Director, Trends Foresight

Location: New York

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.

Description The Director, Cultural Strategy & Trend Foresight will serve as a global cultural intelligence lead, helping the organization understand where culture, consumers, beauty, luxury, technology, and social behavior are moving - and what those shifts mean for brand strategy, innovation, portfolio priorities, and growth.

This role goes beyond identifying what is trending. It is responsible for interpreting the deeper cultural forces shaping consumer desire, decoding emerging behaviors across markets and communities, and translating weak signals into strategic opportunity. The Director will build a rigorous, globally connected cultural sensing capability that helps ELC distinguish meaningful shifts from short-lived noise, anticipate future consumer needs, and activate trend intelligence across brands, regions, categories, R&D, commercial innovation, and consumer experience teams.

The ideal candidate is a trend strategist, cultural strategist, and storyteller: someone who is deeply fluent in beauty and luxury culture, social platforms, creators, communities, aesthetics, rituals, and emerging consumer values - and who can turn cultural insight into clear strategic direction. This person will bring together social intelligence, qualitative insight, market signals, category data, expert perspectives, and regional knowledge to create actionable narratives that inspire decision-making and unlock growth.

Core Purpose of the Role This role exists to help ELC understand what is changing in culture, why it matters, and how the business should respond.

The Director will lead the development of a global cultural foresight discipline that connects macro cultural shifts to beauty category dynamics, consumer behavior, innovation territories, brand positioning, and commercial opportunity. They will create the frameworks, rituals, tools, and narratives that enable teams to move from passive trend awareness to active cultural strategy.

Key Responsibilities
1. Lead Global Cultural & Trend Strategy Build and lead a global cultural intelligence agenda that identifies the most important shifts shaping beauty, luxury, self-expression, identity, wellness, technology, aesthetics, and consumer behavior.

Decode cultural movements across platforms, markets, communities, subcultures, creators, retail environments, and emerging consumer rituals.

Separate durable cultural shifts from short-term fads by assessing relevance, velocity, scale, emotional resonance, category fit, and business implications.

Develop a clear point of view on which trends ELC should monitor, test, invest in, or activate.

Description
2. Translate Cultural Signals into Business Opportunity Connect macro cultural drivers, category shifts, and social signals to tangible opportunities for brands, regions, categories, innovation, R&D, packaging, and consumer experience.

Build strategic frameworks that help teams understand where to play, how to win, and how emerging consumer needs can inform future product, experience, communication, and portfolio decisions.

Partner with Commercial Innovation, Category Strategy, R&D, Packaging, Regions, and Brand teams to convert trend intelligence into innovation territories, concept inspiration, claims direction, consumer experience ideas, and growth platforms.

Support opportunity sizing, prioritization, and activation using a combination of cultural interpretation, social listening, market data, consumer insight, and competitive intelligence.
3. Build…