Unilever’s Mira Beauty Hires New CPO and Its First CMO

“Mira Beauty is the digital truth serum beauty needed,” Lord said in a statement. “It combines state-of-the-art AI with peer-to-peer product recommendations—away from the noise and social hype that flood the beauty space. I look forward to continuing to help our guests find the right beauty products for them through noninvasive personalization.”

Lord, who was honored as an Adweek Pride Star this year and currently serves as a member of Adweek’s Innovators Council, was most recently with Nars Cosmetics, a subsidiary of Japanese beauty mammoth Shiseido, as the brand’s executive director of global omnichannel marketing and customer relationships.

During his two-year stint at Nars, Lord launched an immersive virtual try-on experience, expanded Nars’ ecommerce footprint worldwide, and increased d-to-c digital sales by implementing installment payments and native social media shopping. Lord assumed his new position at Mira Beauty in February. (Per Lord, the company wanted to wait until after its fundraiser and rebranding to announce its new executive hires.)

Under Lord’s leadership, Mira Beauty has removed all product reviews that may have been inauthentic or misleading aggregated from brand discovery and reviews platform Influenster. Now, the beauty library and shopping site, which translates over 10 million product pages, is populated by posts, reviews and answers from its community members. Lord also spearheaded the launch of first-to-market search categories that allow users to filter branded founded by women and BIPOC, citing in the statement his desire for upping transparency and diversity.

Additionally, Lord was also behind Mira Beauty’s Covid-19 relief fund for makeup artists, Sephora advisers and beauty professionals who were furloughed or laid off.

Sampath, who joined the company in 2019 as vp of product and officially began as chief marketing officer in March, is a former technology strategist with expertise in building social engines and products for Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo. “In a world where beauty consumers and enthusiasts are bombarded with aggrandized claims, Mira Beauty offers a destination for real, authentic product recommendations that are backed by strong AI and data chops as well as crowdsourced intel from supportive community,” Sampath said in a statement. “I am thrilled to have joined such an incredibly talented team, and I look forward to helping our guests find the right beauty products based on their interests, values and how they self-identify.”

“We are thrilled to announce the appointment of a remarkably brilliant woman of color to our leadership team,” Lord wrote to Adweek in an email.

At Mira Beauty, Sampath will lead product organization teams and work in partnership with the engineering and marketing teams to amplify the company’s value proposition and improve the user experience.