Corporate Social Impact Programme by Sephora Welcomes 13 New Members from Around the Globe
Sephora, a global prestige beauty brand, remains dedicated to building the future of innovative female beauty entrepreneurs around the world.
This year, the retailer selected 13 new Sephora Accelerate Cohort members working across three categories: Merchandising, Technology and Sustainability.
In its third year, the programme has expanded to include the largest number of entrepreneurs to-date from a total of seven countries, including the US, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, and now, France, Switzerland and China.
As an Accelerate cohort in 2018, these female founders will receive months-long programming, allowing them to acquire the necessary skills to create and evolve into successful businesses.
Specifically, they will receive in-depth instruction and feedback during a one-week bootcamp with expert guidance from the brand and programme partners.
In addition, each entrepreneur will have the opportunity to tackle their business challenges through one-on-one mentoring from the brand’s leaders and beauty industry experts, such as Pamela Baxter, former CEO and President of Christian Dior Couture and Nancy Twine, Founder and CEO of Briogeo Hair Care, as well as receive monetary grants to support their business endeavours.
To conclude the 2018 programme later this autumn, each member will participate in the Accelerate Demo Day, giving them a platform to present their companies to industry experts, venture partners and senior brand leaders with the goal of future business growth, programming and networking.
“We are delighted to welcome these 13 diverse and inspirational female beauty business CEOs and founders into the 2018 Cohort. Each one of these women represent immense talent, intelligence and innovative thinking within their respective fields, and what better way to celebrate their induction into the Accelerate programme than an introduction on International Women’s Day.
“We are pleased to offer these entrepreneurs a comprehensive ecosystem of support to help them achieve their beauty business objectives, not just with this year’s programming, but also by leveraging our alumni network that will continue to increase with each new Cohort,” said Corrie Conrad, Head of Social Impact and Sustainability for Sephora.
As part of Sephora Stands, the company’s broad social impact strategy to inspire confidence and fearlessness among women, the brand’s Accelerate programme was created based on the insight that even in an industry where beauty customers are predominantly female, beauty business women are still underrepresented.
As the programme continues to grow year over year, Accelerate is on track to support more than 50 women-led beauty businesses by 2020.
The brand opened its smallest concept store in North America last year.
