Julie McClain Downey, director of state communications for Senator Cory Booker’s presidential campaign, settled into the couch in her Washington, DC apartment last June—holding her newborn daughter with her left hand, and scrolling through TweetDeck with her right. Technically, she was still on the 12-week, gender-blind paid leave available to all of the campaign’s full-time staffers. But she wasn’t going to miss Booker’s first major televised debate of the election cycle, one that in other circumstances—when she wasn’t in the throes of diaper changes and feedings—she would have watched from campaign headquarters. And so with the baby swing pulled up next to the sofa, she and her husband (also a Booker campaign staffer, also on paid leave) sat in the glow of the TV, cozy in their sweats. “We were like, What is our life?,” says McClain Downey. “It’s so different now.”
It’s so different now could as easily describe the shifting demographics on presidential campaigns this election cycle, where for the first time in history, women dominate high-level positions. Almost a year after a record number of women won elected offices throughout the country (buoyed by female voters), there seems to be an understanding among presidential hopefuls that if you want to win, you better have women on your side—and on your staff. Of the 12 candidates who qualified for the October 15 debate, a third have female campaign managers; women hold more than half of senior leadership roles across the Democratic primary field; and multiple campaigns have teams that are at least 60 percent women.
“When I first started, I think I can remember three or four women who were leaders on campaigns,” says Beto O’Rourke’s campaign manager Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, who has worked on every presidential race for the last 20 years. “You knew who they were because there were so few of them.”
Almost eight years ago, when O’Malley Dillon was deputy campaign manager for President Barack Obama’s re-election bid, she approached older female colleagues about what it might be like to do this work with young children. “I was at that point like five years into my marriage, I was 35, contemplating kids, trying to decide, Can I do this campaign if I’m even thinking about kids? And I had women say to me, not in any other way than just to be supportive, ‘Absolutely no, you can’t do this with a kid,’…or ‘Sure, you can try that, but don’t tell anyone you might get pregnant.’” O’Malley Dillon went ahead with her plans to start a family anyway—soon learning she was pregnant with twins—but she was an outlier. “I really felt like I was a unicorn [working the 2012 race while pregnant],” she says. “People were looking at me like I was crazy.”
That’s hardly the case this election cycle, where multiple women are vying for the Democratic nomination and women have filled key campaign positions for more than a dozen candidates. Already, this increase in women’s representation behind the scenes has had an impact on campaign culture—and understandably so. It would be hypocritical for any candidate to talk about the need for better leave policies or equal pay on the debate stage, but not offer them to his or her staff. And so this has also pushed campaigns to become better workplaces. The difference from what O’Malley Dillon went through just seven years ago to what McClain Downey experienced this year is stark: McClain Downey not only interviewed for her position on Booker’s campaign while very visibly pregnant, she asked during the interview process what the paid leave policy would be before accepting the role.
Julie McClain Downey, back right, joined Senator Cory Booker’s presidential campaign while visibly pregnant.
This year has made one thing clear: Women are showing up, stepping up, and taking what they deserve. From politics to pop culture, women aren’t just leveling the playing field, they’re owning it. As we ramp up to our annual Women of the Year summit, we will be highlighting women across industries who do the work every day. Whether it’s the CEO of a multinational retail corporation, a James Beard Award-winning chef, or the World Cup champions, here are the names you need to know right now. We’ve already celebrated the women in sports and beauty. Up now: 11 women who occupy unique positions in the fashion industry. There are the executives leading major American brands, the founders identifying overlooked opportunities, and the designers building whole words through clothing. Here, they talk career, success, and what’s next.
This year has made one thing clear: women are showing up, stepping up, and taking what they deserve. From politics to pop culture, women aren’t just leveling the playing field, they’re owning it. As we ramp up to our annual Women of the Year summit, we will be highlighting women across industries who do the work every day. Whether it’s the CEO of a multinational retail corporation, a James Beard Award-winning chef, or the World Cup champions, here are the women you need to know right now. First up: 10 profiles of women who are making their mark on the world of sports, where female athletes and businesswomen are fighting it out for championships, equal pay, and culture-shifting change. Spoiler alert: they’re winning.
