L’Oréal Paris Honors Women of Worth

you Carol and Tim for having me. It's a pleasure to be here to talk about this program. And it's been going on for several years. Remind our audience what it's all about. So this is the sixteenth year that we are doing this program, so it's been quite a long time. So this is the program is called the Loyal Paris Women of Worth Program. It's our signature philanthropic event where we recognize extraordinary women who are doing things in their communities, giving back and helping those that are

less fortunate. Um and and it's often women who have gone through some incredible tragedies. For the majority of the women, their causes and these are causes and foundations that they create their nonprofit organizations, and for many of them, they come from personal stories, so tragedies or problems that they or their family have experience have experienced, and that becomes the root of creating a program to give back to others and helping people like them to get through these

sometimes terrible events. How does the selection process go? So the way it works is at the beginning of each year, we do a call for nominations, so we invite the public to nominate. Women can nominate themselves, or women can nominate people can nominate other women. We have an application

process that's available through our website. This year we received over almost two thousand applications, so we get quite a range of of applications, and then we invite our employees and our partners that we work with to go through those applications and then we narrow them down to a short list of you know, a smaller set. Then we have a panel of judges of which I'm part of. It Prior honorees are part of it UM industry leaders

that we work with that Lorial Paris works with. So there's about ten of us who vet through the finalists, if you will, and we select the final ten honorees, so each year it's ten honorees. So because it's sixteen years and we're now up to a hundred and sixty women that we recognized UM in the last sixteen years, and they're pretty fantastic women well and full transparency pre

pandemic I I got. I was honored to be involved with it and was able to present UM for a couple of the dinners that you used to do to honor these women. But what really struck me is that these were individuals, as you said, like tragedy or something happened in their lives and they were able to turn that tragedy into awareness and to helping others. Give us an idea of some of the women. There's Brianna, There's Natalie,

like and and some of their causes. So this year, the range of causes is quite diverse, and we actually look for a diverse range of philanthropies that they work.

So this year UM, some of the things that we some of the women we recognize, for example, a woman named Natalie Wilson who leads an organization called Black and Missing, the Black the Black and Missing Foundation, and and it's she helps bring awareness to locate missing Black women UM, and what we have understood is that black women who have gone missing UM have a much lower likelihood of being found because of how the structure of our country works.

And so she brings awareness. So she uses social media to get out awareness and help UM find these missing individuals. So that's one organization. We have another organization called Sore Overheat or so We're over Hate. A woman named Nancy Tran has founded that and that organization is helping UM older Asian Americans UM protect themselves against xenophobia and we know that's become so prevalent through covid A specially UM.

So there's quite a range. We're dealing with issues. Some are dealing with issues of mental health among teenage teenagers. A woman who started that organization her son unfortunately committed suicide, so now she's helping UM other families who are facing that that issue. UM. We have causes ranging from cancer, support,

food insecurity. So it's quite a range UM, and we look for a diversity, and I feel like it's like so many of the issues that we've some of them that we've talked about, certainly over the year UM and certainly under the pandemic. Tim was noticing that you've been at Loreal a long time. So this is my twentieth anniversary with Loreal. I started my career following business school with Loreal, and I've been there the whole time, twenty years. Um,

grown up through the marketing ranks. Um, what's your first job there? My first job was assistant brand manager on Preference Hair Color, which is actually so it's actually very infamous that it's that because Preference Hair Color is the brand that started the tagline because You're worth it. So it's really very emotional for me to have started there

and now twenty years later to be leading this business. Well, it's so interesting to look at the experience you've had because you were also part of Florial, Paris Facial Skincare, Mabeling Garnier. Then you were part of the consumer products division and New Ventures. And I'm wondering what you would say to to somebody who's early in their career, perhaps just graduating from business school right now, and they see a company they want to spend their career with. How

do they work their way up? Yeah? So I think for me, and people ask me this all the time, how how are you still here, and I think clearly they're sort of the fundamental It's hard work, you know, build your relationships, um be collaborative, listen. I think a lot of it is have some humility and be flexible so the path that you think you're going to take is never the one that actually happens. And be open

to ideas. You know. One of the reasons why I've stayed at Loreal is because every time I sort of was board or I had plateau, there was always a new opportunity, which is why I was able to move around and work on different businesses and take more responsibility. But it was never what I thought it was going to be. It was like you had to have a leap of faith a little bit and trust the organization and sort of be flexible, be open to try new

things and and see where it goes. So each each move was almost like a new having a new opportunity at a new company within the security of a big organization. It almost has like an entrepreneurial nature that you're able to try something new, sit tight. We're gonna come back and talk more with Ali Goldstein, President of Loreal, Paris, USA. This is Bloomberg. I want to get back to Ali Goldstein. She's Loreal Paris USA President. She's here in our Interactive

Broker studio. We've been talking about, uh, the Women of Worth program. As you say, it must be hard to select because you have to whittle it down to ten because so many of these causes, whether it's education, whether it's um, food, insecurities. I mean, they are all dealing with such important issues. Yeah, and it is hard, and we so we spend a few we we spend hours actually,

you know, vetting the women. We read all of their bios, We look at websites, We really investigate and do our research to understand and we try to measure the impact they're having. We look, you know, it's it's it's also it's what are the women doing, What are the impact that they're having. How do we ensure we have a

diverse range of causes. We also look for diversity of the women themselves, you know, age, ethnicity, geography, to make sure that we can recognize arrange because we have so many consumers and we have so many employees, and everyone's passionate about a different thing, and so that's also part of it is you know, I guess you could say, as a as a company, Laureal Paris had a choice do we stand for one cause or do we find a way to reach many people across different causes, and

we chose the latter route, which we're pretty proud of.

