Movie-making, volcano-climbing, Hudong-exploring: Discover Laure’s L’Oréal Great Story.
By: Beauty Tomorrow
Tags: Career Paths, Loreal, Career Change, Lorealgreatstory, Career

We’re all used to linear career stories, the ones that seem smooth, easy, rational. So when Laure started as an intern at L’Oréal China Operations after 7 years of working in a completely different field, the move probably surprised many people in her life. But when you read her story, it appears that this move is what helped her reconcile with her roots, and her values, in her own way. Laure’s story is about resilience, courage, humility, and nature. We hope that it inspires many to follow their dreams, too. We’ll turn to Laure to share her story.

Hi Laure! What is your job at L’Oréal today?

As a CSR and Sustainability Director for the Consumer Products Division, my role is to support our big brands like L’Oréal Paris, Garnier, Maybelline, NYX, and Essie in transforming towards a more sustainable business model.

This means helping them define their strategy, their positioning, their roadmap in order to integrate sustainability inside their brand’s DNA. It’s quite versatile, it goes from:

product transformation (e.g. how to integrate recycled material, how to lighten the packaging, how to transform the formulas to reality) leading the transformation of the business (e.g. tackling echo design of merchandising elements, reducing distractions, reducing the co2 emissions from our transportation) supporting change management (e.g. helping people upskill when it comes to these topics, building learning programs, doing workshops to engage teams, and following the global performance)

What did you study before?

When I was a child my dream job was to become a children’s doctor, a pediatrician. I was very consistent with this path because I always kept to a scientific curriculum, but suddenly I decided to study political sciences in Paris. This wasn’t necessarily for the next steps, but really more for curiosity because I wanted to learn more! After that, I wanted to continue in [sustainable]development as it was called at that time. However, my ex-boyfriend was planning the same so I preferred following my best friend and went for a master's specialization in culture. At 20 years old, that’s how I ended up graduating from cultural management. Quite a stretch right!? During my studies, I was required to spend one year abroad. My first choice was to go to India… but I was not accepted. My second choice was a school of arts in New York, studying music, theater, enjoying the freedom I thought could come with becoming an actress, so this is where I went! It turns out, I was not too bad at this, but when I came back to Paris, the classes were too expensive for what I could afford and I had a few other mitigating factors.

So after graduation, it all made sense to me to find work in the movie industry! I was actually really passionate about cinema. I was going to the movies, at least six times per week but it was very hard to find a job in this market and so I did very short time contracts: three months here, four months there… I was struggling. It was a very hard personal situation, I still had some hesitations, should I go back to school to study medicine? But I thought it would be too long and too costly. It lasted like this six years until I decided that I needed a break so I took one year off went to travel around the world.

What did you do during this year of adventure?

So at 28 or 29, I did six months in Asia and six months in South America. These were incredible experiences! Lots of nature, lots of mountain climbing, lots of sleeping out in the street and just outdoors, under the sky. I went to Thailand, Indonesia, Kazakhstan to Kyrgyzstan, trekking, 15 days without showering as well (!!!) We had the first experience of climbing a volcano in Ecuador and we started climbing during a storm which was very dangerous at night. When the sun rose I realized I could not see anything and asked people around if it was dark… The reason why I could not see was that too much snow went into my eyes during the storm and the first part was frozen… I was blind for maybe six or eight hours which was terrifying. Back down the volcano, I had to spend one entire day with potatoes on my eyes because there were no hospitals around (apparently a very effective healing method, who knew?) Then it came back the day after, but I swore I would never climb again. I guess three weeks later we were climbing another mountain at 6 000 meters…