Sephora's marketing chief on how she's bringing diversity to the company, what trends she's eyeing for 2022, and more

• Sephora has prioritized DEI efforts including a minority-focused brand incubator.
• Its chief marketing officer Deborah Yeh has taken the lead on many of these efforts.
• Yeh discussed the business case for DEI, how being an executive of color informs her work, and more.

Sephora has taken steps to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion at the cosmetics retailer. Its chief marketing officer Deborah Yeh has been a big driver of these initiatives, and was recently named to Insider's 100 people transforming business for this work.

She talked to Insider about the business case for DEI, her accidental path to marketing, how being a person of color informs her work, and the trends she's eyeing. Our interview has been edited for clarity.

What will be the biggest shopping trend in 2022?

People are increasingly looking to shop by their values versus just functionality; and personalization. We recently updated our Color IQ technology, which helps people find makeup based on their skin tones and takes into account how depth, undertone, and saturation plays into complexion.

Why is DEI so important to Sephora?

A large number of consumers experience moments of racial bias when shopping, and most of these incidents go unreported. There are people that will abandon your brand if you're not inclusive. It's a huge business opportunity.

What are some of your key DEI initiatives?

We made the 15% pledge to broaden our assortments. But we also have to put programming and other initiatives around that. So as part of our latest brand incubator class, founders of color not only went through a curriculum and got mentorship from established brand founders of color, a handful of them actually came to market at Sephora.

How do these initiatives translate to your stores?

We're elevating diversity hiring to ensure that store demographics are reflective of the community. We've made some great headway in store directorships over the past year — it's gone from 6% African-American store directors to 9%. The other piece is training and development. We've embarked on a systematic program to do everything from talking about what it means to be inclusive leaders, to explicitly addressing anti-racism, to talking about cultural allyship and the technical skillset that's required to match somebody's skin tone and to serve their hair texture.

How about in terms of where you advertise?

A large part of our presence is on social media, and a lot of the money goes directly to the content creators. A good example here is the Sephora Squad program, where we explicitly select diverse creators and voices. Seventy-nine percent of our 2021 squad identify as POC. Our intent is to think about the places where our business is, and our commitments are a reflection of that.

How does being a person of color inform you professionally?

I have gone on my own personal journey over the last couple of years in terms of bringing my identity into the workplace — about how it can be an advantage and something that should be celebrated, and not set aside. I know what it feels like to not necessarily be seen in an executive environment. I know what it feels like to go into a store and not feel seen. It's hard to take the personal out of the professional when it comes to these issues. It's part of what I bring to the conversation. It motivates me to do more.

What's the single most important skill you've learned in your career, and how did you learn it?

An organizational expert once pointed out that I probably gravitate to a certain kind of person, coming out of an East Coast university. But how do I learn to sell to everyone? It was one of the best things that somebody could have told me early in my career. It taught me how to be a better cross-functional partner, a better vertical collaborator, and talk to every level of an organization. It's a skill that I'm constantly refining.

If you were to advise your younger self, what would you tell her to do more of and what would you tell her to stop doing?

I got into marketing accidentally. When I got my first job out of university, I thought I was going to go back into academia. But following my curiosity ended up being the best way for me to find a career. So I'd say: Do less of thinking about life as a linear path. On the other hand, I would rethink what success means. I found a letter that my dad had written to me in college, which had a line that said: "I'm sure you'll get into a good medical school." While that was my aspiration at the time, I eventually found impact in contributing to society in a different way.