How the beauty industry became a leading voice for social activism

Corrie Conrad had been working at Google as a senior project manager for eight years when she began interviewing at Sephora in January of 2015. The beauty retailer was in search of someone to head a newly carved out “social impact” division, an effort that would advance the company’s scattered value-driven efforts by combining them under one umbrella.

“Prior to then, there hadn’t been an intentional focus on using Sephora’s strengths for the greater good,” said Conrad, who has been Sephora’s head of social impact for the past two years. “I basically served as an anthropologist consultant internally, at first — figuring out who we are, what we’re good at and what our community needs.”