At the 2026 WWD x FN x Beauty Inc Women in Power conference, Revlon’s Michelle Peluso and Edge Empower’s Aniela Unguresan made the case that expediting the rate of female leadership in beauty’s C-suites must become more of an action-driven effort than it has been.
“There are companies that are breaking the mold; there are companies who are making a huge amount of progress for women,” said Peluso, who is chief executive officer of Revlon, adding, “it’s incumbent on every single one of us to think extremely intentionally about the environments we’re creating, because when you do that, you see companies like Ulta and Revlon and Walmart who are bucking the trend significantly.”
In 2026, 11 percent of Fortune 500 companies are run by women — a record percentage, to be sure, but one that has come at a slow clip.
“Women are solidly represented in the workforce and the first line of management, but [these industries], even more in the last decade, were a little slower to build those positions of CEO, CFO and board chairs that were occupied by women — those still remain out of touch,” said Unguresan, who founded Edge Empower.
She added that Edge’s annual survey of 200,000 employees across industries indicates that in the last two years, there has been a six- to seven-point erosion in how many employees agree that gender balance and inclusion are key for their organization to remain competitive.
“Has the business case for investing in gender balance, equity, inclusion changed? No — but the conversation around those topics has changed tremendously,” she said. “So it is more important than ever that we engrain the need for purposeful investments in critical business priorities.”
For Peluso, the advent of AI only makes being proactive more important.
“I started my career by founding a company that Travelocity bought in the beginning of the internet age…and I remember looking around and going to Google for the first time and thinking, gosh, the future is literally being coded by men,” she said. “It is absolutely the case that the future is being written again in this world of AI. The question for each of you and for me is: Are we going to be part of that?
“Are we going to make sure that when we’re thinking about our training programs, our education programs, our change management programs — will they include women, and will they include women in a significant portion? That’s the job for all of us.”
Mentorship and sponsorship remain critical, she said, but making sure women are at the cutting edge of these new technologies that are rapidly changing the ways of work must also become a top priority.
“Access to those critical career assignments is such an important element that is embedded into how talents are being developed in an organization,” said Unguresan. “And then, of course, pay equity — those are the two key ingredients for an organization to value talent and set the stage for talent to succeed.”
Added Peluso: “If I was starting my career again in this moment, or if I was doing management again for the first time in this moment, I would really, really make sure that I felt savvy and ready for the AI world. I would lean in hard, because being at the forefront of massive changes like this — whether it’s from a governance perspective or a usage perspective or a data perspective — being on the ground floor when the world changes serves your career for decades.”
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