Estée Lauder Executive Chairman Says Good Leaders Have ‘Big Ears and a Little Mouth’

William P. Lauder might be a familiar name. His grandmother, Estée Lauder, founded her namesake brand in 1946 and grew it into one of the largest beauty companies today. Currently, the Estée Lauder Cos. have more than 45,000 employees worldwide and own over 20 brands, including Clinique, Tom Ford Beauty, La Mer, and Jo Malone.

Lauder, 64, is now the company’s executive chairman and chairman of the board of directors. He got his start in 1986 as the regional marketing director of Clinique U.S.A. in the New York metro area, helped launch the natural ingredients brand Origins, and eventually rose all the way to serve a stint as CEO of Estée Lauder in the late aughts. (It was recently announced his successor, longtime CEO Fabrizio Freda , will retire next summer amid slumping sales.)

In addition to his current position, Lauder teaches a class that he designed, “Decision-Making in the Leadership Chair,” at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania for second-year MBA students.

Penta recently spoke to Lauder about his most memorable career moments, consumer preferences in the beauty industry, and his thoughts on leadership.

Penta : What is your role at Estée Lauder?

William P. Lauder: We have two great assets: brands and people, and my primary focus is to build great brands and to engage with our people. I travel and visit a lot of our markets and see how we can grow in that market. We have a presence in London, Paris, Korea, and many other international destinations. I host a town hall for Estée Lauder Cos. employees in many of our markets and talk to them about what makes us special and what our values are.

I also visit our factories and research and development facilities to do the same thing.

Can you share a career highlight since you joined 38 years ago?

I was one of the people who created and launched the Origins brand in 1990. The idea was to create a line that was backed by science but made with natural ingredients. We had a product called Peace of Mind to put on your temples and wrists to help relieve stress. We let people sample it in stores, and they loved it so much that they immediately came back to buy it. From there, the brand exploded, and we opened Origins stores. This was innovative at the time because single-brand stores didn’t exist.

Since I’ve moved into corporate management, my highlight is to be able to travel and show the Estée Lauder Cos. flag, as I like to call it, to our employees.

Have are consumer preferences with respect to luxury fragrances and beauty products changing?

post-Covid, there has been an explosion in interest in luxury fragrances, which is reflected in our brands like Jo Malone London, Le Labo, Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle, Tom Ford, and Kilian Paris.

Also, we have new, much younger consumers in their late teens to early 20s who are very into makeup and buy our brands like Too Faced. They are getting into skin care by buying products from our brands, including Clinique and the Ordinary. Teenage boys are very interested in fragrances and buy Kilian Paris and Tom Ford. Our hope is that this younger generation continues their loyalty to us, especially as they get older and have more disposable income.

You teach a leadership class at Wharton. In your opinion, what are the attributes of a successful leader?

First and foremost, the most effective leaders must be effective communicators. I believe in short, quick, and concise comments and statements that you repeat, like mantras. These mantras should be able to be passed down to the people they lead.

Also, you have to be a great teacher to be a great leader. You need to make time for an in-depth conversation with the people you lead to get your message across.

And it’s important to have big ears and a little mouth. Listen more and talk less.

Breast cancer research is a priority for Estée Lauder. Can you tell us more about this?

The Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF) is a nonprofit that my mother, Evelyn, started more than 30 years ago. We, as a family, chose breast cancer because it’s the most common cancer that women are diagnosed with. One in eight women in the U.S. will be diagnosed with breast cancer, and 80% of our employees are women, so the statistic resonates.

The Estée Lauder Cos. Breast Cancer Campaign, our initiative that funds BCRF, is key to our company culture and a cause that brings us together meaningfully. In October, for Breast Cancer Awareness Month, we launch products across some of our brands, and proceeds from sales go toward the foundation. The campaign and the Estée Lauder Cos. Charitable Foundation have raised more than US$131 million to date for BCRF.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

It’s go time for the highest-stakes mission at NASA in more than 50 years.

On April 1, the agency is set to launch four astronauts around the moon, the deepest human spaceflight since the final Apollo lunar landing in 1972.

The launch window for Artemis II , as the mission is called, opens at 6:24 p.m. ET.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration teams have been preparing the vehicles to depart from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center on the planned roughly 10-day trip. Crew members have trained for years for this moment.

