Sephora U.S. Names Zena Srivatsa Arnold Chief Marketing Officer
Zena Srivatsa Arnold has been named chief marketing officer of Sephora U.S.
She most recently served as senior vice president, carbonated soft drinks at PepsiCo. Before that, she held senior marketing and management positions at Kimberly-Clark, Google, Kellogg Company and Proctor & Gamble.
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Sephora Americas president and chief executive officer Jean-André Rougeot noted in a memo seen by WWD that “with a knack for disruption, Zena brings extensive experience in not only building and growing brands, but driving initiatives that reach clients digitally. She brings that rare experience of both traditional consumer marketing and performance marketing.”
Her appointment will take effect early summer, and follows a period of global C-suite reshuffles at Sephora. Srivatsa Arnold’s predecessor, Deborah Yeh, transitioned solely to global chief purpose officer in January after jointly helming the two roles for just over a year.
Also in January, Guillame Motte took the reins as Sephora’s global president and CEO and last August, Artemis Patrick, who had been handling both global and U.S. duties as executive vice president, global chief merchandising officer, transitioned to a full-time global role.
In the internal announcement, Rougeot said Srivatsa Arnold’s appointment comes at the “perfect time” as the retailer narrows in on its growth strategy, adding that she “stood out for her passion for beauty and our purpose, as well as for her curiosity, digital expertise and collaborative approach.”
Srivatsa Arnold will relocate to San Francisco to take on the role.
Last month, Sephora rolled out an empties collection program to 600 stores in the U.S. and Canada as part of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton’s overall Life360 program. Called Beauty (Re)Purposed, the program was developed in partnership with Pact Collective and aims to reduce packaging waste by repurposing beauty empties into carpets, pallets, new packaging or energy.
In March, the retailer teamed with TikTok and marketing agency Digitas to launch the Sephora x TikTok Incubator Program, which connects past and present brands of the Sephora Accelerate program with diverse TikTok creators to learn how to develop meaningful, creator-led social content strategies.
Among the initiative’s 12 participating brands this year are 2021 Sephora Accelerate cohort members Topicals, Eadam and Hyper Skin, who were connected with prominent beauty creators including Amy Chang, Rocio Lopez-Jimenez and Nyma Tang.
Sephora U.S.’ marketing leadership team made up of Anna Banks, Emmy Berlind, Devon Duisenberg, Abigail Jacobs, Jessica Stacey and Maria Terry will report to Srivatsa Arnold in her new role.
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