Our latest Sustainable Beauty E-Summit happened January 29th, 2023. A whole day of expert presentations to dive into the nuance of the topic. Interactive, curated, and completely free to attend. Massive thank you to everyone who helped make this event possible. From our speakers who donated their time and expertise, to our sponsors - it’s because of you that we were able to keep the event free for anyone. To our silver sponsor, Croda, and bronze sponsor, Inolex - thank you! To our attendees - thank you for attending and for being so engaged all throughout the day. And finally to Julia from @rubysresource, thank you so so much for all of your continued help with the back end tech for our conferences!!!
A common critique of industry events is that they are either too expensive for attendees, close their eyes to misinformation, or both. We put this event together to demonstrate how accessibility makes a difference. Our attempt to democratize accurate information for the cosmetics industry. Interested in supporting our free e-conference initiative? Please share!
With that, here’s the conference replay!
Event Schedule
8:15-9:30 am EST: E-Summit Intro + Open Networking
8:30-9:10 am EST: Sustainable Development During the Infodemic, featuring Jen Novakovich
9:10-9:50 am EST: Managing Supply Chains & a Material Update, featuring Thembisile Mashinini.
9:50-10:30 am EST: Corporate Sustainability Management, featuring Audrey Wesson from INOLEX.
10:30-10:45 am EST: Break
10:45-11:15 am EST: ESG, What it Means, featuring Gracee Shorter from Ecovadis.
11:15-11:55 am EST: Substantiating Sustainability & Measuring Impact, featuring Anisha Gupta from Bluebird Climate.
12-1 pm EST: Lunch Break
1-1:40 pm EST: Sustainability in Packaging, featuring Michael Tognetti from WWP Beauty.
1:40-2:10 pm EST: Communicating Sustainability, featuring Eva Lagarde from re-sources.
2:10-2:50 pm EST: Sustainability Legislation Update, featuring Akemi Ooka, Ph.D. from Independent Beauty Association.
2:50-3 pm EST: Break
3-4 pm EST: Closing Panel. Sustainability Challenges in the Cosmetics Sector. Featuring Mark Trexler, Ph.D., Michael Fevola, Ph.D., and Akemi Ooka, Ph.D.
Speaker Bios
Jen Novakovich is a cosmetic scientist and science communicator, founder of The Eco Well. She works as a consultant, where she helps companies with product development and claims substantiation. She’s interviewed hundreds of scientists from diverse fields, regularly moderates industry panel events, and has launched several larger-scale scicomm conferences. She currently serves on the NextGen Advisory Committee with the Society of Cosmetic Chemists and on the Supply Chain and Sustainability Resources and Government and Relations Committees by the Independent Beauty Association. Jen holds two bachelor of science degrees, a diploma in formulation chemistry, a master's in environmental science, and a graduate certificate in the Policy and Science of Climate Change with a focus on legislation that impacts the cosmetics sector.
Akemi Ooka, Ph.D. is Head of Global Supply Chain and Sustainability Resources at Independent Beauty Association. With over 20 years of CPG experience, from Fortune 500 companies to small startups, Akemi’s experience ranges from product development to sourcing and supply chain transformation. Akemi has run chemical procurement at The Clorox Company, formulation and fragrance development at method, and was most recently VP of Product at J.R. Watkins, overseeing development, quality, regulatory compliance, claim support, and third-party manufacturing oversight for hand care, personal care, home care, and OTC remedies. She now heads up the Independent Beauty Association’s (IBA) global supply chain and sustainability programming, supporting small to medium-sized businesses in the beauty and personal care sector. Akemi holds a B.A. in Chemistry from Rutgers University and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California at Los Angeles.