Reid Wiseman, the NASA astronaut serving as mission commander, said he doesn’t fear taking the voyage. A widower, he does worry at times about what he is putting his daughters through.

“I could have a very comfortable life for them,” Wiseman said in an interview last September.

“But I’m also a human, and I see the spirit in their eyes that is burning in my soul too. And so we’ve just got to never stop going.”

Wiseman’s crewmates on Artemis II are NASA’s Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen.

Photo: NASA’s Artemis II SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft being rolled out at night. Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo/Getty Images

What are the goals for Artemis II?

The biggest one: Safely fly the crew on vehicles that have never carried astronauts before.

The towering Space Launch System rocket has the job of lofting a vehicle called Orion into space and on its way to the moon.

Orion is designed to carry the crew around the moon and back. Myriad systems on the ship—life support, communications, navigation—will be tested with the astronauts on board.

SLS and Orion don’t have much flight experience. The vehicles last flew in 2022, when the agency completed its uncrewed Artemis I mission .

How is the mission expected to unfold?

Artemis II will begin when SLS takes off from a launchpad in Florida with Orion stacked on top of it.

The so-called upper stage of SLS will later separate from the main part of the rocket with Orion attached, and use its engine to set up the latter vehicle for a push to the moon.

After Orion separates from the upper stage, it will conduct what is called a translunar injection—the engine firing that commits Orion to soaring out to the moon. It will fly to the moon over the course of a few days and travel around its far side.

Orion will face a tough return home after speeding through space. As it hits Earth’s atmosphere, Orion will be flying at 25,000 miles an hour and face temperatures of 5,000 degrees as it slows down. The capsule is designed to land under parachutes in the Pacific Ocean, not far from San Diego.

Water photo: NASA’s Orion capsule after its splash-down in the Pacific Ocean in 2022 for the Artemis I mission. Mario Tama/Press Pool

Is it possible Artemis II will be delayed?

Yes.

For safety reasons, the agency won’t launch if certain tough weather conditions roll through the Cape Canaveral, Fla., area. Delays caused by technical problems are possible, too. NASA has other dates identified for the mission if it doesn’t begin April 1.

Who are the astronauts flying on Artemis II?

The crew will be led by Wiseman, a retired Navy pilot who completed military deployments before joining NASA’s astronaut corps. He traveled to the International Space Station in 2014.

Two other astronauts will represent NASA during the mission: Glover, an experienced Navy pilot, and Koch, who began her career as an electrical engineer for the agency and once spent a year at a research station in the South Pole. Both have traveled to the space station before.

Hansen is a military pilot who joined Canada’s astronaut corps in 2009. He will be making his first trip to space.

Koch’s participation in Artemis II will mark the first time a woman has flown beyond orbits near Earth. Glover and Hansen will be the first African-American and non-American astronauts, respectively, to do the same.

What will the astronauts do during the flight?

The astronauts will evaluate how Orion flies, practice emergency procedures and capture images of the far side of the moon for scientific and exploration purposes (they may become the first humans to see parts of the far side of the lunar surface). Health-tracking projects of the astronauts are designed to inform future missions.

Those efforts will play out in Orion’s crew module, which has about two minivans worth of living area.

On board, the astronauts will spend about 30 minutes a day exercising, using a device that allows them to do dead lifts, rowing and more. Sleep will come in eight-hour stretches in hammocks.

There is a custom-made warmer for meals, with beef brisket and veggie quiche on the menu.

Each astronaut is permitted two flavored beverages a day, including coffee. The crew will hold one hourlong shared meal each day.

The Universal Waste Management System—that’s the toilet—uses air flow to pull fluid and solid waste away into containers.

What happens after Artemis II?

Assuming it goes well, NASA will march on to Artemis III, scheduled for next year. During that operation, NASA plans to launch Orion with crew members on board and have the ship practice docking with lunar-lander vehicles that Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin have been developing. The rendezvous operations will occur relatively close to Earth.

NASA hopes that its contractors and the agency itself are ready to attempt one or more lunar landing missions in 2028. Many current and former spaceflight officials are skeptical that timeline is feasible.

Estée Lauder Executive Chairman Says Good Leaders Have ‘Big Ears and a Little Mouth’

The lunar flyby would be the deepest humans have traveled in space in decades.