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Ask Vanessa Reggiardo about her mentors, and her answer comes quickly – and with unmistakable emotion.
“My mother, first and foremost,” she said, a little tearfully. “She worked until she was 71. She’s 85 now, and an extraordinary woman and my biggest hero. Grit, determination, courage – she moves mountains in life and in work.”
For Reggiardo, Executive Vice President of Global Brands & Innovation for Consumer Beauty at Coty since November 2025, the influence of strong mentors has shaped nearly every stage of her career. Over almost four decades in leadership roles at L’Oréal, Avon, Combe, her own consulting company and now COTY, she has built relationships with advisers who became trusted confidants – and, in many cases, lifelong friends.
She speaks warmly of the late Joseph Lamia, who built a storied sales career at L’Oréal and Revlon and first introduced her to the beauty business. She stays closely connected with Lynn Emmolo, her first boss on the L’Oreal Paris color brand and most recently Chief Global Officer at Rodan + Fields, Geralyn Breig, who serves as an independent board director for the American Medical Association and H&R Block and was formerly President of North America at Revlon and helped her finesse her strategic thinking skills, and points to Andrea Jung, Avon’s first female CEO who is still empowering women as CEO of microfinance lender Grameen America as an ongoing source of inspiration.
“They believed in me and gave me a chance,” Reggiardo said. “They’re all change agents –resilient, tenacious – the kind of people I look at and think, ‘I want to be like that person.’”
Those characteristics came into sharp focus when Reggiardo first joined Coty in 2021 as general manager of Kylie Jenner’s Kylie Cosmetics – of which Coty owns 51% – and Kim Kardashian’s KKW Beauty, then in transition to SKKN by Kim.
“We were in a dynamic state of evolution,” she recalled. “Kylie’s brand was the larger of the two, and as a team, we made a deliberate push – expanding into new geographies, categories, and segments, with Kylie at the center of it all. It was a convergence of change, guided by a clear ambition: to build a truly global brand while preserving the spirit of a founder-led indie within a company as large as Coty. Finding that balance was critical.”
Reggiardo, a native New Yorker, remembers being aware of beauty from a young age, reading Seventeen Magazine, leafing through the Avon brochure that dropped in her family’s mailbox, or at her local Duane Reade, where she would shop brands like Sally Hansen, and Covergirl – names that are now considered iconic heritage beauty legacies and that are, somewhat serendipitously, part of the Coty Consumer Beauty Color portfolio in addition to Rimmel, Max Factor, and Bourjois, which she now leads as EVP of Global Brands and Innovation. “A true full circle moment,” she said.
Now, her mission and key strategic priorities in driving transformation in Consumer Beauty include refining brand equity, reimaging the approach to innovation, activating through advocacy and authenticity – and all the while, building a new culture and team spirit.
“These heritage brands have experience, and there’s a trust, credibility, and an authority there,” she said. “I’m so nostalgic about beauty. My mother worked outside the house, and I grew up watching her get ready. I have two sisters, so it was a very female-dominated household, and we all used skincare, fragrance, and makeup. For me, beauty is about creativity and self-expression. Whether you use a little or a lot, you just feel good, like a better version of yourself, and that’s such a gift. That’s why I think we’re so lucky to work in this industry.”
Reggiardo found a way to professionalize her admiration for beauty after she received her undergraduate and postgraduate degrees from NYU Stern School of Business in finance, marketing, and international business. She joined L’Oréal as an assistant in 1990 and proceeded upwards from there.
“I found the business aspect of beauty fascinating,” she said. “I’ve been lucky to do so much in so many roles, across categories, channels, and companies – to put my academia through something that I was truly and authentically passionate about.” She credits depth and breadth of experiences as an enabler to being an effective leader, and often encourages team members just starting out to be open-minded and not afraid to try new things.
Because she has had a front seat through so many shifts in the beauty industry and with successful transformations as a signature calling card, Reggiardo has a keen eye for what’s happening next and prioritizes sharing those perspectives with both mentees and newcomers to the field.
“It’s important to manage the present, but to keep an eye on the future,” she said. “For beauty entrepreneurs, trying to navigate through whatever they identify as a white space where a consumer or market is being underserved – that’s very important. Being in beauty, it’s important to look at everything through the lens of the consumer, try to ‘surprise and delight,’ and to understand how much power there is in storytelling.”
Leveraging the learnings from helping to grow Jenner’s beauty brand globally, Reggiardo said she knows what to look for when talking to emerging beauty entrepreneurs. “You almost have to take a page out of (Jenner’s) playbook,” she said. “Don’t be afraid to disrupt. Be a maverick. Be a trailblazer. People want what’s unexpected.”
Leading multiple teams across numerous disciplines both globally and commercially has allowed Reggiardo to finesse her leadership style, which she described as high touch and high impact.
“Those words are important to me because for me, it’s always people first. Without people, you have no business, and without happy people, you definitely have no business. At the same time, it’s important to be very collaborative, empowering, and curious. Across my teams, I like to promote risk-taking and the importance of a proactive approach. I also want to make sure that people enjoy what they are doing and that they feel appreciated and recognized for their work. You need to bring people along – have the vision, set a destination, and get everyone in the boat and rowing in the same direction – no matter the bumps along the way.”
For Reggiardo, it’s also about being agile and resilient and not taking “no” for an answer. Instead, she drives for “yes, but” as she and her teams collaborate on “what needs to be true” (usually time and resources) in order to get the work done.
And through it all – whether building a brand or part of a multinational conglomerate – fundamental leadership and team needs remain the same, she said.
“Everyone needs that personal time. Whether they have kids or a family or not, it doesn’t matter. To be a good leader today is to be able to evangelize about the importance of mental health and work-life balance. Thanks to the unwavering support of her husband and three sons, she was able to make it work. I try to promote that and to encourage it in my team. Because if we are lucky, tomorrow’s another day.”
