L’Oreal’s Oops Moment: Harvard MBA Student Tilts at Cosmetics Giant

That comment helped inspire her response, when, before her next class that day, she received the missive from L’Oreal, she says. “I literally gasped,” Assaf says. “I never thought I would see L’Oreal in my inbox, at least not to recruit me for a job.”

HBS PROF GIVES NEW IDEAS ABOUT LEADERSHIP

The cases she’s studied in Margolis’ class have given her new ideas about leadership, she says. “You can use your story or your strategy to change the way other people think about an issue,” Assaf says.

The recruitment letter gave Assaf a launching platform for her story, and she updated it with the response she received from Deleveaux the next day.

“Please know, our company’s top priority is the safety of our customers,” wrote Deleveaux, a 2005 Columbia Business School MBA. “We would never put an ingredient in a product that we wouldn’t put on our own skin.”

That response provided further fodder for Assaf, who then posted L’Oreal’s online statements about the safety of their products, following them with a link to a list of 1,373 chemicals prohibited in cosmetics by the European Union, and a statement that, “As of today, 1,362 of them are still legal and widely used in U.S. products.”

Now, Margolis is helping her “develop a business plan to try and disrupt the beauty industry,” Assaf says. “It’s just incredible the support here.”

EAT IT, AND SMEAR IT ON YOUR FACE

Peers within her HBS section have joined her in working on two business plans, one of them based on using common foodstuffs such as olive oil and coconut oil to make beauty products.

On carrying her activist bent into an elite business school, Assaf says, “There are always going to be people who believe that I went outside the designated boundaries of how I’m supposed to act as an HBS student.

“Next time they’re in the shower, maybe they will flip over the shampoo bottle and look at what’s in it.”

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