Sephora global chief merchandising officer: ‘The business of beauty is better off with more diverse voices’

Ten years ago, Sephora debuted Accelerate, an incubator program supporting early-stage women founders. The program has since produced 41 graduates, with more than half launching at Sephora, including skin care brands Eadem and Topicals, and makeup brand Kulfi.

The program’s revamp in 2021 to center on BIPOC-founded brands helped Sephora more than triple its Black-owned brand assortment. While major beauty retailers including Target, Amazon, and Kohl’s have rolled back some DEI efforts over the past year, Sephora and Ulta Beauty are among those that largely haven’t waivered. Per Sephora’s 2025 DE&I Heart Journey Report, Sephora Accelerate remains a pillar of its retail-focused DEI efforts, along with the $100,000 Sephora Beauty Grant, created with the 15 Percent Pledge to support underrepresented beauty founders, awarded to Accelerate graduate MAED last month.

While marketing for the 2026 incubator, which opened applications earlier this month, notes those of all backgrounds may apply, “the heart of the program is to improve diversity in our brand community,” Global Chief Merchandising Officer Priya Venkatesh told Retail Brew.

Over the program’s 10 years, Sephora has fine-tuned its curriculum to prime brands for success, with newly added content centering on team-building, financial management, and scaling, and long-term growth. Speaking with Retail Brew, Venkatesh reflected on the past decade of Sephora Accelerate and its impact on founders and the retailer itself.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What are some of the most challenging or surprising lessons about retail that these new brands learn within the program?

Some of the most impactful moments that we’re realizing for brands are when other founders are sharing their stories and their hurdles with the group. [Tower28 founder] Amy Liu or [Danessa Myricks founder] Danessa Myricks have really led share-out sessions with our cohorts, and we have heard that’s been the most transformational or biggest impact sessions, because they get to ask questions, and first of all, some of it can be just emotional, like now you see this successful brand, but they haven’t gotten there without all these hurdles. You’re not alone in the struggles of entrepreneurship.

We underestimate how much community and sharing experiences and stories mean to new founders, and also for them to know that really, Rome wasn’t built in a day, that it takes time.

And then, honestly, the relationships that they’ve built within the founder community has also been incredible, with established founders, and even with other new founders, it’s just the community and support system they’ve found have been one of the most valuable things from the program.

What have these brands taught you about where innovation in beauty is headed, and how has that impacted your role?

When you look at a brand like Eadem or Kulfi, yes, of course, there’s some great product innovation, but it’s also the ability to craft a story around a culture that you’re inspired by or really trying to bring a different voice to the beauty industry. We wouldn’t have imagined there could be a time when we see brands like Kulfi that’s trying to bring South Asian culture into makeup successfully, or Brown Girl Jane that continues to bring really exciting cultural stories into fragrance, or Sienna Naturals that’s really about talking about clean hair care and curly hair in different ways.

What’s unique about Accelerate [is] that’s taught us is there is a place and way to bring unique cultures into beauty and make it accessible for everyone…invite everyone to share these stories and culture. It’s not meant for only certain segments of the population, but there is this universality of certain cultures that when it’s shared and done in a way that’s approachable to everyone, it works. One of our recent hits has been Eadem, which is, again, the science of it is very strong. It’s really good, clean skin care and wonderful lip products. But again, the personality of the brand is something different, and is a fresh voice in beauty that’s been very successful.

It’s very clear the ways that the brands in Accelerate benefit from being in the program. Where do you feel like Sephora benefits the most?

The business of beauty is better off with more diverse voices and more independent voices. So that’s the long game we’re playing, and that was a motivation behind Accelerate, is to improve the pipeline we have. The reality is the global customer, the American customer, it’s all more diverse. When you have diverse founders and brands, we serve them better.

We want to have a consistently more diverse pipeline of independent and diverse brand founders, and if we are able to give this help, then the pipe is helpful. If we’re not, then there’s so many macroeconomic waves that come in and out. It’s just always a struggle for independent brands to raise the capital, found a brand, get what they need to come up with sustainable brands. For us, we’re always happy to have more successful independent brands with diverse stories and voices, and that’s really the benefit for us. If we close off that pipeline and just have big conglomerates playing in beauty, we don’t think that’s the outcome that’s going to be great for us.