CREDO for CHANGE

Allie Compton has over 7 years of experience working in the beauty industry, specifically in "clean beauty." Currently, Allie is the Product Developer for Credo Beauty owned brands, Exa Beauty (color cosmetics), and Eleven by Venus Williams (suncare), where she leads product innovation, development and packaging design cross-category. She evaluates and directs all formula submissions from lab, pilot, through production and establish technical quality standards for cross-categories. she manages business and supplier relationships with R&D, compliance, regulatory, consultants, chemists and technicians to deliver against product innovation, legal, design, and marketing requirements. Allie loves creating purpose-driven products that make people feel beautiful and is deeply passionate about beauty product safety and sustainability.

Alisa works with beauty brands as business counsel from pre-fundraising to sale of their company.  Her experience includes advising beauty brands on every day legal and business  issues including equity grants, hiring or terminating employees, raising capital and engaging with potential investors.  She focuses on supporting her clients with as much understanding of the issues as possible when they make decisions.  Among Alisa’s current beauty clients are BREAD Beauty, ILIA Beauty, Kinlo, Lawless Beauty and UBeauty.

Kelly McCarthy is a brand protection and development attorney with a focus on clients in the beauty industry. Her clients include public and private entities, from emerging beauty start-ups to global industry leaders. Kelly advises clients on a variety of trademark and brand protection issues, including matters involving product and corporate name selection; trademark availability and clearance; worldwide branding strategies; trademark related agreements including licenses; management and prosecution of worldwide and US trademark portfolios; disputes before the U.S. Trademark Trial and Appeal Board; domain name disputes and cybersquatting concerns; foreign, domestic and online anti-counterfeiting and enforcement measures; advertising, claims and promotions, and social media and Internet marketing issues. Kelly specializes in the development and implementation of customized and comprehensive brand protection programs for the beauty industry that focus on global trademark portfolio growth while combatting product counterfeiting concerns and other infringements.

Clean Cosmetic Chemist Krupa Koestline merges her background in biology, biochemistry, and biotechnology with her lifelong practice of Ayurveda to create new concepts and innovations in the clean beauty space. Starting her 10+ year career at Estee Lauder and Neutrogena, Krupa pivoted her focus to creating safer products after seeing firsthand the impact of potentially harmful ingredients used in personal care products. As the founder of KKT Consultants, Krupa understands the importance of innovation in today’s competitive and saturated beauty market. As an expert resource, Krupa strives to dispel myths and misinformation around clean beauty, to see through convenient marketing tactics and buzzwords, and forecast insights into the next trendy ingredient.

Avani is a Partner of The Ember Company.  She has years of experience in the startup world in various capacities including as a founder, advisor, mentor and investor.  She recently served as Head of the Harvard Business School Startup Studio.  In her work with Ember, Harvard Business School and other organizations, Avani has advised over five hundred entrepreneurs. 

Prior to The Ember Company, Avani had a career as a corporate attorney with Arent Fox LLP and Brown Rudnick where she worked on multi-billion dollar mergers.  She also founded a men's and women's contemporary clothing label when she was in law school.  She holds an MBA from Columbia University, a JD from The Northwestern University School of Law and a BA from Loyola University.  Avani volunteers as Co-Leader, Entrepreneurs-In-Training, Barnard College & Girls Scouts.

Susan Kim is the current Chief Executive Officer of Kopari Beauty, the digitally-native, clean, coconut-based lifestyle brand. Kim possesses more than 10 years of experience working for global beauty brands including Huda Beauty, Benefit Cosmetics and L’Oreal USA. With a passion for marketing digitally-native brands, Kim most recently served as the senior vice president of marketing & digital at Huda Beauty. Prior to that time, she spent nine years at Benefit Cosmetics developing a digital and strategic plan that catapulted the brand to an industry top rank.

Over the past seventeen years, operating as the chief brand strategist, Mashama has led creative and strategic teams in both the physical and digital space across many industries. His work is driven by a simple thesis: communicate a client’s message through the creation of beautifully simple, human-centric design.  

Oh and always play.

Katie began her career in advertising working with global brands like American Express and Cartier prior to founding SMAKK Studios in 2011. Her work with clean beauty brands predates the genesis of the phrase “clean beauty,” and she notably worked to brand and launch S.W. Basics. Since then, she has led creative strategy for SMAKK’s many clients in the beauty and personal care categories, including Shiseido, Mother Dirt, The Lip Bar, Orpheus, Aveda, S.C. Johnson, Harry’s, and The Honey Pot Company. A sought-after thought leader in the worlds of beauty and ecommerce, Katie has been featured in Ad Age, Fast Company, Inc, Creative Review, and Beauty Matter.

Ju Rhyu is the Co-founder/CEO of Hero Cosmetics. Ju bootstrapped Hero's launch in 2017 with one product, the Mighty Patch, on Amazon. Five years later, Hero Cosmetics is now a holistic acne solutions brand with over 20 award-winning products and a business that’s doing over $100M in revenue with high profitability. She is a CEW Female Founder 2022 Honoree and was named to the Inc. Magazine 2019 Female Founders 100 list and a Yotpo 2019 Amazing Women in E-commerce. She is a graduate of Brown University and Columbia Business School.

Muffy Clince currently serves as the Director of Emerging Brands at Ulta Beauty. In this role, she is responsible for the Sparked at Ulta Beauty Platform that launched in 2019. This cross functional endeavor was created to scout, on board, launch and grow new-to-market Indie Brands. 

In addition to the Emerging Brands work, Muffy overseas the Merchandising efforts supporting Conscious Beauty at Ulta BeautyTM and the DEI/BIPOC strategies. Prior to taking on this role, over her 18 years at Ulta Beauty, Muffy has held several roles in Merchandising as well as Planning and Inventory, most recently managing key brand relationships for Prestige Cosmetics and launching Chanel Beaute. 

In her time at Ulta Beauty, Muffy has supported the Ulta Beauty Charitable Foundation work, helping to raise funds for the Breast Cancer Research Fund. She is an alumna of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, meeting her husband freshman year and now they enjoy family time with their three kids.  

For over 15 years, Amy Liu worked as a beauty executive at some of the fastest growing prestige companies, including Smashbox, Kate Somerville and Josie Maran Cosmetics. But as a longtime eczema sufferer, she couldn’t even enjoy the best part of working in the beauty industry: trying out all the products! Even the clean alternatives were super expensive or too clinical, like they were coming straight from the doctor’s office. Amy saw this white space as an opportunity, and set out to create Tower 28, a beauty company inclusive of all skin tones, skin types, budgets, and beauty philosophies. Tower 28 is the first beauty brand that’s 100 percent clean, vegan, and free of every known skin irritant. Everything is rigorously dermatologist and allergy tested, with all formulas adhering strictly to the National Eczema Association’s guidelines.