Associate Creative Director at Sephora Parul Sharma Shares Exciting Career Journey in the Beauty Industry
“There is no “one right way” to do beauty anymore which is incredible. There’s a tutorial for everything! You can learn from an 8 year old or an 80 year old. You can learn from a drag queen and a dermatologist. It’s the ultimate “choose your own adventure.” Today’s woman dreamer, Parul Sharma, is an Associate Creative Director at Sephora. Growing up in India, Parul has always had a strong passion for the creative business, eventually building her career at Meta, Sephora, Levi’s and more. In this exclusive interview with Women Who Win, Parul shares a day in her life at Sephora, the exciting trends around diversity & representation in beauty, her must-have makeup product, and how she unwinds with the practice of Nichiren Buddhism. Check out her inspiring story!
1. Tell us your story. Currently, you are the Associate Creative Director, Sephora and have previously served as a creative/arts director at various leading businesses. What inspired your passion for creativity?
Thank you for the opportunity to share my story. I remember drawing nonstop in the back of my school notebooks ever since elementary school. My teachers were exasperated with me! I grew up in small-town India where the trope of the starving artist was well-established. I was a good student and ended up studying Economics and doing an MBA. My first job was as an advertising account executive servicing FMCG clients at Publicis Mumbai. All through subsequent years at various agencies, I was more interested in the work my creative team did than my own role but the barrier to entry was high given my lack of formal art training. I even did a copy internship at Ogilvy which didn’t pan into a full-time gig. Fortunately, I relocated to the US after getting married, and realized that this was my chance to alter the course I was on. I took art classes at a local community college which allowed me to rustle up a portfolio good enough to transfer to a BFA design program at California College of the Arts in SF.
By the time I started school, I had a 3-month old baby, so it was a rough start for sure. I had to lobby to have the school establish a breastfeeding room for students! However, I was motivated to do my best because any time spent at school was time borrowed from my infant.
Art school also immersed me in American culture, the understanding of which is critical to being a good designer. My skills improved with effort over time and I was selected for an internship at CCA’s prestigious in-house student-led agency Sputnik and even won a best thesis award. My tenacious efforts impressed my professors who eventually referred me to my first job opportunity at Levi’s.
2. Tell us what a day in your life looks like as a creative director? What excites you most about the work you do?
This varies greatly depending on the type of company/industry/team one is on. In my previous role at Meta as a creative director, I was working with large global cross-functional teams, collaborating with designers and marketers in many different time zones and working with multiple agencies.
At Sephora, Creative Directors need to bring a fair amount of experience to the table, both in the beauty/fashion industry as well as in their design craft and team management skills. As a social creative, my day begins before I sit at my desk. I’ll typically browse social apps to scan for emerging trends, to see what we posted on various platforms and what kind of engagement we’re receiving. This helps me brainstorm with my team later in the day. I spend a fair chunk of my day in meetings presenting work, reviewing work, facilitating group brainstorms, building consensus with XFN partners, meeting my team 1:1 to coach and counsel them and so on. My team is on-set on many days and I check in from time-to-time.
Additionally, I work hands-on as well, designing, sketching and focusing on projects that have high/long-term impact on multiple workstreams, or that require strategic design thinking or storytelling for projects. I’ve learned to mine data from reporting programs to see what type of work is performing or not—either way, we learn from both successful and less successful posts. The aspect that excites me the most is working on projects that invite a conversation with our audience or show our audience that we see and hear them and value their unique identities. This can range from cultural illustrations that celebrate various communities, to of-the-moment meme posts, to a really great tutorial that demystifies a beauty or skincare routine. I also love helping my team get unstuck when they are working on projects and I love picking their brilliant minds and encouraging collaboration between them.
3. The beauty space has been growing exponentially, and we've seen some exciting trends in diversity, representation etc. What are some beauty/makeup industry trends you think every woman should know about? What are some of the key innovations you see in the beauty space?
The answer to this question is complex and I can only represent my personal knowledge and experience here. The beauty industry is indeed constantly evolving. There are so many new brands emerging each year and what I find fascinating are their origin stories, the founders and their reason-to-be. There’s a trend of celebrity founders but there’s also founders from traditionally under-represented communities which is so exciting for consumers with unique needs and identities. And that is why representation is getting better.
On the influencer side, the passion that people have for expressing themselves through makeup is like no other. I find that rigid beauty standards are being replaced with personal expression. Sephora emphasizes the message that beauty is for everyone and this message really resonates with me personally as well. I am fond of experimenting with my beauty and skincare products and Sephora facilitates this. There’s a crossover of beauty as skincare and vice versa. There is no “one right way” to do beauty anymore which is incredible. There’s a tutorial for everything! You can learn from an 8 year old or an 80 year old. You can learn from a drag queen and a dermatologist. It’s the ultimate “choose your own adventure.”
I am also encouraged by how many brands are rethinking social responsibility, while owning that producing anything inherently means borrowing from natural resources. These responsibility efforts run the gamut from recycling programs, more responsible packaging design, vegan beauty products, eliminating non-biodegradable ingredients, reinvesting in communities that produce the natural resources and better labor practices. Gen Z cares deeply about how the things they consume were built and it is leading to investment in better business practices! Then there’s the exciting changes in how marketing is increasingly becoming a two-way communication rather than a one-way megaphone.
4. You are certainly a busy woman. After a long day, how do you relax and unwind?
When I was 23, I started practicing Nichiren Buddhism. An important daily ritual is chanting Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo, a mantra that affirms that we all inherently have the potential for the highest wisdom or Buddhahood within us. Channeling this wisdom puts us in the drivers’ seat in our lives. I chant for an hour in the morning when I wake up and end my work day with an additional 15-30m of chanting. This clarifies my mind, and helps me place the events of the day in the context of my higher mission and goals. I apply the humanistic principles of wisdom, courage and compassion in how I deal with people at work and elsewhere. Sometimes, after work, I will join a Buddhist discussion meeting or visit a fellow practitioner. There’s always an uplifting discussion involved. Outside of this, there’s always the dog to be walked, the dinner to be prepped, and stories to be read to the kids before bedtime. I choose between a good book or a good show before I hit the bed around 10. I am an early riser so a reasonable bedtime is sacrosanct.
5. Do you have an essential beauty/self care item? Let us know!
An effective yet gentle makeup remover is a must. I never go to bed without ridding my pores of potential buildup.
As I’ve mentioned before, I am an experimenter by nature, so my go-to products keep changing but currently I’m using Farmacy’s Deep Sweep Pore Cleaning Toner in between the makeup removal and the nightly moisturizing.
I’ve also been using AlphaRet Overnight Retinoid Cream with AHA to battle my skin’s tendency to pigment. If you use the latter, you MUST wear sunscreen without fail.