Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Nancy Pelosi tells Biden he can’t win the election, United Therapeutics founder and CEO Martine Rothblatt becomes a billionaire, and Sephora’s new North America CEO discusses her journey to the C-suite and embracing DEI. Have an amazing Friday!
– Industry make up. When Artemis Patrick first moved to the U.S. from Iran in 1979 at the age of 7, she did not speak English or see beauty like hers rewarded in her new country’s culture. She grew up in Northern California, with foster parents who were caring but who didn’t look like her.
Her childhood has shaped the way she views beauty and her approach to her job. Patrick was named Sephora North America’s CEO just a few months ago, the first woman to hold the position.
“I often reference the fact that I grew up with curly, coily, textured hair,” Patrick told Michal Lev-Ram, host of Fortune’s Leadership Next podcast in a conversation that also touched on her journey to the C-suite, the comeback of in-person shopping, nurturing independent brands, and, naturally, AI. “You know, my foster mom was going to get perms, and I was trying to figure out how to iron my hair…there wasn’t a lot of product made for me by people who look like me, who had hair like me.”
Now, she’s in a position to change that for her daughter and others like her. After a few stints at other retailers, Patrick landed at Sephora in 2006 as the director of dot com merchandising and has held various other roles in the years since, including as the general manager of Sephora’s partnership with J.C. Penney. She’s proud that the company has long nurtured smaller, indie brands, and worked to diversify the people it hires, the brands it partners with, and the products it can provide to consumers.
She says diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives are baked into Sephora’s business at a time when other companies are running away from such principles.
“Every single person in the organization has an objective tied to diversity, equity and inclusion, and that’s actually been in the ecosystem for years,” she says. “It’s just smart business, especially in what we do, it would make no sense to walk away from that.”
Embracing differences also helps her be a better leader by shaping how she thinks about belonging and inclusion in the hiring process, she says.
“I think it’s critical that as a leader you hire people that have different points of view than you do,” she said. “You need to surround yourself with people who know things different from you, who know more than you on certain topics. And that’s always been a part of how I live my life; [it’s] just a curiosity.”
You can listen to the rest of the conversation here.
Alicia Adamczyk
alicia.adamczyk@fortune.com
The Broadsheet is Fortune’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. Today’s edition was curated by Nina Ajemian. Subscribe here.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Slim chances. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told President Joe Biden in a private conversation that polls show he cannot win the election against Donald Trump. A source told CNN that Biden countered Pelosi’s statement by saying he had seen polls showing potential for victory.
- Good fortune. Martine Rothblatt, the transgender founder and CEO of United Therapeutics, just became the 35th self-made female billionaire in the U.S. Rothblatt started her biotech firm in 1996 to find a cure for pulmonary arterial hypertension following her daughter’s diagnosis. Forbes
- Billion-dollar broadcast. A new deal between the NBA and NBC, Amazon, and Disney will net the WNBA an estimated $2.2 billion, according to the Washington Post. The deal values the women’s league’s media rights at $200 million per year and covers the next 11 seasons.
- Debt on arrival. Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves shared that she will have “difficult decisions” to make ahead of her first Budget this fall. Britain has not experienced debt levels this high since 1961, and Reeves, the first female finance minister in Britain, may have to raise taxes or cut spending in response. Bloomberg
MOVERS AND SHAKERS:
- J.P. Morgan Wealth Management hired Anne Black as a philanthropy specialist with a focus on ultra-high-net-worth initiatives. Black was president of Goldman Sachs Gives, and previously worked as director of major gifts at the American Museum of Natural History.
ON MY RADAR
Healthy women help everyone rise—I’ve seen it in Kenya Fortune
The questions behind the Ozempic baby boom Financial Times
PARTING WORDS
“You can talk yourself up and into anything or out of it, and so if you can start to change the way you think, you change the way you act.”
— Emma Grede, CEO of Good American, on how she makes gratitude part of her daily routine
