Michelle Freyre Is Redefining Leadership in the Beauty Industry—and Beyond

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Michelle Freyre believes beauty is more than a three-step skin-care routine.

“To so many Latinas, it’s a real external representation of who you are,” says the 53-year-old global brand president of Clinique and Origins at Estée Lauder. “My mom taught me a lot about beauty, not just about being made-up, but to feel my best and most empowered self.” Freyre, whose introduction to skin care and makeup was as a customer at a Clinique counter at her local retail store in Puerto Rico, where she grew up, is now using those lessons to inform her work as the leader of decades-old, billion-dollar cosmetics brands with a global reach.

Freyre spent 20 years at Johnson & Johnson before uprooting her family, including 7-month-old twins, from the West to East Coast to pursue a new leadership opportunity. That process taught Freyre much about risk-taking, which she says is core to her leadership. But as she rose through the ranks, she was also forced to reconcile her cultural norms with the expectations set by the male-dominated business world. “It took a while for me to feel safe and be my authentic self. And when I think of my authentic self, it’s dressing more feminine, in my hair, my red lipstick, the earrings, all of that,” she says. “And even how I speak with my hands.”

Her visibility has proved beneficial to other Latinos at the company. As an executive sponsor of Hispanic Connections, Estée Lauder’s employee resource group for Latino employees that has more than 700 members, Freyre helped launch the company’s sponsorship program, which works to retain, develop, and attract senior-level Hispanic talent. “Michelle said vamos, sentémonos, let’s sit down, let’s put our heads together, and let’s do it,” says Barma Uruchima, a vice president at Estée Lauder and the co-chair of the ERG.

Overall, Estée Lauder Companies (ELC) is relatively diverse. In 2023, just over 50% of employees at ELC identified as a person of color, up from 46% in 2021, according to ELC’s social impact and sustainability report. And Hispanic or Latino representation in the corporation stands at 18%—about the same as the demographic’s proportion in the U.S. But Latinas specifically, across corporate America, make up under 5% of entry-level roles. The numbers grow even more stark the higher the ranking, with Latinas accounting for just 1.5% of senior vice president positions across the country, according to a report by nonprofit Lean In. Freyre says she is grateful for all the mentors she’s met throughout her career, but she goes silent when asked to name Latino leaders in the industry who have mentored her on her own career path.

Freyre hopes to fill that gap. “There was no one that was Latino when I was growing up that was above me, which is just a testament to the work we have to do,” she says. “I do feel a huge responsibility to pay it forward. Because I do know that now they can look at me. But I have to go and pull them up with me and make that happen.”