Celessa Baker and her team start most mornings sliding into LinkedIn or Instagram DMs of people who have captured her interest. “They might be a well-known athlete because of something they said at a conference, or the CEO of a coffee shop, or a tour manager of an artist who is on the rise,” said Baker, Vice President of Marketing Partnerships at Sephora. “Across the board, whether it’s sports, celebrity, or music, there’s no realm we won’t get into if we think it’s the right partner.”
Baker and her team focus on creating out-of-the-box partnerships for the beauty retail empire — alliances that go beyond the expected. Recent examples include a three-episode documentary series launched on Hulu in January, created by Sephora, entitled Faces of Music, where musicians Chapell Roan, Victoria Monét, and Becky G craft a specific beauty look and explore themes around art and beauty. Also in January, Sephora announced a multiyear partnership with Unrivaled, the new women’s pro basketball league, in a deal that includes outfitting a glam room at the league’s facility in Miami. And in April, Sephora revealed it had secured naming rights to the 31,000-square-foot Oakland facility of the WNBA’s Golden State Valkyries. The Sephora Performance Center, home to the pro women’s basketball team, will feature Sephora branding throughout the courts, locker rooms, lounges, and fitness and training spaces.
“We turn over every rock to find these first-to-market opportunities,” said Baker. “All these partnerships started with a DM. I’ve learned that we have to cast a net of 100 to get 10 good ones that lead to one that goes viral.”
Baker joined Sephora 11 years ago as a Senior Integrated Marketing Manager in the color division, working her way through positions such as Vice President of Brand Marketing for Makeup and Haircare, before being offered the opportunity to specialize in marketing partnerships. She had a somewhat unconventional career trajectory; before joining Sephora, her background was in men’s fashion, sports marketing, and radio.
Nonetheless, entering the beauty industry tapped into a long-held love for makeup — a passion Baker traces back to her multicultural, biracial, immigrant childhood. Born in the Middle East to a Black American father and an Iranian mother, Baker came to the U.S. when she was a year old, with her family first landing in San Francisco before moving to Riverside in Los Angeles. Her father worked in telecommunications, while her mother opened a beauty salon.
“My mother was an inspiration for me,” said Baker. “She didn’t know how to brush my textured, curly hair, so she went to cosmetology school to learn. She ended up working in beauty salons and then owning them. Beauty was intrinsic to her culturally — the ‘kajal’ eyeliner, the heavy lip, blush. And I grew up in my mother’s salon, watching the transformation women went through between walking in and walking out. I watched my mother glam herself every day. Iranian women don’t step out of the house without full glam, even if it’s just to go to the neighbor’s house. Seeing it through that lens showed me that beauty is a form of self-expression, a way to come alive in different ways.”
Baker attended Chapman College in Orange County as a biomed major, switched to physical therapy, and then found herself researching the fastest way to finish college with the credits she had — ultimately earning a degree in organizational design. But something more important happened during her college years: she became enamored with music and landed an internship at Los Angeles’ biggest urban radio station.
“That formed my career and opened my eyes to what was out there. I never thought of music as an option for a career, let alone marketing and entertainment,” said Baker. She eventually became the marketing director of the radio station where she had interned, and said that’s where she “really fell in love with marketing. In the pre-social media age, I got to rebrand an entire property, had to learn how to produce a commercial, and think about how to connect with consumers and build out sales packages and innovative messaging.”
Her now-husband was living in San Francisco at the time, and through a connection with Steve Harvey — who was launching a line of suits at Men’s Wearhouse — Baker joined the retail group as marketing director. Baker was keenly aware that she was now “in Sephora’s backyard” and felt the pull to work there.
“That was the impetus for me — the draw of the iconicity of Sephora and being a part of that,” she said. “Beauty is so multifaceted that it mirrored my entertainment background. It was fast-paced, disruptive, bright. It was colorful. It was vibrant or energetic. And I joined Sephora right at the time when influencers and content creators were emerging and figuring out how to use social media to amplify and scale marketing messaging. It was very exciting.”
As Baker and her team seek out potential partnerships, she keeps a certain mandate in mind: how can beauty be a conduit for human connection, and how do brands — and retailers — reach the consumer where they are? “The customer experience is now more of an omni experience,” she said. “The funnel used to be, ‘Let me just tell you who I am. Then I’m going to come back and tell you what we do, then entice you with what we have. And then I’ll get you in the stores.’ But the landscape is changing and seeing how consumers are interacting with brands in a variety of ways, brands need to be omnipresent.”
Which is why Baker is constantly seeking unexpected and disruptive partnerships — itself necessitating a ton of media consumption — and diving into her team’s shared inbox to find leads: someone who might be trending, seeding a movement, or has said or done something that positively affects the zeitgeist. “That allows us to expand our footprint beyond the traditional beauty consumer and engage with audiences in unique ways. I am not just a beauty junkie, and neither are our clients. And that is why Sephora should be ‘everywhere’ the consumer is. That is what the epitome of partnership is. And my belief is — you’re only as good as your last deal.”
