Guerlain chief sustainability officer Cécile Lochard: 'Collaboration is the new competition'
As sustainable products and packaging further cement themselves as top initiatives for beauty companies, luxury French fragrance brand Guerlain, owned by LVMH, is at the forefront of innovation. At the helm of these initiatives is Cécile Lochard, the brand's chief sustainability officer. Lochard joined Guerlain in January 2019 and was quickly promoted to her current role, a first for the brand, in March 2020. That Lochard was not your typical tried-and-true beauty executive -- she came from World Wildlife Fund -- has enabled the heritage brand to be nimble and experimental. "I was working for WWF because I was fond of animals. And I'm so lucky that integrated into Guerlain's purpose is to preserve the bee, the sentinel of the environment and the first pollinator," Lochard said on the latest episode of the Glossy Beauty podcast. Under Lochard's leadership, bee preservation, biodiversity regeneration, climate change, eco-packaging and women's empowerment have been some of the biggest areas of the brand's focus. Alongside UNESCO, the company launched Women for Bees in July 2021, a five-year female beekeeping entrepreneurship program. The entrepreneur program is just one of the many ways the brand is sticking true to its mission.