Executive Director, Strategic Innovation & Partnerships

The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. is one of the world’s leading manufacturers, marketers, and sellers of quality skin care, makeup, fragrance, and hair care products, and is a steward of luxury and prestige brands globally. The company’s products are sold in approximately 150 countries and territories under brand names including:
Estée Lauder, Aramis, Clinique, Lab Series, Origins, M
· A·C, La Mer, Bobbi Brown Cosmetics, Aveda, Jo Malone London, Bumble and bumble, Darphin Paris, TOM FORD, Smashbox, AERIN Beauty, Le Labo, Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle, GLAMGLOW, KILIAN PARIS, Too Faced, Dr.Jart+, the DECIEM family of brands, including The Ordinary and NIOD, and BALMAIN Beauty.

Title:

Executive Director, Strategic Innovation & Partnerships

Position Summary:

The Executive Director, Strategic Innovation & Partnerships serves as the senior scientific catalyst connecting ELC's Priority Pillar leaders with the external innovation provider ecosystem. The role is responsible for transforming how ELC identifies, accesses, and leverages external science by shifting supplier engagement from a reactive, opportunity-driven model to a proactive, strategically aligned, performance-driven and repeatable partnership model.

Through scientific insight, external relationship leadership, and technology assessment expertise, this leader enables early access to emerging technologies and innovation pipelines, fosters collaborative development programs, and helps translate external capabilities into differentiated technologies that strengthen ELC's competitive advantage.

Operating at the intersection of Research & Innovation, Procurement and Legal/Intellectual Property, the Executive Director creates the processes, criteria, governance, and engagement models required to move supplier opportunities from initial discovery through evaluation, development, and commercialization readiness.

Role Responsibilities:

Champion a Strategic External Innovation Mindset Across Advanced Technologies Partner with Priority Pillar scientific leaders to identify future scientific needs, capability gaps, technology requirements, and innovation opportunities that can be accelerated through external supplier partnerships.

Influence and enable internal scientific teams to engage partners strategically as sources of innovation, capabilities, and co-development opportunities rather than solely as providers of commercially available ingredients.

Drive a proactive approach to external innovation by identifying, targeting, and cultivating relationships with suppliers whose technology roadmaps align with ELC's long-term innovation priorities.

Build and manage a transparent portfolio of external partners and opportunities, tracking status, priorities, risks, decisions, milestones, and expected value. Use, refine, deploy a scorecard to continuously assess external suppliers, and their areas of expertise.

Help establish a culture of scientific scouting and external engagement, within the strategic Supplier ecosystem, that prioritizes early access, collaborative development, and strategic partnership over opportunistic evaluation of technologies nearing commercial launch.

Create visibility into emerging supplier pipelines, platform technologies, and future innovation roadmaps to strengthen the competitiveness and differentiation of ELC's innovation portfolio.

Partner with Legal and Procurement to support agreement structures that reflect the intended collaboration model and business objectives. Help ensure objectives, success criteria, milestones, confidentiality requirements, exclusivity needs, ownership rights, and IP terms are clearly defined before collaboration begins.

Develop Strategic Scientific Partnerships that Create Competitive Advantage…