CEW honors the beauty industry’s top talent annually with its Achiever Awards. So, when it came time for longtime president Carlotta Jacobson to choose a successor, it was only natural she select from within those ranks.
Enter Elana Drell Szyfer, the beauty executive who most recently helmed RéVive Skincare and became an Achiever in 2020. Now, she’s tasked with nurturing the coming generations of professional talent, and evolving the esteemed organization to best suit the needs of a rapidly evolving workforce.
“When I left RéVive, Carlotta approached me about working with CEW to help them do their strategy,” Drell Szyfer said. “I started working with the strategy team in April or May, and when I heard there was a search for a new president, I threw my name in the hat and got named in October. I was working on strategy for six months or so before that, and now I’m implementing it.”
Drell Szyfer is starting with the core tenets of the organization. “This year, there is a real focus on community and making sure that CEW acts as a beauty community aggregator — it’s really for members, but it also refers to the industry as a whole, and being a place where the industry can come for information and partnership,” she said. “We’re collaborating with people like the Fashion Institute of Technology and the Savannah College of Art and Design. I’ve stretched our reach to be able to say ‘we’re stronger together.’”
Among those collaborations, CEW has become the key programming partner for Columbia Business School’s beauty club, which has over 200 members. “There’s such a strong interest in the industry, but people don’t know where to go or how to access it,” said Drell Szyfer. “A lot of companies don’t recruit so there are jobs, but people have to find them on their own, and we’re trying to be that access point.”
As a part of developing the next generation of female talent, CEW is also offering free memberships to students.
The opportunities are geographic as well, as Drell Szyfer looks to leverage other cities in the U.S. with a thriving beauty community. “There’s a big growing presence in Los Angeles, but also Chicago and San Francisco,” she said. “We kicked off an ambassador program, selecting ambassadors in each of those cities who are members, and people who would reach out to CEW all the time and say, ‘We’d love to help you do something.’”
There is also room for more professional development, Drell Szyfer said, with the ambition of being a resource for upskilling and mentoring. “We made an investment in a platform called Rally Board, which allows you to match one-to-many with a mentor. It’s a cohort model, and the platform schedules the meetings for you, takes meeting notes and is AI-driven,” she said. “We also started working with a career coach who comes from beauty.”
As Drell Szyfer looks to broaden the organization’s aperture, she also wants to attract members from other functions of beauty businesses. That relates to the incoming class of Achievers being honored Thursday.
“We try to represent the industry as a whole — not just the marketers and not only CEOs. There are a few honorees who I think are important for different reasons,” she said. “Mary van Praag has been here for a really long time, and is a perfect example of someone who came up through a commercial lens and is somebody who is such a strong leader. It’s the only company other than E.l.f. to make market share gains in the color cosmetics category at mass.”
On the flip side, “You have somebody like Mandy Fields, the CFO of E.l.f. It’s important to recognize not only the marketers,” said Drell Szyfer. “A lot of the reasons why women are not gaining the top CEO jobs is because people say they don’t have operational or financial experience. Which brings me to SK Lee, the fact that someone from P&G running a major, major category is in Singapore. This helps demonstrate how global the beauty industry is.”
Drell Szyfer said she’s also been campaigning for Laura Slatkin to win an Achiever for years. “Same with Jo Horgan and also Mary van Praag — they’re all incredible human beings and leaders. Laura has built an incredibly strong brand that has always been recognized in fragrance but I don’t think she’s been recognized more broadly across the industry,” Drell Szyfer said. “She’s such a talented brand builder.”
“All the honorees demonstrate a diversity of roles, leadership, styles and size of companies,” she said. “Then, of course, Carlotta [Jacobson, former CEW president] — for whom ‘catalyst’ is the ultimate descriptor. She was a catalyst for change, and I think the award is incredibly appropriate.”
