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.

The best financial advice many Australians are receiving right now is not coming from licensed advisers charging by the hour. It is coming through a phone screen, in the ten minutes between work and dinner, from creators who have built credibility the hard way: by being right, being transparent, and being specific in a space where vagueness has always been the easy default.

This is not a ranking by follower count. Follower count is a measure of distribution, not of quality. What follows is a ranking by substance — credentials, accuracy, community depth, and the quality of what an audience actually learns from following these accounts. The distinction matters, because the Australians acting on this content are making real financial decisions with real money.

1- Queenie Tan – Corporate Authorised Representative; Co-Founder & Director, Invest With Queenie & Billroo

There are finance influencers who talk about building wealth, and there are those who document it in real time with receipts. Queenie Tan belongs firmly in the second category. Starting from a $400-per-week income, Tan built her net worth past $1 million while publishing the actual numbers — income, savings rate, investment decisions — for an audience of more than 400,000 across platforms.

She is a Corporate Authorised Representative, co-founder of the personal finance app Billroo, and the author of a book that has become a practical reference for young Australians navigating ETFs, superannuation and property. What separates her from the crowded field of money educators is precision: she does not talk in principles when she can talk in percentages.

2- Alan Kohler – Editor-in-Chief, Eureka Report; Editor-in-Chief, InvestSMART Group; ABC News finance presenter, host of Inside Business.

If Queenie Tan represents the new wave of personal finance creators, Alan Kohler represents something the new wave will spend decades trying to build: institutional credibility that has survived multiple economic cycles. As Editor-in-Chief of the Eureka Report and InvestSMART Group, and a decades-long presence on ABC News, Kohler has spent more than thirty years making financial analysis accessible without dumbing it down.

His coverage of RBA decisions, market movements and economic policy is cited by podcasters, journalists and fund managers alike. He is not chasing virality. He does not need to.

3- Aleks Nikolic – Corporate lawyer; host, Big Swinging Stocks podcast

Most finance creators address the mechanics of money. Aleks Nikolic addresses the psychology — and that distinction explains why her following is as loyal as it is. Operating as Broke Girl Wealth across Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, Nikolic covers ETFs, crypto and investment strategy, but her real differentiator is a willingness to discuss the emotional architecture of financial decision-making.

Shame around debt. Fear around market volatility. The limiting beliefs that stop people acting on what they already know. In a space where confidence is routinely performed, her candour is a genuine competitive advantage.

4- Bryce Leske & Alec Renehan – Equity Mates Media

Equity Mates did not build a following. They built a media company. What began as a podcast by two friends learning to invest has grown into Australia’s most established investing media brand, covering ASX stocks, ETFs, global markets and fund manager interviews across podcast, social and YouTube.

The longevity is the credential. Equity Mates has operated through multiple market cycles, a global pandemic, and a generational shift in how Australians engage with investing — and its audience has grown through all of it. When the hosts speak, their listeners know they have been paying attention for years.

5- The Lazy CEO – CEO & Founder, Showpo; Shark Tank Australia investor

The metric that matters most on social media is not followers — it is engagement, because engagement signals trust. Jane Lu, known as The Lazy CEO, maintains an engagement rate of approximately 1.15 per cent on Instagram, which is exceptional for a finance account of his size. Her 242,000-plus followers are not passive consumers: they ask questions, share experiences and apply what they read.

Her content focuses on business finance and wealth building, and the active comment sections are the clearest possible evidence that her audience does not merely scroll past.

6- Tash Invests – Founder, Tash Lends; Forbes Australia 30 Under 30

Tash Invests built her following on a premise that sounds simple but is rarer in practice than it should be: she publishes the actual numbers. Not approximations or ranges or anonymised case studies — her salary, her savings rate, her portfolio value, her net worth, updated and on the record.

Having bought her first property at twenty-two and grown her documented net worth past $1 million, she has become the primary reference point for young Australians trying to understand what building wealth on a moderate income genuinely looks like. The specificity is the product.

7- David Scutt – APAC Market Analyst at StoneX Group

The authority of most finance social media content rests on research and reading. David Scutt‘s authority rests on having done the job. A former Treasury Dealer at Arab Bank and the Commonwealth Bank, former ASX Business Supervisor, and former Global Markets Editor at Business Insider Australia and anchor at ausbiz TV, Scutt now brings that direct market experience to his role as APAC Market Analyst at StoneX Group, rather than relying on secondary commentary.

When he discusses foreign exchange movements or ASX dynamics, it is not because he has read about them. It is because he has traded them.

8- Meddy Demars – Investing & crypto content creator

The gap Meddy Demars fills is specific and underserviced: connecting global macroeconomic events to the practical reality of Australian investors. When the US Federal Reserve adjusts interest rates, when inflation data moves, when commodity prices shift — most Australian finance content either ignores the local implications or translates them poorly.

Demars, operating across TikTok and Instagram from Sydney, does the translation well: explaining what global conditions mean for Australian stocks, savings rates and investment portfolios in terms that are accessible without being condescending.

9- Simran Kaur – Founder, Friends That Invest

Friends That Invest is arguably the most successful community-building exercise in Australian personal finance, and Simran Kaur is the reason why. The New Zealand-based creator — whose audience is predominantly Australian — built a podcast, a book and a social media presence around a single insight: that the personal finance world was not speaking to young women, and that the consequences of that gap were significant.

The measurable cultural shift that followed — women engaging with investing concepts in communities that had not previously existed — is the kind of impact that most financial literacy programmes aim for and rarely achieve.

10- Effie Zahos – Money Editor at 9News

Effie Zahos is one of Australia’s most recognised financial commentators, appearing regularly across 9News, A Current Affair, Today and Today Extra as 9News Money Editor. Her role puts everyday money questions, from mortgage rates to cost-of-living pressures, in front of a national broadcast audience.

Before television, she spent years as editor of Money magazine, building the editorial foundation for her current commentary. She is also Director and Money Commentator at InvestSMART, an ambassador for Canstar, and a published author, with her financial advice available in print as well as on screen.

That combination, decades of editorial experience, an active broadcast presence, and a body of published work, is what makes her commentary carry weight beyond any single platform or post.

The common thread across this list is not follower count or platform presence. It is that each creator has built an audience willing to act on what they say, and for the Australians making financial decisions off the back of this content, that trust is the only thing that actually matters.

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

The voices reshaping how Australians think about money — and why credibility matters more than reach.