Lessons in Leadership: The Future of Beauty with CEW President Elana Drell Szyfer

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0:39Elana Drell Szyfer:droplet device duo.

0:40Dr. Ekta Yadav:Hey guys, welcome back to Skin Anarchy. Today's a very special episode because I am truly interviewing a legend in the beauty industry and she is just so well-versed and she has so much experience across the board, you know, whether it's the brand side, whether it's the product development side, whether it's the leadership and the mentorship component that goes And I mean, she's seen it all. She understands the space, I think, better than anyone else that I know. And so without further ado, I want to introduce you guys again to Ilana Drell Seifer. Welcome. She is the new incoming president of CW as well.

1:12Dr. Ekta Yadav:So welcome, Ilana. I'm so honored to be here.

1:14Elana Drell Szyfer:Thank you so much. Thank you. It is week seven. Oh, wow. I hope it's going well. It is. It is. Thank you.

1:21Dr. Ekta Yadav:Well, I'm really excited, Ilana. I've been really looking forward to this interview because, like I said, like I can't think of a better person than you to really kind of get a grasp on where our industry is headed. You know, I think there's so much that's happened in terms of development lately in the last few years. And I want to dive into that, but I want to actually introduce our listeners to you and your wonderful career and your background. If you could kind of walk us down our lane, tell us about, you know, your past experiences. I know when we spoke last, you were at Raviv as the CEO of Raviv, but just to give them an understanding of your multifaceted career.

1:52Sure.

1:54Elana Drell Szyfer:So I, well, first of all, thank you again for having me. It's a real pleasure. And we spoke early on in your journey of your own podcast. And, you know, now everybody wants to be on Skin Anarchy. So thank you for having me back. You know, when I talk about my career, I kind of talk about it in two phases, and I guess I'm starting my third phase. So for me, I did not envisioned being in beauty. I was an undergraduate major in history in college. I did go to school in New York City. And so part of my sort of the draw of New York City was the opportunity to always have an internship and kind of explore the world of work.

2:39Elana Drell Szyfer:And my early internships were utilizing the skills that I thought I had at that time, which were I interned in a PR firm. I ended up writing for a particular company's corporate communications newsletter. And actually through working in corporate communications, I was exposed to the world of corporate philanthropy. And I actually thought I wanted to work in a company and give away their money to support the arts. And I started to pursue that as a career. And the advice that I got from people is, Alana, that's a very difficult job to get within a company. It goes to somebody right before they end up leaving a company.

3:23Elana Drell Szyfer:But if that's what you're interested in, you should go work in not-for-profit and you should work on the fundraising side and that will introduce you to the companies. And so you can meet the companies that way. Maybe someone will bring you over to the other side. And so I did pursue fundraising and my first job was actually in the development office at the Juilliard School. And I was the liaison between students who got scholarships and the people who were the donators of their scholarships. And while I was doing this, I had a first-gen American father who kept saying to me, what are you doing working in not-for-profit?

4:04Elana Drell Szyfer:When are you going to go back to graduate school? and when are you going to make some money? So I took my first class in marketing and I said, oh, you know, this could kind of be interesting. I kind of like this. Let me think about getting my MBA. And I started to investigate that and realized I had zero of the requirements to apply for getting an MBA. So I started taking all of the requirements that I hadn't taken as an undergrad, pre-calculus, calculus, macroeconomics, microeconomics, et cetera, studying for the GMATs. And simultaneously, I said, but let me also now see if I can get a job in marketing.

4:45Elana Drell Szyfer:And I couldn't actually get a job in marketing. It wasn't so easy, but I did get hired to work at Chanel, not in the operating company, but actually in a kind of private area of the company, the family office. because you know Chanel is still privately held. And I got that job because I spoke French. And I happen to speak French because that's a personal passion, just like the arts are a personal passion. And that was my entree really into beauty. It was the first time that I discovered this world of beauty. And where better to discover it than at 9 West 57th Street at Chanel. and I didn't work in the beauty team, but I observed them and what they were doing and I was absolutely fascinated.

