Evelyn H. Lauder
Sr. Corporate Vice President, The Estée Lauder Companies Inc.
Founder and Chairman, The Breast Cancer Research Foundation
Evelyn H. Lauder is an articulate, outspoken dynamo. She is an astute businesswoman, skilled sportswoman and talented photographer; an ardent activist and philanthropist, and a devoted wife, mother and grandmother. Born in Vienna and a survivor of the London blitz, she came to the United States as a youngster with her parents. Her remarkable life is an American success story.
Shortly after her marriage to Leonard A. Lauder, now Chairman of The Estée Lauder Companies, Evelyn Lauder was persuaded to join the family business by her mother-in-law, Mrs. Estée Lauder. Her teaching background was an excellent springboard for one of her earliest jobs - creating the Company's initial training programs - and she enhanced the Estée Lauder range by adding many colors and treatment products that appealed to a wider range of complexions and skin types. More than 40 years later, Mrs. Lauder remains a driving force in the success of The Estée Lauder Companies. In 1999, she was featured in Crain's New York Business magazine as one of New York's 100 most Influential Women in Business.
Mrs. Lauder has held many different positions while contributing her invaluable insights about new fashion trends, consumers' rapidly changing needs and new approaches to the development of innovative skin care, makeup and fragrance products. She also helped to create the Clinique brand. More recently she has focused on fragrance - an interest shared with her famous mother-in-law and one that stems from her lifelong passion for flowers and gardening. As part of Mrs. Lauder's travels as the Company's "ambassador," she delights in discovering the occasional exotic flower and using it to create a novel fragrance note. Her rare ability to visualize unique fragrance combinations or impressions drives the Company's creative efforts in New York. There, as the head of Fragrance Development Worldwide for The Estée Lauder Companies, she works at bringing these concepts to life in uniquely distinctive yet globally successful fragrances such as Beautiful, Knowing, Estée Lauder Pleasures, Intuition and Beyond Paradise.
Evelyn Lauder's energies and enthusiasm reach outward, too. She is a leader in New York City's cultural and philanthropic life. As a director of The Lauder Foundation, she was instrumental in presenting a whole new concept of Adventure Playgrounds to the City of New York. From 1967 to 1973, The Lauder Foundation replaced outmoded facilities by building three creative play areas in Central Park that were designed to challenge children's skills and stimulate their imaginations while placing a strong emphasis on safety and physical fitness. Mrs. Lauder continues to contribute significantly to city parks through her active participation as a board member of the Central Park Conservancy and New Yorkers for Parks (formerly The Parks Council.) Many other charities have also benefited from Mrs. Lauder's thoughtful guidance and renowned generosity, including not-for-profits devoted to health and human services, education and inner-city schools, the environment, women's causes and the arts.
However, it is for her formidable role in the battle to defeat breast cancer that Evelyn Lauder is perhaps best known. In October 1992, she and Alexandra Penney, then editor of Self magazine, developed the pink ribbon, which has become the worldwide symbol of breast health. Mrs Lauder spearheaded the distribution of hundreds of thousands of ribbons and "Breast Self-Exam" instruction cards at Estée Lauder counters across the United States. That effort placed Breast Cancer Awareness at the public forefront. Fifteen years later, more than 60 million pink ribbons and even greater quantities of educational brochures and bookmarks have been given away around the world.
The Estée Lauder Companies' Breast Cancer Awareness Campaign presently extends to over 40 countries and represents the most significant and influential campaign ever instituted to educate women worldwide about the need for early detection and treatment of breast cancer. In 2000, Mrs. Lauder and The Estée Lauder Companies launched its annual "Global Landmarks Illumination Initiative," in which historic landmarks are illuminated in pink lights during the month of October to focus global attention on this issue. Each year, hundreds of prominent landmarks in more than 40 countries around the world pariticipate, including famous sites such as The Empire State Building, Niagara Falls, the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy, and the Tokyo Tower in Japan.
Mrs. Lauder's leadership in the fight against breast cancer extends beyond the Company, however. In 1989, as a member of the Board of Overseers at Memorial Sloan-Kettering's Cancer Center, she successfully initiated a fund drive that raised in excess of $18 million to equip the first-ever breast and diagnostic center. Completed in 1992, the Evelyn H. Lauder Breast Center at Memorial Sloan-Kettering on East 64th Street in New York City, serves as a worldwide model for offering coordinated supportive services all under one roof for one disease, a concept which has been replicated in other institutions and for other diseases.
In 1993, Mrs. Lauder established The Breast Cancer Research Foundation to address a crucial lack of funding for research. Under her chairmanship, the Foundation has grown to become the largest national organization dedicated exclusively to funding outstanding research relating to the causes, treatment and prevention of breast cancer. Since inception, BCRF has raised $175 million - $32 million in fiscal 2007 alone. In the coming year, these funds will support up to 150 researchers in the United States, Belgium, Canada, France, Israel, Latin America, Spain and the United Kingdom. Mrs. Lauder was recently recognized for her many contributions to breast cancer and the field of philanthropy in New York Magazine's 2006 "The Influentials" issue.
As to her personal interests, wherever Evelyn Lauder goes, her IS30 Olympus camera goes too. In the course of her extensive travels with her husband, she has captured rainbows rising from the Pacific Ocean, sculptural snow scenes while cross-country skiing in Colorado, extraordinary patterns created by light reflecting on water, and landscapes from Myanmar to Chile to Tuscany to the South of France. The stunning results have led to many one-woman exhibitions. The first, in 1992, was mounted at the Holly Solomon Gallery in New York City, and as with all subsequent shows, Mrs. Lauder has donated all of her proceeds to The Breast Cancer Research Foundation.
Her recent photo exhibition, titled "Beauties and Other New Work", opened at Pace/MacGill Gallery in November 2005, followed by exhibitions in Philadelphia in June 2006 and Aspen in July 2006. A limited-edition portfolio entitled "Ten Beauties" was published on the occasion of Mrs. Lauder's exhibition at Pace/MacGill Gallery, with all proceeds from the sale of the portfolio benefiting The Breast Cancer Research Foundation.
Mrs. Lauder has also shown her photographs at a variety of other galleries, including the Harley Baldwin Gallery in Aspen, the John Berggruen Gallery in San Francisco, the Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles, the Greenberg Van Doren Gallery in St. Louis, and the Royal Opera House at Coven Garden in London. Her work has appeared in many publications, including Interview Magazine, American Photo, House & Garden, O: The Oprah Magazine and Town and Country. In October 2002, Harry Abrams Inc. published "An Eye For Beauty", Mrs. Lauder's second collection of photographs of the natural world. Her first book of photographs, also from Abrams, was "The Seasons Observed", which appeared in September 1994. The royalties from sales of both books benefit The Breast Cancer Research Foundation.
