Ep 47 Glow Down How To Make It In The Beauty Biz With Ukonwa Ojo + Why Do Celebrities Love This $23 Beauty Cream?

Ever wondered who’s behind alllll the CoverGirl changes you’ve been hearing about over the past year? In today’s episode, we get up close and personal with Coty’s Chief Marketing Officer, Ukonwa Ojo, the mastermind behind CoverGirl’s woke-generation re-brand. ***Update: Ukonwa Ojo is making career power moves and since we chatted a week ago, she is no longer with Coty—and we can’t wait to see where she’s going next!!*** Remember the iconic tagline, “Easy Breezy Beautiful CoverGirl”? Bye, girl. Now, it’s “I am What I Make Up”—so much more empowering, non? How about the slew of new spokespeople, the first “cover boy” to front a cosmetics campaign, the first female race car driver to star in a beauty ad, the first makeup spokesmodel in North America to wear a hijab, the first 70-year-old model to be signed for a modelling contract (promoting a smokey eye launch!)

Oh, and let’s not forget shaking up mass retail shelves by offering 40 shades of foundation for diverse skin tones, and CoverGirl’s pledge to to go cruelty free with Leaping Bunny certification in recent months. There is one woman behind all of these milestones, and we had the privilege of sitting down with her to learn some of her seriously mentoring ways. Listen in to find out what Ukonwa thinks about not being able to try on makeup in drugstores, what hair product she can’t personally live without, and for those on the come-up, her advice on how to ask for a raise.

But first, tune in to our Damn Goods segment, in partnership with our friends at Weleda, where we go deep on a serious cult favourite: Weleda Skin Food. Tune in as Carlene takes us on a little journey to a small town called Irvington, New York, to visit Weleda’s HQ. We find out why this iconic skin balm, invented in 1926, is still hoarded by Rihanna, Victoria Beckham, Julia Roberts, Pat McGrath—and us. CEO Rob Keen schools us with a heck of a lot of Weleda trivia, like why the headquarters has an on-site pharmacy that fills prescriptions (?), and how the founder, scientist and philosopher Rudolph Steiner, basically invented the concept of biodynamic farming and applied all of those principles into skincare.

Oh yeah, and we’re here to tell you about the brand’s first major innovation in nearly a century: three new Skin Food line extensions launching this month, quite possibly as bomb as the O.G.

Products mentioned in this episode: Weleda Skin Food; Weleda Skin Food Light Nourishing Cream; Weleda Skin Food Body Butter, Weleda Skin Food Lip Butter; CoverGirl TruBlend Matte Made Foundation; Hair Rules Curly Whip

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