5:35And it was also the first time that I even learned what Women's Wear Daily

5:39Elana Drell Szyfer:was or many other publications, kind of trade industry publications, many which don't exist anymore. And I actually used it as an opportunity to educate myself about the industry and literally see people's names in articles and write to them. Because since I was working as an assistant, and I also wasn't in the operating business of beauty, I wasn't quite yet where I wanted to be. And it was through that, that I actually then got a job at L 'Oreal by writing to somebody. And that was where my career really took off. Again, I did not get a job working in a beauty team. I actually got a job in finance as somebody's assistant a second time, also because I spoke French.

6:28Elana Drell Szyfer:But this particular person said to me, it feels to me like you're a little experienced and educated for this role. What do you really want to do? And I said, oh, I really want to work in marketing. And so he said, okay, if you do this for me for a year, and he actually had two different job. So he kind of needed a strong admin support. He said, if you do this for me for a year, I will help you move into marketing. And I had nothing to lose. So I took the job and he kept his word. And a year later, I moved into marketing and I also started getting my MBA at night. And that was kind of the beginning, the origin story of how it all started.

7:10Elana Drell Szyfer:And then from there, I worked my way up in marketing and I spent four years at L 'Oreal. I left and followed a boss to Avon. I stayed there for three years and then ended up going back to L 'Oreal for four. And I then left L 'Oreal and went to Estee Lauder for seven years with my last role being on the Estee Lauder brand running global marketing. And I left Estee Lauder almost 16 years ago to start running smaller company for private investors or private equity. And so that's what I've done for the past 15, 16 years is I ran three companies. I sold two and that was when we met when I was at Raviv.

7:57Elana Drell Szyfer:So that was an amazing experience for me personally because it was the first time that I worked on a deal from basically the first day of diligence of buying the company, which we bought from Shiseido. I worked on my first carve out stand up from Shiseido, which means you buy a company, you take it out and you build it and run it independently. And then I was there through the transaction and the transition of turning it over to the new acquirer who was a Chinese strategic, who is a Chinese strategic. So we sold Raviv in October of 2024. I stayed through April of 2025. And then I guess that's where the new chapter begins.

8:42Elana Drell Szyfer:I started doing consulting. I was consulting for a bunch of different brands as well as Cosmetic Executive Women, which is the largest member organization in beauty, health, and Wellness. And I have been a board member at CW for the past 10 years. They were doing a strategy. The then president, Carlotta Jacobson, asked me if I would help with the strategy. And I said, sure. And so I started working with CW. And then during that time, Carlotta announced her retirement and there was a search process and I put my name in the hat. And that brings us to today. So that's a very long way to talk about 30 plus years of working in the industry.

9:28Elana Drell Szyfer:I'm happy to answer any questions about like individual companies, roles, etc.

9:33Dr. Ekta Yadav:There's no overview. No, it's amazing. And I find it to be amazing because you've seen so many different levels of this business, right? And that's where I think there's a lot of like disconnect for anyone who is maybe even coming into the business side of the industry. is like, we don't see things as like this connected, like landscape. It's always like in silos, I feel like, you know, either like people are talking about indie brands, or they're talking about prestige brands, they're talking about really, really big organizations. I mean, it's very difficult to wrap your head around. And so I'm just curious, your decision making across the board has been like top notch, you know, and what is really, I guess, what were some of the things that really made you grounded in what you really wanted to bring to every organization and carry from one to another?

10:20Dr. Ekta Yadav:Like what were some of those pillars for you throughout your career?

