Sephora’s Vice President of Marketing Partnerships on Her Career

What separates your typical store from a powerhouse retailer is the relationship—and experience—it builds with its customers. Sephora, one of the largest beauty retailers to date, is certainly no stranger to this strategy. Internal teams work tirelessly to reimagine the consumer experience, from how people interact with brands to the promotions and marketing campaigns they see online. No one knows this better than Sephora veteran and vice president of marketing partnerships, Celessa Baker. 

Baker built her career around studying the connection between audience and product. How do people feel influenced? What is an opportunity to be disruptive and innovative in an industry? These are the types of questions she asks when leading Sephora in digital partnerships. Most recently, the retailer has found itself hitting home runs with women’s sports. In May, Sephora debuted its partnership with the new WNBA team, the Golden State Valkyries, which (believe it or not) all started with a team member sending a DM. While it may feel seamless and serendipitous from the outside looking in, Baker is leading the charge behind the scenes to surface opportunities for Sephora. (Not only to elevate brand awareness, but to forge a lasting impact.) Ahead, Baker shares her career journey, her latest pivot at Sephora, and the legacy she hopes to leave behind.

What did you initially think that you wanted to do professionally?

“Where I started college and where I ended college were not a linear path. I thought I was gonna be a doctor, and then I switched gears. I fell in love with the idea of marketing through my career journey. It wasn’t as clear as saying I wanted to go into marketing and get an MBA. It was the concept of connecting with consumers and influencing what they do. There was a class in college about what influences you to make a purchase, and that’s where I started to think about a career in marketing. I really thought about my use case and what influences me. Social [media] wasn’t a big presence at the time, so back then, it was word of mouth. Is my friend going to influence what I am going to do? Why? Where are those influences, and who do I trust most?”

You started your career in radio and entertainment before entering the retail industry via Men’s Warehouse. How did you eventually evolve into Sephora? 

“I’m a marketer. I love marketing, but when I see an opportunity, I raise my hand and take a risk. During my time at Men’s Warehouse, I did a slight pivot in the organization into the tech department for our app. I started working on app enablement for in-store communication so that you could speed up customer service, store training, and development. In every meeting, someone said Sephora has the best app, Sephora has the best experience. I’m like, well then, why am I here and not there?

“Luckily for me, I had a couple of friends who worked at Sephora, and I started to just chip away. At that time, Sephora was going through a marketing reimagination, and it just kind of aligned. I worked my way in and got a job. I took a lateral move because I wanted to be at Sephora. [I said to myself], if they’re the best, then I want to be at the best, so let me invest in that. Now I’ve been at Sephora for 11 years.”

For most of your time at Sephora, you were in brand marketing. Tell me about that era of your career.

“I will never forget my first day at Sephora. It was a tiny brand marketing team. My director told me it was her last day, and I thought, “Oh my god, what did I sign up for?’ I jumped way into the deep end, learned so much, and spent my career thinking about the evolution of that team and building it out. When I left, I had a 23-person team. I invested in that.

“I found the work was fast-paced, which I needed. It was complex, which I loved. No day was the same, and each day it’s a different type of work. I loved that it was in marketing and halfway in merchandising, because that’s a core partner, but also all of the brands that we carried. I was able to see the beauty world and the retail world from the outside of Sephora’s four walls and bring that information in. It was a constant world of stimulation and engagement.

“I’m always grateful that Sephora thinks client-centric first. We build things around what’s in the service of the consumer—that will make us the preferred retailer. Always having that at the forefront has kept me engaged. Sephora has been a beautiful place to allow me to try new things, learn new things on their watch, and contribute to the business. Over time, it became less about my personal career journey and more about the career journeys of those that I was mentoring or those on my team that I could then give them guidance and help them develop their careers.”

What are some of your core day-to-day responsibilities?

“What my job looks like right now is a small team of four. We live, breathe, and eat all things social partnerships. It’s market research, understanding who the players are in the market, what is happening, what could be of interest, and where we should explore next. Then it is a lot of vetting partnerships and thinking of ideation. We’re in a new space, so we can build something nobody has ever seen before. We can amplify something that’s existing, we can tack onto something that’s about to happen. It’s future-forward thinking in a space that has no restrictions.

“We think about Sephora and what partnership will help amplify or align with the core values. What’s gonna be disruptive in the space? We are out in the world in the wild, thinking about what we can build.”

Over the past few years, we’ve seen an increase in beauty and sports partnerships. From Unrivaled to the Valkyries, Sephora has certainly been at the forefront of the trend. How does the brand approach this strategy?

“We thought about Unrivaled as an emerging league that we were taking a risk on. Who knew if it was gonna survive and be here beyond the first season? Through that partnership, we labeled ourselves, and we put the fund in funding. We were not the partner that came and said, ‘Hey, we need our logo everywhere because we need brand awareness.’ We thought about how we can be in the service of the consumer in this regard. How can we be in service of the athletes? We provide glam for their media days, we introduced them to the world of beauty, knowing that a lot of athletes are trying to build brands on and off the court.

