Kathleen Dunlop is the CMO North America for Unilever’s Beauty & Wellbeing brands. She has been in marketing at Unilever for 25 years, building global brands with purpose across Beauty & Wellbeing, Personal Care and Home Care. She started her career as an MBA graduate in the US on the local jewel Q-Tips and then Dove skin cleansing. She lived and worked in the UK and China from 2003 to 2013 on some of Unilever’s biggest homecare brands such as Surf and Dirt is Good, returning home to the US to the Vaseline brand in 2014. She was the Global Brand VP of Vaseline from 2018-2023, overseeing 5 years of continued growth and ushering that brand into the 1 billion euro club in 2023, while also increasing the brand’s social impact through the creation of the Vaseline Healing Project, a global partnership with Direct Relief to increase access to critical skin health care reaching over a million people in 60+ countries every year since 2015. This initiative was expanded in North America with the award-winning See My Skin platform, a partnership with Hued that offers a first of its kind image-search database specifically for skin of color where patients can find skin health resources for often overlooked darker skin tones and be connected with a culturally competent dermatologist.
Kathleen believes that there is no such thing as business as usual anymore. Climate change, population growth, our polluting lifestyles and the planet’s finite resources require businesses to re-think the way they operate. And socially-conscious and connected consumers are rewarding those businesses that embrace sustainable living. With everyday products used by millions of people, such as Dove, Lifebuoy, Vaseline, Ben & Jerry’s, and OMO, Unilever has an enormous opportunity and responsibility to address some of the world’s global challenges. Through the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan, the company has set out a roadmap to double its business while halving its environmental footprint and increasing its positive social impact.
Kathleen received her MBA from The Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in International Relations from Stanford University. Prior to Unilever, she worked for The Rockefeller Brothers Fund and one of their affiliates in Poland managing economic development programs in Eastern Europe. She has lived and worked in the United States, Great Britain, Poland and China.