10:23Elana Drell Szyfer:Sure. Well, I would say once I got into marketing, I think for many years, and let's call them like the first 18 or so, I had a North Star. I knew I wanted to run a global marketing organization. Like I wanted to be the head of marketing. And so every decision that I made around taking a job within marketing was about thinking about how do I build my experience base to get there? And those those were, you know, if I worked on a small brand, I would do that for a period of time because in small brands, you do everything. right I realized early on in my first marketing job that I was really doing marketing at the time we also we called it marketing services today it's really project management but you know I was doing marketing I was doing project management I was doing education I was doing a little bit of trade marketing and so I I was inputting to sort of global marketing strategy and when I would tell people all of the things that I would do that I was doing they almost didn't believe me because my experience was so broad, although the size of the business was so small.

11:41Elana Drell Szyfer:And I realized that I needed to like to build my own skillset. I needed to go much deeper in a specific area, but also on a larger business. So then I moved essentially over to Avon, where then I started working, you know, on much bigger brands and much bigger businesses. but I also was, you know, much more limited in my scope, you know, was much more defined. And so that was, you know, that I, I, then I spent my first eight years working in skincare. And at some point I realized, okay, but people who run global marketing teams, they know all the categories. So now I need to learn another category.

12:23Elana Drell Szyfer:And I started learning fragrance and personal care. And then, you know, so I, I kind of always thought about it that way. I was kind of like, okay, if you think about this like a coloring book, right? Like what are the different things that I need to color in to finish the picture? And so it was big brand, small brand, skincare, fragrance, makeup, hair care, body care, etc. And it ultimately led me to the role that I had kind of, you know, not known exactly what that was, but dreamed about. And that was my last job at Estee Lauder, which was running a global marketing team. So you were responsible for all product, you know, the entire innovation calendar, all of the brand representation, not only domestically, but around the world, you know, setting global strategy, if you will, innovation and visual strategy for the brand globally.

13:19Elana Drell Szyfer:And I did that for three years, but, you know it was it was 18 years in the making basically um and interestingly that was kind of my first the first time that I realized okay so this is what I've been working for now that I'm here what do I do next and it became apparent to me pretty quickly that uh CMOs global marketers and I think it's even more so today, you'll keep those jobs very long because like the speed of innovation, the speed of change, the speed of technology, the speed of everything. And basically like people want to, I think I kind of looked at like people who are running marketing teams and I was like, oh, they better quickly become general managers or like there's always like the next big thing behind you.

14:13Elana Drell Szyfer:Like somebody like the newer, better version of you is literally right behind you. And so that's kind of after doing that role for three years, that's really what I started to think about was how do I become a general manager? I didn't think that on day one, but at some point I did. And simultaneously, I had a number of friends who kind of said to me, listen, Alana, of like you're you work all the time and you are traveling around the world you know at at that time on the Estee Lauder brand and I think it's still true today 75 percent of the business of Estee Lauder brand came from outside of North America you know people think about it as a very American brand it's a very global brand and so if you're running global marketing but 75 percent of your business is outside of the U.S.

15:01Elana Drell Szyfer:so should you be as well and so I spent you know I don't want to I spent 50 % of my time traveling, but I spent a lot of time in the markets and a lot of time traveling. And, you know, people started to say to me, you know, a lot of the calculus of this, if you're going to work this hard, don't you want to own a piece of what you're doing? And I said, what does that mean? Like, I had no idea what that meant. And people said, you know, there are other ways to think about running brands, but also to think about investing in yourself and thinking about your career from a financial perspective. And that's this world of private equity and private equity operators, which I literally didn't know anything about, nothing.

15:51Elana Drell Szyfer:And I would say, you know, when I started thinking about this 15 or 16 years ago, there were very few people who were leaving big companies to go run independent brands. I think today, if you polled people in big companies, I would say probably 50 % of people, they look at that at this point as their North Star, like, I want to get trained here, and then I want to go run something for myself, and I want to have a piece of it, etc. But I was completely naive and uneducated and I had no idea the world even existed. And, but that was what I want. I realized that I wanted to run a brand and I, I knew what the time table was to do that within a corporate environment.

