand portfolio evolved into two brand clusters led by Jane Hertzmark Hudis, Executive Group President, and Stéphane de La Faverie, who has been promoted to Executive Group President. This new brand leadership structure is designed to ensure continued portfolio-wide alignment, enabling the business to focus on the greatest areas of opportunity. Jane and Stéphane will continue to report directly to Fabrizio Freda.
“This evolution further positions The Estée Lauder Companies’ brands to win with consumers in a complex and continuously changing beauty landscape, while elevating our internal talent bench and organizational planning to position us well to deliver on the company’s long-term strategy with agility,” said Fabrizio Freda. “The strength of our portfolio reflects the strength of our leadership team, and this evolution leverages the track record and high potential of each leader to take our business to even greater heights in the future.”
Building upon their enterprise-wide leadership responsibilities, Jane and Stéphane, in partnership with the Brand Presidents, will oversee their brands’ businesses, equity and innovation, continuing to work in close alignment with all internal functions and regions. Additionally, they will work closely with brand and value chain leaders to drive the strategy and growth plans for the company’s product categories and key subcategories.
“We have been and will continue to be a brand-led company. This exciting update to the organization will further enable our brands’ industry leadership,” said William P. Lauder.“Leveraging ELC’s internal talent pipeline globally underscores our commitment to create new professional development and career advancement opportunities for the next generation of leaders across our organization.”
This organizational evolution aligns with ELC’s forward-looking corporate strategy and Compass to accelerate the company’s ability to deliver now while simultaneously preparing for the future. The company’s top brand leaders are organizationally aligned in a management structure designed to promote cross-brand synergies and advance development at multiple levels of the organization. In line with the company’s internal talent vision, this announcement also includes the appointment of several leaders to elevated brand roles within the clusters of Jane and Stéphane.
Executive Group President Jane Hertzmark Hudis will continue leading one of the company’s brand clusters, with a portfolio of brands that includes: La Mer and Bobbi Brown; TOM FORD BEAUTY; M·A·C; Clinique and Origins; Aveda; Bumble and bumble; and Dr.Jart+. Jane will also continue her enterprise-wide executive leadership of skin care and hair care, which are important growth-driving categories for our company. All the current brand leaders will remain the same, with the exception of Sandra Main taking direct responsibility of La Mer. In addition, Jane will continue as an executive sponsor for key strategic enterprise-wide priorities, including initiatives focused on marketing excellence and winning with Chinese consumers.
As one of the most accomplished, visionary executives in prestige and luxury beauty, Jane has a proven track record of leading, building, and transforming global brands to achieve outstanding broad-based growth. Jane will leverage her tenured expertise, including her vast knowledge of China, luxury beauty, and consumer-centric local relevance, to further enable her brand portfolio to win across categories, regions, and channels.
Jane is a passionate advocate of leadership development, mentorship, and women’s advancement. In addition to her enterprise-wide responsibilities at the company, Jane co-founded The Estée Lauder Companies’ Women’s Leadership Network (“WLN”) in 2017 to inspire and engage women across the organization, helping them become exceptional leaders and mentors. Under Jane’s co-executive sponsorship, WLN has become the company’s largest employee resource group with a presence in every region.
As Executive Group President, Stéphane de La Faverie will continue to lead one of the company’s brand clusters including Estée Lauder and AERIN Beauty; Jo Malone London; Le Labo; KILIAN PARIS, Editions de Parfums Frederic Malle, Darphin Paris and LAB Series; and DECIEM (The Ordinary, NIOD, and Avestan). Additionally, Stéphane will add ELC’s California-based brands to his portfolio – Too Faced; Smashbox and GLAMGLOW – expanding his category leadership to now include makeup, in addition to fragrance and subcategories of home, bath and body, and men’s skin care and grooming. With the exception of Estée Lauder, all the leaders of the brands now in Stéphane’s portfolio remain the same. Stéphane will also continue to drive integrated planning and end-to-end business operations enterprise-wide.
Stéphane’s promotion to Executive Group President reflects his outstanding track record of building successful global brands and his deep expertise across categories and channels, helping build fragrance as a powerful engine of growth for the company, and leading the Estée Lauder brand to be one of the world’s most beloved prestige beauty brands.
Stéphane’s strength as an inclusive and empathic leader, and his ability to balance emotional inspiration, authenticity and strategic insights to drive long-term, sustainable growth, have helped him successfully build his portfolio of brands and nurture a winning leadership team.
Additional Brand Leadership Updates
- Justin Boxford has been appointed Global Brand President, Estée Lauder. He will report to Stéphane. A separate announcement on Justin’s appointment will be shared in the coming days.
- Sandra Main, Global Brand President, La Mer and Bobbi Brown, will assume direct leadership of La Mer and will oversee Bobbi Brown until a new leader is named. Sandra will continue reporting to Jane.
- Michelle Freyre has been promoted to Global Brand President, Clinique and Origins, expanding her brand oversight. Michelle will report to Jane.
- Amber Garrison, who assumed the role of Global Brand President, Origins in July 2022, will continue as a member of Jane’s leadership team and report to Michelle Freyre.