“We took that and slid into the DMs of the Golden State Valkyries. Sephora wasn’t known as being in this space. So, of course, intrinsically, they probably wouldn’t have thought, let’s reach out to Sephora and see if they want to partner. We took some of the key learnings of Unrivaled and started a conversation. Within 60 days, we were moving forward [with the partnership].

“Why it was important was twofold. The business of women’s basketball is growing, so if we’re gonna jump in, we wanna jump in. But really, it was a team that was in our backyard. A lot of people do not know that Sephora is headquartered in San Francisco. So it was a great way to support the Bay Area. 

“They are a team that is aligned with our values in terms of investing in the players. They built out a practice facility dedicated to the female athletes. That’s a luxury in the WNBA space. So knowing that that was gonna be there, we could carry some of the elements we learned from Unrivaled with the glam room, the media day, and some of those entitlements. But also knowing the Bay Area is huge with sports fandom. The Valkyries are sold out for the season. They are now the most valuable WNBA team within the first season, and it hasn’t finished. So finding a partner that allows us to express our core values, that we are aligned in value, but also there’s some sort of magic there. It just provides a level of fan engagement experience that’s unique in our market.”

What was it like attending the first Golden State Valkyries game and witnessing all of your hard work come to life in a fully packed stadium?

“You try not to get too jaded, like, oh, we did this. I think it blew through our expectations in terms of the energy in that arena on night one—it was unmatched. I’ve been to a lot of sporting events, and just seeing the level of support [was incredible]. When you walk into the arena and you see everybody in the violet shirts, you feel the energy and engagement. It was surreal. It was a pinch-me moment. Then, of course, our team is always like, how can we make it better? What do we do next? Where do we push? But sometimes we have to learn the art of pausing and appreciating the moment in time.”

What is the most challenging part of your job right now?

“I think being able to speed up picking the right partner is the most challenging. In the first half of the year, we probably vetted over 300 partners. Then you have to comb through all those meetings. That in and of itself is exhausting. 

“I don’t want to say the hard part, but rather the magic is finding the right partner that aligns with who you are, so that you can go to market in a disruptive way. I think the partnership landscape is ripe for reimagination. A lot of brands have used these larger partnerships for amplification and top-of-mind awareness of who they are as a brand. We are actually coming at it from a perspective of wanting to make an impact that changes the future of women’s sports. We don’t wanna invest because we need our logo there. We want to invest because it’s the right thing to do at the right time. And we wanna make a longstanding impact.

“It can be challenging because partners are traditionally saying, ‘Well I have all these places you can put your logo’ or ‘I get this much broadcast in reach.’ We’re like, yeah, we want something else. We want to be more intentional in building the next generation of female athletes into brand ambassadors. We want to help them think about their business and their brand. We want to connect with consumers in a way that is meaningful for them. Not just, here’s my logo, it’s Sephora sponsored. Yay. We’d walk away.”

You mentioned reaching a point in your career where you began focusing on mentoring your team. What about your mentors? Was there anyone who helped you get to where you are today? 

“Coming into retail and then beauty, I was on an island where this was not an industry I was familiar with. Having the luxury of being at a company for so long, 11 years at Sephora, I’ve been able to build relationships within the industry and maintain the ones outside of the industry that have paid it forward. Sephora and LVMH have offered programs like EllesVMH, which is our internal ERG group. Through that, I’ve been aligned with mentors who are sitting within the LVMH portfolio, maybe not just Sephora, and I’ve been able to gain career-shaping insights and guidance.

“I have a core group of friends that I have met through my years of beauty, and we have our own little council. We have a group chat, and we’re like, Hey, does this sound crazy? We sit in different markets in different tiers and titles. Even my peers [are mentors]. I have a work wife. She’s been with me along this journey. We built the brand marketing team together. We are very different in nature, but we are very close and are each other’s sounding board.”

Do you have any advice for anyone looking to break into the partnerships field?

“Networking is key. I think people think sending a resume over while applying online is the best foot forward. I used to reverse engineer people’s addresses in cold emails so I could get on their radar. Knowing somebody on the inside, continuing to show up at conferences or places where individuals gather in an industry that you want to get into. You may not always get a response when you slide into someone’s DMs or LinkedIn. So, casting a wide net and then nurturing that relationship.

“Remember that it’s not transactional. Make sure you’re not just like, ‘hey, there was a job at Sephora.’ No. Hey, can we get to know each other? Can I take you out for coffee? Can we have a conversation about this? Who are you outside of your job? What’s your career journey? Investing in the relationship, not just the transaction, is important.”

What kind of lasting impact do you hope to have on the beauty industry? What do you want your legacy to represent?

“It’s twofold. One would be the team and talent that I mentor, hoping that they have long and fruitful careers within marketing and or retail. I want them to look back and say oh, I remember this coaching moment, or an opportunity you gave me—you saw something in me. 

“My impact would be some thumbprint of legacy that I’ve left behind that has improved it for the next generation of women. I want those who work in the industry and young girls who look at beauty and consume it on a day-to-day basis to feel seen, heard, and represented in the beauty landscape. Whatever role I can play to continue advancing that so it is not seen as a standoffish industry, but something inclusive [I’ll be happy with].”