Beauty incubator Maesa names new execs

Global beauty brand incubator Maesa has announced a number of key roles, with new innovation, marketing and strategy leaders, as well as a new CFO.

Tara Brown joins the firm as Group Chief Marketing Officer. She has over 20 years of experience, particularly in beauty and personal care. She previously served as Keurig’s VP Brand Marketing, Strategy and Innovation. And before this she was a member of Johnson & Johnson’s Global Leadership Team as VP Total Brand Experience, with responsibilities for global marketing operations and for building leading edge digital capabilities. She’s also worked in senior roles at Procter & Gamble.

She’s replacing Scott Oshry at Maesa as he’s moving on to a major new role within the firm. Handing over his his brand, digital, e-commerce, CMI, and influencers’ marketing management responsibilities for Maesa’s proprietary brands to Brown, he’s now becoming Chief Innovation Officer.

In the role, his focus will be innovation (of course), as well as brand incubation and new business development on a global basis. But he’ll continue to manage marketing and product development for US private label brands, while Brown will also oversee marketing and product development for all European private label brands in addition to her responsibilities on Maesa’s own brands.

Another new hire is Krista Lausman as  Senior Director, Strategic Planning and Transformation where she’ll manage business strategy development and implementation. Most recently, she was an Engagement Manager at L.E.K. Consulting where she advised corporate and private equity clients on a range of strategic issues.

And the company also has a new finance chief with Zaheer Ferguson joining at Group CFO. He has extensive experience in the financial and beauty sectors. Most recently, he’s been Executive VP Portfolio Group as a member of the Bain Capital European Private Equity team since 2019. He also worked at Coty and was the finance transformation lead for the largest merger in the beauty industry when Coty acquired Procter & Gamble Beauty.

All of the new execs report directly to CEO Gianni Pieraccioni, who said the team takes up the new roles at an “exciting moment for our company”.

Maesa is a key incubator of innovative proprietary beauty brands and the provider of strategic outsourcing and private labels to retailers and beauty operators in mass, drug, prestige and speciality trade channels. It has created brands such as Kristin Ess, Flower, Hairitage, TPH by Taraji, Hey Humans, Anomaly, and Mix:Bar. And it has worked with Target, Walmart, Dollar General, Ulta, CVS,  AS Watson, Boots, DM, and Douglas.