Description

The Director, Cultural Strategy & Trend Foresight will serve as a global cultural intelligence lead, helping the organization understand where culture, consumers, beauty, luxury, technology, and social behavior are moving - and what those shifts mean for brand strategy, innovation, portfolio priorities, and growth.

This role goes beyond identifying what is trending. It is responsible for interpreting the deeper cultural forces shaping consumer desire, decoding emerging behaviors across markets and communities, and translating weak signals into strategic opportunity. The Director will build a rigorous, globally connected cultural sensing capability that helps ELC distinguish meaningful shifts from short-lived noise, anticipate future consumer needs, and activate trend intelligence across brands, regions, categories, R&D, commercial innovation, and consumer experience teams.

The ideal candidate is a trend strategist, cultural strategist, and storyteller: someone who is deeply fluent in beauty and luxury culture, social platforms, creators, communities, aesthetics, rituals, and emerging consumer values - and who can turn cultural insight into clear strategic direction. This person will bring together social intelligence, qualitative insight, market signals, category data, expert perspectives, and regional knowledge to create actionable narratives that inspire decision-making and unlock growth.

Core Purpose of the Role

This role exists to help ELC understand what is changing in culture, why it matters, and how the business should respond.

The Director will lead the development of a global cultural foresight discipline that connects macro cultural shifts to beauty category dynamics, consumer behavior, innovation territories, brand positioning, and commercial opportunity. They will create the frameworks, rituals, tools, and narratives that enable teams to move from passive trend awareness to active cultural strategy.

Key Responsibilities
1. Lead Global Cultural & Trend Strategy
Build and lead a global cultural intelligence agenda that identifies the most important shifts shaping beauty, luxury, self-expression, identity, wellness, technology, aesthetics, and consumer behavior.
Decode cultural movements across platforms, markets, communities, subcultures, creators, retail environments, and emerging consumer rituals.
Separate durable cultural shifts from short-term fads by assessing relevance, velocity, scale, emotional resonance, category fit, and business implications.
Develop a clear point of view on which trends ELC should monitor, test, invest in, or activate.

Description

2. Translate Cultural Signals into Business Opportunity

• Connect macro cultural drivers, category shifts, and social signals to tangible opportunities for brands, regions, categories, innovation, R&D, packaging, and consumer experience.
• Build strategic frameworks that help teams understand where to play, how to win, and how emerging consumer needs can inform future product, experience, communication, and portfolio decisions.
• Partner with Commercial Innovation, Category Strategy, R&D, Packaging, Regions, and Brand teams to convert trend intelligence into innovation territories, concept inspiration, claims direction, consumer experience ideas, and growth platforms.
• Support opportunity sizing, prioritization, and activation using a combination of cultural interpretation, social listening, market data, consumer insight, and competitive intelligence.

3. Build a Modern Cultural Sensing Capability

• Create and maintain a global signal-sensing system that integrates social and digital analytics, creator and community intelligence, regional market inputs, qualitative insight, syndicated data, expert sources, competitive activity, and emerging technology tools.
• Evolve the existing trends platform into a dynamic global cultural intelligence hub - a single source of truth where markets and regions can contribute, access, and activate cultural and category insights.
• Establish governance, taxonomy, rituals, and reporting standards for trend identification, evaluation, tagging, prioritization, and activation.
• Stay at the forefront of new tools and methodologies, including AI-enabled trend sensing, social listening, semiotics, digital ethnography, creator intelligence, search behavior, visual culture analysis, and emerging consumer research methods.

4. Drive Strategic Storytelling & Executive Influence

• Develop compelling cultural narratives that make complex signals clear, inspiring, and actionable for senior leaders and cross-functional partners.
• Lead monthly and seasonal trend and culture briefings that help the organization understand emerging shifts and their implications for beauty and luxury.
• Create high-impact presentations, trend reports, cultural maps, strategic provocations, and opportunity frameworks that influence brand, innovation, and portfolio decisions.
• Serve as a trusted thought partner to leadership by bringing a future-facing, culturally grounded perspective to strategic business questions.

5. Connect Global, Regional, and Local Intelligence

• Build strong relationships with regional and market teams to surface culturally specific signals, local beauty behaviors, and emerging consumer needs.
• Create mechanisms for markets to contribute to the global cultural intelligence system in a consistent, high-quality way.
• Identify both global cultural patterns and local nuances, ensuring that foresight is not overly centralized or Western-centric.
• Facilitate cross-regional knowledge sharing and help teams understand where trends are global, regional, local, or community-specific.

6. Manage External Partners and Expert Networks

• Manage relationships with trend agencies, futurists, cultural strategists, semioticians, research partners, social intelligence providers, and expert networks.
• Identify best-in-class external partners for non-standard research methodologies and emerging cultural analysis.
• Ensure external work is integrated into ELC's internal point of view and translated into practical business recommendations.

Qualifications

Required Experience

• 10-15 years of experience in cultural strategy, trend strategy, consumer foresight, insights, brand strategy, innovation strategy, social intelligence, or a related strategic discipline.
• Minimum 5 years of experience focused on trends, culture, consumer behavior, or foresight.
• Strong understanding of beauty, luxury, fashion, wellness, lifestyle, identity, and social/digital culture.
• Demonstrated ability to translate cultural and consumer insight into brand, innovation, portfolio, product, communication, or commercial strategy.
• Experience identifying emerging trends across social platforms, creator ecosystems, communities, markets, and cultural spaces.
• Proven ability to distinguish meaningful long-term shifts from fads, viral moments, or platform-specific noise.
• Experience synthesizing multiple data and insight sources, including social listening, digital analytics, syndicated data, consumer research, competitive intelligence, market data, and qualitative inputs.
• Strong executive storytelling skills, with experience presenting to senior leadership and influencing cross-functional stakeholders.
• Experience working in a global, matrixed organization and partnering across regions, brands, and functions.

Preferred Experience

• Experience in prestige beauty, luxury, fashion, lifestyle, wellness, or consumer goods.
• Strong fluency in TikTok, Instagram, creator culture, social search, visual culture, aesthetics, online communities, and emerging digital behaviors.
• Familiarity with semiotics, digital ethnography, cultural analysis, futures methodologies, social listening tools, AI-enabled research, or innovation strategy.
• Experience managing trend platforms, insight portals, knowledge hubs, or enterprise-wide intelligence systems.
• Experience working with trend agencies, futurists, cultural strategists, research vendors, or ex fashion desirable

Pay Range:

The anticipated base salary range for this position is $124,200.00 to $214,450.00. Exact salary depends on several factors such as experience, skills, education, and budget. Salary range may vary based on geographic location. In addition to base salary, this position is eligible for participation in a highly competitive bonus program as well as participation in the share incentive plan. In addition,

In addition to base salary, this position is eligible for participation in a highly competitive bonus program with the possibility for overachievement based on performance and company results. In addition, The Estée Lauder Companies offers a variety of benefits to eligible employees, including health insurance coverage (medical, dental, and vision insurance), wellness and family support programs, life and disability insurance, retirement savings plans, paid leave programs, education-related programs, paid holidays and vacation time, and many others. Many of these benefits are subsidized or fully paid for by the company.