The Estée Lauder Cos. has confirmed that Tracey T. Travis, government vice chairman and chief monetary officer, will retire.
As WWD first reported on Thursday, Travis will exit the publicly listed firm at a time when hypothesis continues to swirl over the way forward for chief government officer Fabrizio Freda.
Travis’ retirement shall be efficient as of June 30, 2025, on the finish of Lauder’s subsequent fiscal yr. The corporate mentioned a successor has been recognized and shall be named within the coming weeks, and that Travis “will work intently with this individual to make sure a clean and profitable transition.”
In her function, Travis oversaw world finance, accounting, investor relations, info know-how and technique and new enterprise improvement. She joined the corporate in 2012 from Ralph Lauren Corp., the place she was senior vice chairman of finance and chief monetary officer. She additionally served as a member of the chief management staff and funding improvement committee. Travis started her profession at Basic Motors as an engineer, and likewise held management roles at Restricted Manufacturers, American Nationwide Can and PepsiCo.
“Tracey has been a useful enterprise associate and a trusted adviser to me, our executives and board of administrators, in addition to a mentor and function mannequin to many throughout our group,” Freda mentioned in an announcement. “She has constructed and led a strong, built-in world finance and technique group that has served as a valued enterprise associate throughout the corporate and has helped to optimize supply of our monetary plans. Her monetary acumen, self-discipline and operational excellence have been important to our firm’s progress, and so many areas of our group have her priceless imprint on them.”
In an inner memo obtained by WWD, government chairman William Lauder and Freda lauded Travis’ transformation of the corporate’s World Finance & Technique group, writing that she and her staff solidified Lauder’s core planning course of with an emphasis on executional excellence.
“Working alongside senior management, Tracey and her staff have carried out and pushed a progressive end-to-end mergers and acquisitions technique and value-driven empowerment and integration, together with many strategic acquisitions comparable to Deciem and Tom Ford,” they wrote, noting that she additionally led New Incubation Ventures staff to allow the “sourcing, constructing and progress of the manufacturers of tomorrow.”
In an announcement, William Lauder mentioned, “Tracey has had a outstanding influence on driving our enterprise ahead by main our portfolio technique, but additionally by growing our expertise, cultivating a tradition of inclusion and continued studying, and advancing initiatives to foster a extra various and equitable office and market.”
Travis is amongst a small group of ladies to succeed in the CFO place in a large-cap firm — in response to the S&P 500, solely about 15 % of CFOs at this time are girls. At Lauder, Travis cofounded the Ladies’s Management Community in 2017, which has greater than 2,000 world members.
“Our youthful feminine generations, from what I’ve seen, actually at Estée Lauder, do have extra confidence, which is terrific,” she mentioned, throughout a hearth chat on the WWD Ladies in Energy convention in 2022, noting that there’s nonetheless a lot work to be accomplished in tackling gender disparities within the office.
She spoke of the significance of her engineering diploma, noting that it taught her be an issue solver. “I like to impact change, and engineering actually teaches you the way to try this,” she mentioned.
Tracey Travis, government vice chairman and chief monetary officer of the Estée Lauder Cos., on the 2022 WWD x FN x Magnificence Inc Ladies in Energy occasion in New York Metropolis.
Kreg Holt/WWD
Travis has acquired quite a few awards in the course of the course of her profession, together with Finest CFO from Institutional Investor journal; Prime 100 African People in Company America and Most Highly effective Ladies in Company America by Black Enterprise journal; the CEW Achiever Award in 2019, and WWD’s Ladies in Energy in 2022. This April, she was honored with the distinguished alumni award by her alma mater, the College of Pittsburgh Swanson Faculty of Engineering. She at the moment serves on the board of administrators of Accenture plc and Meta Platforms Inc.
A mom of two daughters, Travis has at all times championed the idea of ladies with the ability to stability a high-powered profession with a strong household life, so long as that’s their private alternative. “I’m a giant ‘no regrets’ individual. I’ve made acutely aware decisions,” she advised WWD in 2022. “My youngest daughter began her profession in a kind of [demanding] jobs and really shortly determined she wished extra stability. I need them each to reside a full life, and that features having a profession that’s their alternative.”