You bring together extraordinary women from all over the country each and every year, and I'm wondering how they're able to use this as a way to network with people who have had similar experiences, people who run similar organizations, and then they take that experience and then move on and create this network that that last year's absolutely so the way it works is as Loreale Paris, we try to provide more than just a financial reward for these women,

So we actually as a company bring our resources as a company to give them education and mentorship. And we also we like to keep the alumni of the program as a network. So it's not one and done. It's

these women. These hundred and sixty women are now part of this very special group called the Women of Worth, and we try to keep in touch with them and and see how they're doing throughout as the years progress and partner women with similar types of causes, because some are more advanced in their in their philanthropies, some are

just starting and they can learn from each other. So each year we also do an educational summit where we bring the current years honorees together and we we provide education, but we also bring back some of our alumni as well and provide support. So it's it's much more than dollars. It's also lots of networking. As you said, education, UM, and of course awareness. What what's the impact of the platform that you give these individuals and all of the

women over the last what fifteen sixteen years? What's been the result of you know, their connection with you and the platform that you provide them. And I know you guys have now you now do a program, a television program. Tell us a little bit about that. So UM last year we shifted how we brought awareness to these women. UM partly was linked to COVID, but in the end we feel it was absolutely the right thing to do UM and we really wanted to bring some scale and

broad awareness to these fantastic women. So we partnered with NBC to create a one hour primetime TV spec where we worked with our Loreal Paris spokespeople UM to interview the women and showcase what they do in their communities. We brought film crews to their community so they could see the people that they were impacting and really showcase their work. UM. So that was last year was the first year we're doing it. We're super excited that we're

doing it again this year. So if I could plug the show this year is UM will be aired on December sixteen, eight o'clock on NBC. If if you like to watch it, I encourage whoever is interested to to UM tune in. It's a fantastic program. And this year actually we were able to bring all of the honorees to Paris UM to film the show in the heart of the city where a Loreal Paris was founded. So what a special experience for the women UM and they were able to meet our spokespeople and have a very

special experience UM you know from Loreal Paris. So they were able to meet each other and that work and have this special trip to Paris. We filmed the show and now it's it's all being put together, so it's pretty fantastic. But it's really about bringing awareness to the women and their causes and giving them a national stage UM and and in the past for some of these women they've really gone on to do amazing things or their causes. We've had one woman received a Nobel Peace Prize.

We've had two women received presidential medals. We've had women go and and and and work with their senators to create legislation through Congress. So we think we have a pretty good track record. The women have really done some

outstanding things well. And it's interesting too, and you talk about I know some of these causes, right, I mean, women have have gone on to raise lots of money for their cause and really whether it's you know, cancer progress with kids and sons of like, it's really remarkable. And as you say, like there's a lot of things. Sometimes you think there's attention or time spent on something,

but there's no payoff. It's really wonderful to see that by raising these women up and giving them the platform connected with you guys, that they're able to then make some significant in rows. Let's have some and this for us is really important. So over the last sixteen years, we've we've contributed over two million dollars towards these women's organizations. This year we actually decided to double the investment because

we believe it's that important. So um. So historically we've given it's not a huge amount of Each year we've given each woman ten thousand dollars. This year we've doubled it to twenty dollars. The National honor we had another two dollars, and hopefully with the spotlight of the NBC special will have support from consumers as well and others. Okay, so don't judge me, but I'd be like killed by my producers to have you in here and not ask

about kind of the environment. Okay, how is like the world? Like, how do you see the world right now? Like we're we have lots of like volatility within the markets and so on and and so forth. Does it feel right now? So it's still very volatile right every day? Who knows what we're going to face. Um, But I'm I'm optimistic, you know, within the beauty industry, we're optimistic. It's the holiday season. People are back using makeup, buying makeup. We

just went through, you know, the Thanksgiving weekends. People are shopping, um, which isn't very encouraging. And I'm optimistic that people are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel tunnel whatever that light. Maybe it's a it's a new normal that we don't know yet, um, but I'm optimistic that things are getting better at least week. Can we see

our consumers wanting to get back to some normal life. Um. And so it's it's volatile, as I said, every day can be challenging, lots of issues of course that we're all facing. Um, But but we are excited and our offices are open and we're happy to be back engaging with people live. When does this special again? And December eight pm? Alright, good. These are remarkable women. Take my word for it, take Allie's word really for it, um, because it's been year after year of them doing incredible stuff.

Thank you so much. Ali Goldstein, she's president of Lorial Paris USA, talking about their Women of Worth program,