GEORGIA GARINOIS-MELENIKIOTOU ANNOUNCES PLANS TO RETIRE FROM ESTÉE LAUDER

After an exceptional 10-year career with The Estée Lauder Companies, Georgia Garinois-Melenikiotou, Executive Vice President, Corporate Marketing, has made the decision to retire from the company, effective July 1, 2020.

When Georgia joined the company in 2010, she took on the responsibility of creating and leading the Corporate Marketing function. Georgia was instrumental in laying the foundation for the company’s digital-first mindset, which we continue to develop and build today. She successfully leveraged our creativity-driven, consumer-inspired culture to implement her strategic vision for Marketing Excellence capabilities – such as Consumer Insights for consumer centricity and local relevance, Marketing Analytics for personalization and consumer loyalty, Media for 360, digital first consumer engagement and a world class Global Consumer Care organization for a seamless consumer experience.

Georgia has built an outstanding team of experts, both at the center as well as at the regions, by recruiting and developing top talent to drive consumer centricity, agility and bias to action. She and her team have built new capabilities and have enabled our brands, regions and R&D organizations to strengthen brand equity and develop best-in-class products and consumer engagement programs that are highly aspirational and locally relevant to our consumers.

During her time with the company, Georgia’s position and responsibilities have grown and evolved, a testament to her marketing expertise, strategic thinking and leadership abilities. Together with her team, she enabled a truly consumer-centric marketing across the organization, through the operationalization of question-based tools — such as Brand Book, Segmentation to Personalization, Claims and Storytelling, Marketing Planning, A&P Effectiveness, Opportunity Assessment and Marketing Analytics visualization. She drove winning strategies across social and digital media through partnerships with digital players like Google and Facebook, enablement of influencer best practices across the business and by leading relationships with our media partners. She also partnered closely with functions across the organization to enable and support key capabilities, including collaborations with R&D to drive winning innovations, Finance to deliver A&P leverage and GIS to enhance the company’s Marketing technologies.

INTERNAL

One of Georgia’s most notable accomplishments is the education programs for Marketing Excellence. She led the creation of the Global Marketing Symposium at Wharton, where executives from The Estée Lauder Companies’ marketing teams around the world gather to deepen their understanding of new capabilities and tools and how to use them for enhanced execution. Georgia also led the implementation of best practice sharing and on-the-job training programs while deploying ongoing online education on key new capabilities such as Digital Marketing, the Art of Repeat and Marketing Analytics to Action.

As a member of the company’s Executive Leadership Team since 2010, Georgia has had a strong and lasting leadership presence amongst her colleagues. Outside the company, Georgia received the 2019 Fulbright’s award for Global Business Leadership, has appeared in Ad Age’s “Women to Watch”, and continues to serve on the European Professional Women’s Network as a VIP Advisory Board member. Georgia was a Board member of Bacardi Limited, and today she is a board member of Almirall Pharmaceuticals and the MIT Sloan School.

Georgia made some vital contributions to The Estée Lauder Companies. Her strong leadership and visionary abilities will be greatly missed across the business. We wish her all the best for her well-deserved retirement.