16:37Elana Drell Szyfer:And it was probably another five years after, you know, already running a marketing team for three. And I was young and impatient. Very honestly, I was like, why do I have to wait five years. I'm ready now, right? And so I did. I left Estee Lauder. Everybody thought that I had lost my mind. And maybe I had, honestly. Like culturally, the cultural shift for me from going from 18 years of, you know, being in a big company and doing 27 presentations a week and never going anywhere without a 50 page deck, like to this new world, it was, it was not easy. But I think what I learned was how to integrate the best of incredible training grounds that I got basically between L 'Oreal and Estee Lauder.

17:34Elana Drell Szyfer:And even Avon, I had, I learned a very different skill set, but one that I think has served me very, very well. And I tried to keep the best of what I knew and process and all of those things, but integrated into a world where you don't have the resources to have all the data that you used to have or the people or the, you know, creative teams or whatever. And you also have to learn to exercise an entrepreneurial muscle, but also to exercise a lot of financial muscles you have no idea exist or need when you work in a big company, because there are all kinds of teams of people to do those things for you.

18:18Elana Drell Szyfer:And so, yeah, that was another big transition.

18:23Dr. Ekta Yadav:That's so fascinating. And, you know, I find it to be amazing because we live in such a different world right now where you brought up marketing, and I really want to get your take on this, because I think the ecosystem of what I am seeing as marketing today is so different, right? In terms of like, even when I was, you know, discovering brands as a consumer, like 15 years ago, and how I would discover them and what marketing meant to me. Now I see it as so different. I mean, we have social media, we have all the hype around like all of these different apps, you know, TikTok, and there's just so many different things that are going on.

18:55Dr. Ekta Yadav:What is your take on how brands are approaching this now in terms of like that growth mindset of like where they should be spending their time with marketing? Like what is true global marketing now versus when you are spearheading it?

19:10Elana Drell Szyfer:Okay. Well, that, I mean, that's such a great question. And, you know, I don't, I don't want to portray myself as a, you know, marketing dinosaur, but I think, and I think one of the very positive things about my many being in the business for many years and and then going to work for private equity is that I was afforded the opportunity to be able to serve on some boards. And even today in my new role, I maintain sort of a proximity to operating within the industry by being on some boards. So, you know, I'm, I kind of, I'm not doing it myself. I'm watching others right from the sidelines as I pursue a new opportunity with CW.

19:53Elana Drell Szyfer:But I would say marketing is very, there are certain things about the industry that are exactly the same. Let's establish what they are. There are many ways for consumers to learn about products. Personalized recommendations from people you trust is still, I think, the number one discovery and probably always has been. And consumers remain completely engaged and excited about this industry. I think that was the case 30 years ago, and I think that's the case today, and I think

20:27Dr. Ekta Yadav:that will remain the case in 30 years.

20:30Elana Drell Szyfer:So that's kind of, you know, while we say the consumers change, I think the landscape and the landscape for how and where consumers learn about things, how they want to hear them, who they want to hear them from, who is a trusted source, etc. I think all of those things have changed and the delivery of the message has changed. But I think a lot has kind of remained the same. And, you know, that's a very, that's a view from 30 ,000 feet, right? What has changed completely is customer journey, discovery, and distribution. And, you know, it sounds like sort of, you know, kind of quaint today when I tell some of these stories, but I sat in meetings where 30 people around a conference table debated for three hours.

21:22Elana Drell Szyfer:Do you put your URL for your website on your print ad in a print magazine, or was that going to make your retailers upset? Right? Yeah. Fast forward, like nobody reads a magazine. Okay, that's not true. But there are far fewer of them. They are probably reading it on some kind of digital device or just taking, you know, viewing outtakes of it on a social media platform. And half of those retailers, we were, you know, worried about making upset don't exist anymore. Right. So the conversations have changed just but there are always new things to consider.

22:06Dr. Ekta Yadav:Right. No, the thing that's very challenging.