by “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer doesn’t usually laugh at the CEOs he interviews on his CNBC show.
But in a memorable on-air interview with Elf CEO Tarang Amin in 2023, he did just that while discussing the key drivers behind the company’s 15th consecutive quarter of growth. (Elf has since reached 21).
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“We’re very excited because we have this great workforce that knows our consumers,” Amin replied, describing Elf’s internal demographics: A workforce that’s more than 65 percent Gen Z and Millennial , more than 75 percent female and more than 40 percent diverse. Not to mention a board of directors, one of 4 out of 4,200 in corporate America, that is two-thirds women and one-third minorities.
“I’m going to break form here for a second,” Cramer replied, putting his script aside.
“Where you are and who you are is no coincidence.”
Amin couldn’t agree more. The soft-spoken CEO believes Elf’s overwhelming success is driven by its internal culture, one that places a premium on equity and diversity.
“I started my career in beauty many, many years ago as part of the team that relaunched Pantene in the early 90s. I love beauty,” he said. “I love the passion for ideas, the passion for innovation. But one of the things I didn’t like about beauty was that it sometimes felt exclusive.”
In fact, one of the earliest goals he set for himself when he became CEO in 2014 was to diversify the company’s workforce. “My first goal was that I wanted our staff to reflect the community we were serving, which is why we are so diverse,” Amin said. “If you have a team that represents your community, you can work much faster. You don’t need to go to a focus group to find out what they like, or how they deal with it, or where they live.”
Amin is equally passionate about driving diversity and inclusion on Wall Street and not just at Elf, setting a goal to help double the rate of women and diverse members added to corporate boards by 2027.
Elf kicked off the “Change the Board Game” initiative earlier this year when it announced a partnership with the National Association of Corporate Directors and its sponsorship of 20 women and/or diverse board-ready candidates through CCND Accelerate, a program two years which creates a path for executives to prepare for board service.
In May, he underscored that ambition with a media-dropping campaign on digital screens around Wall Street called “So Many Dicks.”
Working with the purpose-driven agency Oberland, Elf researched corporate boards in the US finding that men named Richard, Rick, or Dick (Dicks) served on company boards with more women and diverse groups. this public.
“We don’t want to be one of four, and we feel we have a responsibility as good corporate citizens to encourage others,” said Amin of the campaign.
“It all starts with intention,” said Elf chief financial officer Mandy Fields. “It was very intentional to have more women on our board, because that’s the community we’re serving to make sure our board selection includes diverse candidates. That mindset helps to move things along. Without a purpose or a goal or something to anchor back to, you’re wandering out here.”
Not every company is willing to commit to such a bold campaign, but for Fields, what better way to encourage Wall Street to promote diversity and inclusion more effectively.
“I received a lot of praise for the ‘Change the Board Game’ campaign. It was a unique way for Elf to break through that material,” she said. “Different groups, different management teams, boards of directors generate better results than other companies. No one can argue with our 21 consecutive quarters of growth, we are doing the right thing in Elf”
When it comes to making sure this ethos trickles down through the rest of the organization, Scott Milsten, senior vice president, general counsel and chief people officer at Elf Beauty, emphasized that the most important thing nor that the employee base should match the consumers it serves.
“We start from a common place of, this is a beauty company, a young beauty company,” he said. “It naturally attracts like-minded people.”
Although Elf doesn’t have quotas, its recruiting team always strives to present a diverse range of candidates, he said.
Amin has also created an environment where everyone is free to give specific feedback to help the team succeed, eliminating the need for performance reviews. “No one has to wonder what I think. I’ll tell you,” he said. “I want to make sure everyone is comfortable being able to express themselves….I didn’t want a performance review. I wanted to remove that stuff. Sometimes, the reviews were based on who gets paid more, who gets paid less. For me, it’s like, no, we’re all in this together. I want everyone to make a lot of money. I want everyone to rise and fall together.”
Amin doesn’t just pay lip service to this idea. He put his money where his mouth was, literally, creating a compensation program that gives equity to all employees regardless of where they are based or what their level is.
“I said, on the first day, I want to make sure that it’s not just the people at the top, but everyone who works in the company who benefits from the long-term value creation we will have,” said Amin.
That included all the global markets, which was no easy task before the company went public, having to create what is known as phantom equity.
“We strongly believe that outstanding performance should deliver outstanding results for everyone, and we’re thrilled that it does,” said Milsten. “It makes your work more impactful. I want to cringe just thinking about going into a room and looking at the stock price, and six people celebrating, and 27 people who don’t know what we have high-provinces. It doesn’t work for me on a personal level. It doesn’t work for Tarang on a personal level, which is why we tried to do it differently.”
To contact the team, Amin sends a weekly company note email that started during the pandemic (his 227th was published at press time) and then the Amins have an evening.
Every summer, he invites everyone on the leadership team and their significant others from each market to his home for cocktails and food. It makes two in California, where the company is headquartered, and one in New York.
“We are flying people from London to have cocktails at Tarang’s house. It’s one team, one dream, right? There is no ‘oh, the US leaders are important, not the UK leaders,’” Milsten said.
Marcus Collins, a former Wieden + Kennedy executive who is a professor of marketing at the University of Michigan, has seen that dynamic play out firsthand. Invited to speak at an Elf off-site in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, he struck up a conversation with a tablemate at dinner. It turned out that she had joined the company about two months earlier and was the office coordinator.
Surprised that such a recent hire would even be invited on a company trip to an exotic location, Collins mentioned the encounter during his tech checkup the next morning with Amin and several other executives.
“‘Oh, you’ve met Rosie!’,” he recalled Amin telling him, surprised that the CEO even knew her name.
“I’ve never seen a CEO, CMO, CPO anywhere that knows the people who are lower in the social hierarchy of the organization,” said Collins, who has worked at Nike, Google, Apple and others during his career. life. “This idea of a focus on people and democratization – it’s true,” he continued, laughingly saying that one of the most popular sessions on the scene was about EBITDA [earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization].
“It’s not normal that everyone has shares. That is a democratic element,” Collins said. “Beauty is only a vehicle that Elf represents in the world, but they are driven by something much greater and it is made tangible and manifested through their cultural practices.”
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