Bee Shapiro
Bee Shapiro is a New York Times beauty contributor, a position she has held since 2009, the author of the newly published collection Skin Deep, and the founder of Ellis Brooklyn, a luxurious, sustainable, chemical-free line of skincare and perfume.
Rich Gersten
Rich has spent the last 30 years investing and building great consumer brands at top private equity firms including Tengram Capital Partners, L Catterton, and North Castle Partners. Rich spent the last 9 years dedicated specifically to investing in the beauty industry, where he developed an extensive network of relationships that sourced many emerging growth brands with very limited access to institutional capital. Realizing the significant opportunity to address this underserved area of the market in beauty, Rich founded True Beauty Ventures.
Rich received a BS in Economics from Union College (N.Y.) and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Jodi Katz
Jodi’s career has spanned the quickly evolving communications marketplace. She started her career agency-side at BBDO, followed by jobs with magazine publishers, digital start ups and beauty brands. Prior to launching Base Beauty, Jodi was the Creative Director of the global prestige French brand L’Occitane en Provence. She graduated from
Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania with a degree in Government in Law and lives with her family in New Jersey. Her hobbies include fitness, Rent the Runway and watching reality TV on Bravo (her current favorite show is Below Deck).
Shelby Wild
Founder Shelby Wild is aiming to revolutionize the beauty industry with her naturally-derived haircare company Playa. Shelby founded Playa in 2017, hoping to simplify her own haircare routine with easy-to-use, toxin-free products. With millennial-chic packaging and transparent ingredients, Playa was quickly in demand from retail and beauty giants Sephora, Net-A-Porter, and Revolve.
Sarah Foley
Sarah is a senior finance professional with 20 years of private equity and financial advisory experience. Most recently, Ms. Foley served as CFO of a New York City-based food company for over two years. Ms. Foley has served as a member of multiple private company boards of directors. She is also an active angel investor and member of New York Angels.
John Bailey
Carla Ruiz
Alex Fogelson
Alex completed his B.S.M at Tulane University in 2011, going on to complete an MFin. Alex went on to work in varied positions at Coach, The Estee Lauder Companies, Li & Fung Beauty, CHAPFIX+, and the Fung Group, and in 2015 he co—founded Taste Beauty along with two others, with over 30 years of experience in the beauty industry.
Taste was founded with a hungry spirit and a passion to drive innovation through the most unique products, highest quality, unprecedented customer service and rapid speed to market.
Lori Haram
Lori Haram is the Senior Vice President, Business Affairs and Operations for the Cluster of Brands that are led by Executive Group President, John Demsey. In this role, Lori is responsible to drive strategic projects across the more than 20 brands in the Cluster, as well as support specific initiatives within certain brands, notably Too Faced where she is the primary point of contact between the brand and the larger ELC organization. Lori is also the Chief of Staff to John Demsey.
Previously, Lori led New Business Development for ELC. In that role, Lori completed 8 acquisitions, including Smashbox, Le Labo, BECCA and Too Faced, and 2 minority investments. In 2016, Lori was named as one of the most influential women in mid-market M&A by themiddlemarket.com.
Lori has more than 30 years’ experience in global finance and strategic planning. Following the completion of her business school education, she joined The Estee Lauder Companies as a Financial Analyst in the International division. Lori went on to hold various leadership positions within ELC including Vice President, Finance for Estée Lauder, USA and Canada; Vice President, Global Finance and Strategic Planning for M.A.C Cosmetics, and Senior Vice President, Global New Business Development. In these roles, she worked closely with the Brand Presidents and Senior Management to develop and execute strategic and financial priorities for the business.
Over the course of her career, Lori worked outside of ELC for approximately 5 years. From 1996-1998, she held the position of Vice President, Finance for EMI Group, Angel Records Division, and from 2007-2009 she was first a consultant to, and subsequently the General Manager of the then-independent beauty brand Carol’s Daughter.
Lori developed and delivers a Career Readiness program to 12th grade students under the auspices of the non-profit organization PENCIL and is also the Treasurer of the Lords Valley Country Club. She holds a Bachelor of Business Administration, Management, from SUNY-Binghamton and a Master of Business Administration, Finance and Accounting, from Columbia University. She and her husband Khaled live in Manhattan, and their son Ian lives close by.
Michelle Connelly
Michelle Connelly joined Credo in 2017 with nearly a decade of experience in the industry, successfully driving beauty brands at retail through strategically planning their marketing initiatives, visual merchandising and inventory planning. Prior to being recruited to lead the Credo merchant team, Michelle’s career in beauty began after successful stints at both Sephora and Macy’s.
Credo is the leading clean beauty retailer based in San Francisco, CA boasting the largest, safest and cleanest beauty assortment in the U.S. Credo has 8 locations across the nation with more on the horizon and carries the most beautiful, effective and clean beauty brands available today.