Esi Eggleston Bracey, president of Unilever USA and CEO of Unilever Personal Care in North America, joins Suzy founder and CEO Matt Britton on the latest episode of The Speed of Culture podcast in collaboration with Adweek. They dive deep into Bracey’s inspiring career journey and share mantras to achieve success including being yourself, helping people and creating value for your enterprise.

Bracey is a seasoned executive leader with more than 20 years of experience in the beauty industry, previously holding leadership positions as president of Coty’s Global Consumer Beauty division and svp of Procter & Gamble’s global cosmetics business.

Her work has been recognized with numerous industry and leadership awards, including the Ad Color Legend Award, BE Powerful Women in Business, Ebony Power 100, BET Butterfly Award, Cosmetics Executive Women Achievers Awards, Advertising Age Women to Watch and Women’s Wear Daily Marketer of the Year.

Key takeaways:

• 03:37 – 05:31 – Nurturing the Achiever Mindset — P&G is a great place to start a career, known for its on-the-ground training and growth mentality. It attracts people like Bracey with an achiever mindset. She became the youngest general manager in the history of P&G.
• 05:32 – 11:45 – Know Yourself, Be Yourself, and Share Yourself — It’s easy to mold yourself to a new organization. But this doesn’t allow you to discover and unleash your full potential. Understand your strengths and desires, embrace diversity and express yourself at work. These can be the first steps to advancing in your career and helping the company thrive.
• 12:27 – 19:37 – Leading a Large Scale Merger — During her time at P&G, Bracey led the merger between Coty and P&G Specialty Beauty Business. For Bracey, this project was dynamic, exciting and fueled her personal growth. It was an opportunity to get her hands dirty and extract the best of both worlds to create a new, more innovative, performance-driven company.
• 27:04 – 32:43 – Growth and Impact: The Crown Act — There’s no compromise between growth and impact. For Bracey, a brand’s purpose is to solve people’s problems. Find out what the consumer needs and match that with your company’s goals to create something both beautiful and profitable. For example, Dove co-founded The Crown Coalition (Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair) to help pass the Crown Act, a law that prohibits racial discrimination based on natural textures and protective hairstyles. The company has continued to be one of the fastest-growing brands through this model and philosophy of beauty inclusivity.