Name: Iranian Immigrant to the C-Suite: How Sephora’s North American CEO Is Shaping the Beauty Industry
Uploaded: 2024-07-17
Duration: 6 min 15 s
Description: Iranian American immigrant Artemis Patrick’s background shaped her ideas around beauty, which now inform her decisions as Sephora’s North America CEO. Over the years, she’s watched beauty trends change through social media, and hopes to educate younger consumers on making the best choices for their health.

Iranian American immigrant Artemis Patrick’s background shaped her ideas around beauty, which now inform her decisions as Sephora’s North America CEO. Over the years, she’s watched beauty trends change through social media, and hopes to educate younger consumers on making the best choices for their health.

Iranian Immigrant to the C-Suite: How Sephora’s North American CEO Is Shaping the Beauty Industry

Photo illustration by Fortune. Photograph provided by Sephora.

Leadership

Iranian American immigrant Artemis Patrick’s background shaped her ideas around beauty, which now inform her decisions as Sephora’s North America CEO.

Iranian Immigrant to C-Suite: How Sephora’s North American CEO Is Shaping the Beauty Industry

Isn't that funny? Everything is, I think back to when I was 1314 and going to the mall and I'm dropping my daughter off at the mall. And I remember a few years ago thinking is that ever going to happen again? And it is, and it's happening in, in, in a big way. Welcome to leadership. Next, the podcast about the changing rules of business leadership. I'm Mikal Avram and I'm Diane Brady listeners will be familiar with the Sephora brand, but they may not be familiar with you. So I want to start by actually asking you to tell us a little bit about you. I was born in Iran. So I immigrated to the US in 1979 when I was seven years old. And you know, at that time, I didn't actually speak any English. It was very difficult for my family and I, and then my mom went back to Iran and unfortunately, this was during the Iranian hostage crisis. So she got stuck there and my father was not able to take care of me. So I ended up moving into a group home and then grew up with foster parents since I was 10 years old. And so I really think that very much shaped who I am not just as a person but as a leader. Um, and especially if you think about, you know, the world of beauty and historically, um, how, you know, there was one definition of beauty, especially when I was growing up in the eighties and I certainly did not fit that mold. So, um, it has really, really guided, um how I think about beauty, how I think about um belonging. Uh and I think that that's always sort of been my north, my north star, obviously, Sephora is an incredibly strong brand. Um I have 12 and 14 year old girls, so I, I limit but I'm, I'm curious like, how would you characterize this moment in time in which you stepped into this role? What, what are the, you know, there's been so much uh very fast evolution in the retail space and the ecommerce space with tech over the last few years and different, you know, consumer trends that seem to be evolving so quickly. So how would you characterize where things are today for Sephora? Yeah, I mean, I have a 13 year old girl. So, so I feel you um you know, I would say what's, what's incredible about beauty is uh it's always had this, this tactile um feeling of, you know, connection and belonging and being able to try new things. I, I think the inherent love of beauty among every generation um across all ages has always been there, obviously, what has evolved is access and social media. And I do think this idea and understanding of, of specifically skin care. Uh I, I know that I probably did not take the best care of my skin um when I was younger and I see my daughter packing up her super group in her backpack and, you know, that's, that's exciting and, but that's because of, you know, tiktok and um other forms in youtube and other forms of social media. Um and, and the speed at which things come to light is, is just, you know, it's, it's mind boggling and I have been at before for 18 years. So I've seen different evolutions of this. Certainly, I remember when Instagram first launched and I remember contouring, it was just like I was thinking to myself, how many contour kits do people need? Right. And, and so we, we've seen it before. It, it's not new in that sense, but it is in terms of the speed and the democratization of it all and just the access to all the information around ingredients and a deep understanding of what people are putting on their skin, on their hair, on their body, sticking with the topic of, of kids shopping in Sephora. There has been some concern over what young girls are putting on their faces. Like, do they really need retinol? Do they really need some of the stronger uh, products or anti-aging stuff like that. What do you, what's Sephora's response to that? And what do you see as your responsibility for educating younger shoppers? Well, I believe we have a huge responsibility as well as our hundreds of brands to educate the consumer on what is right for, for their skin, regardless of their age. And where I think that we have a competitive advantage is our beauty advisors. We have 25,000, incredibly well trained, unbiased noncom commissioned uh beauty advisors. So it's actually been a really easy pivot for us to focus those educational moments of which we have many um specifically on skin care and skincare ingredients. So that is where we are seeing um you know, a lot of the chatter and the noise and making sure that they know, yes, you need, you know, at a certain age, you need to wash your face, you need sunscreen and you need some moisturizer. But no, you don't need retinol. Um and making sure that, that we share that information. Um you know, at the end of the day, there is only so much, you know, a sales person can do, we can educate and then beyond that, um it really is the responsibility of the consumer. But I feel that we are very well placed to at least be able to share our knowledge on that and make sure that they understand what, what they are buying, what kind of technology do you think has really moved the needle in the store to create a better shopping experience? One of the the core tenants of everything we always do from a tech perspective is that it has to enhance the consumer experience. So I'll give you an example of that is our proprietary skin scan where we do almost 100,000 scans a week, the 70% conversion rate. So what happens is the consumer can come in and we have this proprietary tool and it essentially looks at the scan and it will make a foundation match. Um At the same time, it also goes through a skin diagnostic and tells you whether your skin is oily or dry and makes product recommendations. So that is not something a consumer will do on their own. That is a conversation starter between our beauty advisor and the client and that to us is what is really exciting about technology. Um So that's how we really think about it. How do you enhance the consumer experience? How do you make it easier for our beauty advisors to have those conversations and create that really human connection? So it's digital for the sake of human the way I sort of think about it.