There’s no doubt about it: the last few years have ushered in a whole new standard of diversity and inclusivity within the beauty industry. Thanks to Fenty Beauty’s complete disruption, more and more brands—from new indie names and legacy brands alike—have had to rise to the occasion, expanding their product offerings to accommodate women of color, black women in particular.
And while that industry-wide growth is surely noteworthy, it’s also important to recognize that black folks have provided for their communities long before Fenty, and continue to do so to this very day. Now there are more black-owned beauty brands than ever before addressing the specific needs of women of color, along with products suitable for any and everyone, like non-toxic menstrual hygiene products and SPF that won’t leave a trace.
Here, we’ve rounded up 18 of those brands, promising something for everyone to obsess over.
Maybe you noticed there’s a big cultural shift happening in comedy right now? New, more diverse talent is rising up and gaining influence, while established male comedians like Louis C.K. and T.J. Miller are taking career hits after sexual misconduct allegations come to light. Of course, the same men then launch their comeback tours in a matter of months—Rome wasn’t built in a day, I guess—but the point here is that the new guard is now in a better position to call them out and shine a light on the bullshit.
An example of this happened just last week, after Phoebe Robinson shared on Instagram that she left a New York comedy club when she learned a comedian accused of sexual misconduct was added to the lineup with her. “It’s weird because stand-up comedy is sort of all over the place,” Robinson, a comedian and co-host with Jessica Williams of the 2 Dope Queens podcast and HBO special, told Glamour at a Sundance event. “The rules that might apply at other workplaces don’t really apply there for whatever reason.”
She says she was excited to do the show—but when the comic accused of sexual misconduct dropped in, she thought, “Oh, this guy’s bad news.”
So, “I just left,” she says. “I just really don’t want to be on the same stage as these predators, as these abusers. I think it’s really disgusting and terrible that other comics are being forced into that position. It sucks that audience members have to be like, do I get up and leave now? Like, I didn’t pay to see this person perform.”
The reaction to her Instagram post, she says, has been nice so far. “I think there’s always going to be that faction of like, ‘Just get over it!’ Or, ‘You’re just jealous that this guy’s famous.’ And I’m like, ‘No, it’s bigger than comedy.’ I just don’t want to do a show with an alleged rapist. I just don’t.”
Robinson hopes that as more queer people, people of color, and women gain power more people will come around to her perspective. Her co-star Williams echoes this, telling Glamour, “I want to see more stories from people different from a cis, straight, white male. I want to see more stories of people of color and queer people. I really want new, innovative stories.”
The culture shift might not be happening as fast as we’d like, but Robinson and Williams are doing their part to keep pushing. “Whatever I can do in my power, I will,” Robinson says. “I really do want to figure out a way that all of us comics can come to some sort of agreement, where we can really make some active change. Right now, the thing that I can do is just walk out.”
2 Dope Queens returns to HBO for a second series of four hour-long specials on February 8.
Anna Moeslein is a senior editor at Glamour. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter @annamoeslein.
When it comes to gender equality at the highest level, the beauty industry comes out on top. In a 2016 report by LedBetter, a research group that measures the gender disparity across big-name companies, it found that beauty outranked every other profession in terms of the highest percentage of women seen on the board and in executive positions (apparel and retail came in second and third). Unfortunately, that number was 29 percent—twenty-nine percent—which paints an incredibly bleak and a very real picture about how far away we are from achieving equal representation at the C-suite.
For a business that largely caters to women, that’s built on the dollars women spend, it’s aggravating to see that, in 2019, it’s still rare for a woman to reach the upper echelons of a major corporation.
But a handful of schools are determined to change that. New York City’s Fashion Institute of Technology boasts two beauty-centric programs: a bachelor’s in Cosmetics and Fragrance Marketing that packages the business, science, and marketing aspects of the industry into a two-year curriculum, and a master’s that’s loaded with management courses for future execs. As the longest running programs of their kind in the country (30 years for the bachelor’s, 20 years for the master’s), both groom their graduates with the tools to succeed in the beauty industry.
