Lydia Drakeford on Who Gets to Move Up in Beauty

For The Beauty Brief’s The Name Drop, Boardroom Beauty founder Lydia Drakeford talks about the women who make beauty brands run, what they’re asking each other in private, and why the industry needs to take sponsorship seriously.

A senior manager leads a launch. A director builds a creator program. Their work shows up in the results, and when the industry tells the story of how it all came together, the person in the interview is usually a founder or CEO.

Lydia Drakeford wanted to hear from the people closer to the work. A Columbia MBA and former senior partner manager on Google’s beauty portfolio, she had long been a devoted listener of Glossy, The Business of Fashion and Vogue Business. In 2023, she started Boardroom Beauty as a podcast to have the conversations she wished she heard more often, especially with Black and brown women in middle management who could tell you exactly how a launch got done.

“I wanted to hear from the women who actually make beauty brands run,” Drakeford tells The Beauty Brief. The interviews revealed a pattern. The same women who could turn a big idea into a business result were often left to figure out on their own who could advocate for them, how promotion decisions got made and what their experience might qualify them to do next.

The questions people stayed to ask

At Boardroom Beauty’s first live panel with the Black Beauty Club at Dumbo House, Drakeford paid attention to what happened after the conversation ended. People stayed, exchanged numbers and kept asking questions. The podcast had already brought together an audience with shared professional concerns. In person, those listeners could start answering one another’s questions.

Today, Boardroom Beauty is an invite-only collective that brings women of color in beauty together across career stages. Its dinners and roundtables make room for the conversations Drakeford hears happening privately. Am I being paid fairly? Why am I still hearing “you’re not ready yet” when I’m already doing the job? How long should I wait before I make a move?

The format matters. Drakeford uses small groups, table prompts and anonymous questions so people have several ways to participate. Executives join the conversation, which means a director can ask a president a candid question over dinner. And because the programming runs throughout the year, there’s a chance to pick up that conversation again.

“I wish executives could hear how much talent is quietly deciding whether to stay,” Drakeford says, “and how often one honest conversation or one advocate would change that decision.”

A bigger career can move sideways

More than 100 beauty professionals gathered for Boardroom Beauty’s second annual Leaders Forum, where the theme, “EXPAND,” reflected a shift Drakeford was hearing from members. They were considering consulting, board seats, moves between brand, agency and tech, and building platforms of their own. They had questions about how to land a first board seat, what to charge for a consulting project and who could help them get started.

For Drakeford, the idea came into focus during Topicals CEO Sukiana Chancy’s closing keynote. Chancy spoke about the turns her career had taken before she became CEO. For women wondering whether a move across roles or companies would set them back, her path raised a better question. What if the range you build along the way is part of what prepares you to lead?

Who gets discussed when the door closes?

Ask Drakeford where beauty companies are overlooking leadership talent, and she’ll take you right back to middle management. The people running launches, managing creator programs and owning the numbers often have limited visibility in the meetings where promotions are decided.

Her proposal is to make sponsorship a formal responsibility. Give senior leaders specific high performers to advocate for, then track whether those employees actually advance.

“A mentor gives advice, a sponsor makes sure you’re considered when the decision is made,” she says.

When Drakeford talks about what she hopes a Boardroom Beauty member can say a year after joining, she lands on something more concrete than a bigger network. “I know the people I need to know, I understand how decisions get made in this industry, and I made a move I wouldn’t have made on my own.” She hopes that woman is already opening doors for the people coming up behind her.