unilever
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Esi Eggleston Bracey Built Brands by Looking for Who Was Missing
An engineer by training and an accidental marketer by her own account, Esi Eggleston Bracey has spent 35 years finding the people brands overlook - then turning that attention into products, growth, representation, and durable change.
Ben & Jerry's
How two friends from a $5 ice cream course turned a renovated Vermont gas station into a global brand - and why its founders are now at war with the company that owns it.
Dermalogica
Dermalogica is a Los Angeles-born professional skin care company founded in 1986 by skin therapist Jane Wurwand and her husband Raymond. Built out of the International Dermal Institute - a training school Wurwand launched three years earlier - the brand pairs clinically minded, irritant-free formulations with rigorous therapist education, selling only where a licensed skin professional can advise. Now a Unilever Prestige brand sold in more than 80 countries, Dermalogica is widely regarded as the world's number one professional skin care line, known for franchises like BioLumin-C, Age Smart, Active Clearing and the teen-focused Clear Start.
Michael Polk
Michael Polk is the President and CEO of Implus, the Durham, North Carolina maker of footcare, fitness and sporting goods brands like Sof Sole, Spenco, Yaktrax and TriggerPoint. A first-generation American and career consumer-goods operator, he spent decades climbing through Procter & Gamble, Kraft Foods and Unilever before running Newell Brands for eight years, where he led a transformation that roughly tripled enterprise value. Since 2020 he has paired the Implus job with an advisory role at private equity firm Berkshire Partners, trading the glare of a public-company quarter for the hands-on work of building brands shoulder-to-shoulder with a smaller team.
Faiz Ahmad
Faiz Ahmad is the Chief Executive Officer of Paula's Choice Skincare, the Unilever-owned, Seattle-based science-driven beauty brand. He spent two decades building direct-to-consumer machines at Apple, Delta Air Lines, Optum and YETI before stepping in to steer Paula's Choice through a sports-meets-skincare era anchored by the FIFA World Cup 2026 sponsorship.
Anita Batho
Anita Batho is the Co-Founder and Principal at Torch (torch.com.au), a boutique brand strategy and innovation consultancy based in Sydney, Australia that has illuminated brand futures for blue-chip clients since 1999. Drawing on a career spanning consumer goods giants Unilever (Best Foods) and ICI Paints, and senior roles at Kantar, Anita built Torch into a respected agency known for immersive consumer research, bespoke brand workshops, and commercially grounded innovation work for clients including Arnott's, Telstra, PepsiCo, A2 Milk, Mercedes-Benz, and Moët Hennessy.