“We’ve been around for a long time, so we can see the results and track the students’ success stories: All of the students who graduate go into the beauty industry and many them have been extraordinarily successful in moving up the corporate ladder,” says Virginia Bonofiglio, associate chairperson of FIT’s Cosmetics and Fragrance Marketing department, naming the president of Nars, one of the founders of Milk, and senior VPs at Estee Lauder, L’Oreal, and Shisheido as alumni of the program. “The key is finding people who, at a very early stage, know this is what they want to do.”
“In larger public companies, the position of CEO is governed not only by the company, but by the shareholders, and their interest is always in the finance side, so a lot of CEOs—who are men—are brought in because of their financial successes,” says Bonofiglio, calling out Fabrizio Freda, president and CEO of Estée Lauder, who was previously the president of Procter & Gamble’s snack division, as one such example.
And the fact that Freda comes from the food sector isn’t even a surprising one—there’s always been a link between big food brands, like General Mills and Kraft, and beauty. Bonofiglio reasons that it’s because “there’s always been a close relationship between food and beauty—what happens in food first will happen in beauty second. I think it’s because we think with our stomachs first.” (The natural food trend and then the clean beauty movement is the first to spring to mind.)
But at the end of the day, they are still two completely different industries, and in beauty, men simply aren’t the targeted demographic.
A look at a fragrance textbook for one of SCAD’s courses.
Hadley Stambaugh
“I can’t say that a woman or a man will be better as a CEO, because it depends on the individual, but I will say that women will have a much stronger point of view when it comes to formulas or packaging because we’re the consumers,” says Linda Treska, founder of her two-year-old beauty brand Pinch of Colour. “It ultimately comes down to the consumers—what they experience and how they’ll respond—so women do have an advantage; we use these products every day.”
A 2003 graduate of the FIT program, Treska says she always knew she’d wind up in beauty. She kicked off her career as a makeup artist, but it wasn’t enough. She had an insatiable curiosity to learn about the business side of the industry. She enrolled in the undergraduate program (an associate’s degree is required in order to be eligible) and drank in the knowledge of sourcing ingredients, developing products, understanding the competition, and navigating the landscape. Eighteen years later, she worked her way up, with stints at Vincent Longo, Estée Lauder, Laura Mercier, and Laura Geller, before she finally decided she was ready to strike out on her own.
“When I was starting out, the business was very different from what it is today—there were definitely more men in key positions and the market was dominated by very big companies with deep pockets and a long history,” Treska says. “But with the Internet and social media, the landscape has changed for everyone in the past five years. Now, there are so many young women CEOs with their own successful brands.”
“It’s important that companies and leadership reflect the diversity and genders of their consumers.” —Meloney Moore, SCAD Business of Beauty and Fragrance professor
Not only is she the CEO of her own brand, but she’s also referring to the influx of women-led labels, like Emily Weiss’ millennial-favorite Glossier, Kylie Jenner’s namesake line of cosmetics, Rihanna’s inclusive Fenty Beauty, Katia Beauchamp’s beauty-subscription service Birchbox, the genderless beauty brand Milk Makeup founded by husband-and-wife duo Mazdack Rassi and Zanna Roberts Rassi, and so many more. (Change is also happening at major corporations as well—Revlon named Debra Perelman as CEO last year, the first female to helm the company in its 86-year-long history.)
“The beauty business is booming; every category in beauty is growing,” says Bonofiglio. “Everybody cries about retail, but beauty retail is flourishing, both digital and brick-and-mortar. Beauty is thriving, and more and more people are into it.”
It’s an indicator of just how much has changed. Delphine Horvath, one of two full-time professors employed to teach FIT’s cosmetics and fragrance marketing and an industry veteran of 15 years with roles at Coty, Revlon, and P&G, says when she got her start in the late ’90s, a program of this kind didn’t exist in her native country France, despite it being a significant business. Even now, she says beauty is still considered to be a shallow or superficial career path, and at FIT, one of the biggest misconceptions is that it’s a course that teaches makeup application.
