When Artemis Patrick becomes CEO of Sephora North America next month, she’ll be in a rare and privileged position: Rather than becoming a glass cliff CEO, the fate of many female executives, she’s stepping into corner office while the LVMH-owned brand is on an upswing.
Last year, the cosmetics retailer reported “record-breaking” profits globally and exceptional sales in North America. Patrick, an 18-year Sephora veteran, left her role as global chief merchandising officer last fall to become North America president, a title she’ll retain as CEO beginning April 1.
Patrick’s ascent through the ranks of Sephora to one of the top perches in beauty is a dramatic version of the classic American dream. The executive emigrated to the U.S. with her family at age 7, fleeing the violence of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. Her father, she explains to Fortune, was a pilot for the former Shah. Like other government employees of the time, he risked imprisonment and death if he didn’t escape.
The move was trying for her family and what she calls a fall from grace for her father, who went from holding a high-paying job flying planes for a king to pumping gas in Los Angeles. At the time, Patrick didn’t realize that she would never return to Iran. “I still thought it was temporary. I was learning English and going to school, but I thought for sure we were going back to Iran, and I was going to go back and see my family,” Patrick says in a Sephora video about her history.
Her mother returned to Iran during the 444-day-long US hostage crisis and found herself unable to leave. She chose not to move her young daughter to Iran, where women were losing their rights and freedoms. Under the new Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini, the government immediately enacted a law requiring all women to wear a veil outside the home, regardless of their religion or nationality. It also barred women from studying certain fields, disallowed women judges, ordered that men and women be segregated in the workplace, and legalized child marriages.
Because Patrick’s father was “not equipped” to care for her, as the CEO explained to reporters in New York this week (she declined to provide specifics), she was placed in a group home and then, at age 10, moved into foster care. As a child, Patrick says she didn’t realize the sacrifice her mother had made—the two did not meet again until Patrick was 15—but her foster parents encouraged her to finish college and later pursue a graduate degree. They remain in her life today.
Patrick explains that her background provides her with a unique understanding of the importance of inclusion as a leader. “I’ve always led with openness and curiosity into diverse thoughts because I was welcomed in that way on several occasions,” she says. “And when I was younger, sometimes I wasn’t.”
Growing up in the early 1980s, “it seemed like everyone looked like Farrah Fawcett,” she says. She did not. Patrick had dark curly hair and olive skin and did not resemble her white foster parents, which affected her self-esteem, she says. “That feeling of belonging—I understand the importance of it.”
Still, Sephora’s track record with diversity and inclusion has fallen short on several occasions.
In 2019, the company closed for one day to conduct staff-wide diversity training, months after singer SZA, who is Black, shared on social media that an employee had racially profiled her. One of the shop’s salespeople had called security to make sure the Grammy-nominated singer wasn’t stealing. More recently, a store’s handling of an incident involving chaperoned teens applying blackface makeup attracted criticism.
But, Sephora has dramatically increased the number of employees of color in leadership roles at the firm since 2020. Slightly over half, 51%, of managers are people of color, compared to 39% in 2020. At the level of VP and above, 42% of executives are people of color, up from 28% four years ago, according to its 2023 DEI report.
Patrick acknowledges there’s still considerable work to be done. “This is not something that you kind of say, ‘Okay, we’re done,’” she says.
