One of the world’s leading manufacturers and marketers of skin care, makeup, and fragrance products located on 5th Avenue, the Estée Lauder Companies, invited our Apex for Youth mentors and mentees to Career Day on Friday, April 29. Not many of us were familiar with the beauty industry and its marketing, so the panelists introduced the company, along with the products they create, the science they use, and the teamwork before the release of the final product.
Dan introduced to us five career panelists: Rita, Emily, Amanda, Christina and Ukachi. All were very skilled in their fields of studies and the roles they played within the company; they discussed in depth about their college majors, their employment and their passion for working in this industry. One thing they all stressed: Your major in college doesn’t dictate your future career. Trying new things and exploring infinite number of opportunities can open up your eyes as to what you find most passionate for. Amanda expressed that she had never imagined the possibility of working in chemistry and makeup during her time in college. She now concocts different formulations and shades of lipsticks with her chemistry knowledge and leverages her know-how about different elements’ reaction to each other in the lab. That sounded like an interesting and fun job! Amanda also shared the sheer number of mandatory tests a product has to go through before it can be sold to the public, which gave us insight into how complicated it is to bring a new beauty product to live!
After the panel, our mentors and mentees had a hands-on activity where we created our very own lip gloss to keep. We each experimented on our own, formulating unique tones with different amounts of coloring. We also added in “pearls” which when mixed in with the base formula, it provided a shimmer to our lip glosses. After the activity, we learned about the new technology advancements in 3D printing with Vahe, where he gave us a behind-the-scenes look to how the packaging engineers model new bottle designs. Personally as a student, I enjoyed these mini interactive sessions a lot and we all had fun as a group!
The panel and the activities together were amazing experiences for both our mentors and mentees. Thank you Estée Lauder Companies for hosting this event — we certainly learned a lot about the company and new career opportunities!
-Celine Yan, Apex Development Intern