“Empowering our students and changing that mentality is something we try to do,” Horvath says. “And now, with the rise of successful entrepreneurs who have created a platform for women to express themselves, who are driving the growth in the beauty market and creating opportunities for women to take leading roles in the industry, it’s changed the whole game.”
That explains why since FIT launched its program, there has been a crop of similar ones across the country, like Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising’s Beauty Industry Management major on the west coast and NYU’s one-year Fashion & Luxury MBA that preps students for managerial roles in apparel, beauty, wearable tech, and more. And as of last semester, Savannah College of Art & Design has introduced a new degree: Business of Beauty and Fragrance.
Promotional materials for SCAD’s fragrance marketing and management course
“Marketing has changed a lot over the years—it’s become a two-way conversation with social media and there’s less of an emphasis on TV commercials—and with a growing industry like beauty, it’s the perfect time to have a background that specializes in the business of it,” says Meloney Moore, who after more than seven years in executive roles at Estée Lauder left to help develop SCAD’s beauty program and is now its sole professor. “I think it’s important that companies and leadership reflect the diversity and genders of their consumers. And we want SCAD to become a funnel of great and creative talent for the industry.”
In the semester that the program has been available, Moore has cultivated an interactive, hands-on, professional environment with plenty of simulations and workshops, along with traditional lectures. It was important to her that the structure of the program mirrors real-life experiences, and as the industry changes—the importance of consumer feedback, the demand for more inclusive foundation shades—the curriculum is expected to evolve with it.
“In the past couple of years, I’ve never seen so many new companies and new innovations. And the language is changing—companies are starting to take a stance, have opinions, and engage with consumers,” she says. “It requires a new type of marketer who is more creative and attentive to details. In our classes, we incorporate social media marketing and consumer engagement as much as possible so that students are relevant in their positions when they graduate.”
“I think this program gives women the specialized knowledge and confidence to put themselves out there, to learn to speak up more for themselves, and to realize they are very valuable to the industry.” —Melodie Young, 2018 alumna of FIT
Meredith Walter, a sophomore at SCAD, was originally in fashion marketing and managing but immediately switched when she received an email that alerted her to the new major. She’s already confident that these courses are not only giving her the tools to succeed in the industry (though which field exactly she has yet to determine), but they’re also inspiring her to hold a leadership position in the future.
“I’ve always looked at a marketing campaign as a consumer, so it’s been incredible to learn about the research and everything that goes on behind the scenes,” Walter says. “It’s been inspiring to watch Meloney teach the class, and it makes me excited to build my knowledge and learn her ways so I can be someone like her.”
Because it’s still in its infancy, as Walter says the classes are about half the size of a normal one at SCAD, but “that’s what makes it more intimate and fun.”
Similarly, FIT’s beauty department is the smallest in the school—and yet, interestingly enough, Horvath says it’s one of the very unique programs that can be linked to every other department, including fashion, jewelry design, and packaging. But the beauty of having such a small class (50 juniors and 50 seniors are enrolled every year) is to ensure that each graduate is mentored, properly trained to be a professional, and equipped to find a job at the end of the program.
Melodie Young, a 2018 alumna of the program, landed a job at Fenty as product development coordinator one month after she graduated in May, and she credits the school for readying her to enter the industry.
“I think this program gives women the specialized knowledge and confidence to put themselves out there, to learn to speak up more for themselves, and to realize they are very valuable to the industry—the more diverse a company’s leadership is, the better chance it has to reach a broad audience,” says Young, whose ultimate career goal is to be involved in the creation of an inclusive brand. “I went into product development because I thought making product for people of color like me was the coolest thing. So I’m lucky to have found a job at Fenty, which speaks to that inclusivity.”
In the face of so much promise and potential, perhaps reality won’t look so bleak, after all.
“Programs like these are the keys to success for a lot of individuals, and I feel like if I hadn’t gone to FIT, I wouldn’t have the career I did have,” Treska says. “Students get the opportunity to meet leaders from the industry first hand, and I’ve mentored a lot of these brilliant women. I can’t wait to see what they’ll do next.”