Audrey Wesson is the corporate sustainability manager at Inolex, a fiercely independent company that designs sustainable ingredients for health, beauty, and wellness. Inolex designers are guided by the Principles of Green Chemistry to envision and realize solutions to advance the needs of customers and invent the future of sustainable ingredient platforms. Audrey is passionate about making business more people-centered and environmentally responsible. With a technical background in chemical engineering, Audrey applies systems thinking and business acumen to bring the Inolex sustainability program to life. She leads annual sustainability reporting, helps implement ESG initiatives through the company and provides guidance for the Inolex sustainability strategy and vision. Audrey holds a BS in Chemical Engineering from Villanova University and a certificate in Corporate Sustainability from the NYU Stern School of Business.
Gracee Shorter joined EcoVadis in 2020 with one goal in mind -- to help educate the corporate world about their opportunity, and responsibility, to build our future in a more sustainable way. She draws on experience in technology solutions consulting, sustainability and retail to inspire leaders in the consumer-facing industries to raise their standards and drive positive change throughout their supply chains. Gracee is responsible for helping companies internally align on the vision, governance and goals required to achieve ambitious yet necessary change, and helps deploy and execute strategies for driving the sustainability agenda forward.
Thembisile Mashinini is the International Business Development Manager, Co-Head of Commercial, Cirebelle Fine Chemicals. Stay tuned for Thembi’s full bio.
Eva Lagarde has over 15 years international experience in the beauty industry, starting with Cosmoprof (the leading B2B beauty event), and continued with MakeUp in shows and then Premium Beauty News (leading B2B publication), Eva is now helping brands to develop beauty product with sustainability at the core thanks to the re-sources.co platform. Eva is always about innovation. Scouting the latest trends and products over the world with sustainability in mind. She has hosted in the last four years, annual events about innovation in beauty packaging, make-up, skincare and fragrance in Paris. Eva holds a Masters Degree in Communications & Marketing from Paris II Assas University.
Michael Tognetti is Senior Director, Global Sustainability & Sourcing WWP Beauty. Michael Tognetti plays a key role in leading the development of future-focused sustainability initiatives at WWP Beauty. Michael’s background in manufacturing includes work in the beauty, pharmaceutical, and liquor industries covering a wide range of manufacturing processes. His experience also includes work in the resin industry creating custom plastic masterbatch formulations, establishing global distribution partnerships, and facilitating audits of manufacturing facilities.
Anisha Gupta is a cofounder at Bluebird, a climate tech startup founded in early 2021 building a software platform that provides actionable tools to enable consumer brands to develop lower waste and carbon products from the start of their product development process, make reductions, and communicate their efforts transparently. Bluebird currently works with health & beauty brands like Versed, Function of Beauty, Glossier, Dieux, Beautycounter, and Ritual. Prior to founding Bluebird, Anisha held product development and supply chain roles at consumer brands of all sizes, including at Unilever and numerous emerging and scaling brands. Through this work, Anisha was able to see firsthand the cost and complexity involved in building sustainable products, inspiring the inception of Bluebird to solve this need. Anisha holds a BSE in Chemical Engineering and and MS in Sustainability Management. She was named on the Forbes 30 Under 30 2022 list in the Social Impact category.
Mike Fevola, Ph.D. is Vice President of R&D and Product Stewardship at Inolex, a designer of sustainable ingredients based on green chemistry. Previously, Mike was a Research Director & Fellow in Global Beauty R&D at Johnson & Johnson Consumer, responsible for upstream innovation in Cleansing, Sun Care, and Body Care. Mike holds a Ph.D. in Polymer Science & Engineering from the University of Southern Mississippi and a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Delaware. He is an inventor on 38 US Patents and a coauthor of 20+ peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. Mike also serves as Chair of the Personal Care Products Council’s International Nomenclature Committee.
Dr. Mark C. Trexler directs the Climatographers, worked on the first carbon offset project in 1988, and founded the first business climate risk consultancy in 1991. The Climatographers’ Climate Web knowledge management solution (www.theclimateweb.com) is the closest thing today to a collective intelligence for understanding and tackling climate change. In his work with companies today around carbon offsets and climate change strategies generally, he focuses on helping companies avoid not only greenwashing, but greenwishing.
Thank you to our event sponsors for helping us keep our e-conferences free and accessible to anyone!
