Mandy Fields, CFO Of E.L.F. Beauty, Is Playing With Giants

Celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, e.l.f. Beauty is competing against legacy cosmetic brands that have been on the scene for five times as long. But they’re certainly doing something right—the company’s stock price has increased more than 1,500 percent in the last five years, making it the best-performing stock on the NYSE during that period.

Mandy Fields has been leading the charge as CFO, for 19 consecutive quarters of growth. She joins Jack McCullough to discuss how e.l.f. Beauty continues to punch above its weight by keeping its community at the heart of everything it does.  Listen by clicking below. The Q&A, lightly edited and trimmed for clarity, follows.

Welcome to the show. I’m your host Jack McCullough and you can follow us online at RockstarCFOs.com. We have a great guest. A great CFO from an intriguing company—Mandy Fields, the CFO of e.l.f. Beauty. Mandy, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me, Jack.

I know you’re a Midwesterner. You grew up in the Midwest. Where did you grow up?

I grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana, so a Midwesterner.

I know you went to school at Indiana State.

Indiana University.

I know you studied business and I’m curious, what was appealing about business to the 17-year-old Mandy?

I’ll take you back even before I was 17 years old. When I was a kid, maybe even as young as like 10 years old or 11 years old. I remember sitting with my mom and balancing everything out. She would get paid and we’d go through and say, “This much needs to go to the rent or go here,” and see what she’d have left.

I’d sit there and I’d write everything down for her. I was like her checkbook balancer. I’d go through and it was the highlight of my week when we were able to do that. I knew from an early age that I would be doing something that involved financials. I did not have words to say, “Yes, I want to be a CFO,” but I knew that I’d be doing something in that realm. By the time I got to IU, choosing business was an easy choice for me. What it came down to is, which route was I going to go? Was I going to go more on the accounting side or the investment banking side? As you see from my background, I chose the investment banking side.

It’s amazing when you think about the influence of your mother. She was just challenged balancing the checkbook and had no idea that this would someday lead to you being a public company CFO.

She may still not understand exactly what I do, but she had no idea at an early age that’s what she was fostering.

Mandy, I was remiss because I’m so excited about e.l.f. Beauty. It occurs to me that perhaps some of our readers aren’t necessarily familiar with it. What can you share with the readers about e.l.f.?

E.l.f. is a fantastic company founded in 2004. We’re celebrating our 20th Anniversary. That’s exciting, but it was founded by a father-son duo that had this premise that they could sell color cosmetics for a dollar over the internet. If you can imagine, this is before the days of the iPhone. Early days of the internet. Honestly, 2004, you talk about commerce online.

We’re digitally native. We’re still the only top five mass color cosmetics brand that has its own direct-to-consumer site. Others will pop you over to Amazon or somewhere else to shop. That’s how we got our early founding. Now, we are on our 19th consecutive quarter of growth. In our 20 year history, we only had two quarters where we have not had growth. It’s a tremendous growth story. Over the past five years, we had the best performing stock in the NYSE. We have seen tremendous investing behind marketing and all of those things to drive both top line and EBITDA margin expansions over these past few years. I’ve been in the role five years now, and I’m so pleased with the progress that we’ve been able to make as a company.

The mission of e.l.f. is what attracted me to the company. We have set out to make the best of beauty available to accessible to every eye, lip and face. We’re doing just that. It’s one of the companies that I’ve been associated with that lives out their mission in every single thing that we do. We are very closely tied to our community.

Our community is reflected in our employee population, with over 70 percent women, and young, diverse and beauty enthusiasts like our community. Even our board of directors is one of the most diverse. We are one of four public companies out of 4,200 public companies that has the board diversity that we have. We are proud of what we’ve built here at e.l.f. Beauty.

That’s fantastic. From that, a bunch of people are going to want to apply for a job there. You mentioned that you started your career in investment banking, which seems preordained from the time you were about seven years old. Along the way you learned, and you joined some huge companies—GAP and Albertsons. What was that journey like going from investment banking to some big companies? What did you learn along the way that prepared you to be the CFO of a smaller company, but a great and fast and growing company?

After school, I moved to New York and I was in investment banking for JP Morgan. I covered the oil and gas industry. What I learned in that experience is that I loved banking. I loved everything finance, but I did not like the industry that I was covering. I intentionally set out to get into consumer. It was one of those things where I wanted to be close to a tangible. Something that you could touch, feel, and interact with. I felt that consumer, you could speak to the heart of people. That’s what I wanted to get into. That’s reflected in the career choices that I’ve made since then.

I would like to say that I had a job in hand and all those things, but it wasn’t that. When I left banking, it was because I had met my husband, who was not yet my husband at the time. I was living in New York and he lived in New Mexico. That’s another story for another day, but he was relocating to the Bay Area is the point. We both moved out to the Bay Area.

When we moved out to the Bay Area, I said, “I want to get into consumer now. This is what I’m going to do. I am going to work for the GAP.” I did not know anyone at the GAP at the time and this is before the days of LinkedIn. I couldn’t just send a LinkedIn message over to someone. What I decided to do was reach out to the CFO of the GAP at the time. Byron Pollitt was the CFO back then and I did not have his email address.

I sent an email. You talk about secrets of CFO. This is one of the secrets. I’ve sent an email to every single combination of email address I could think of, because I didn’t know anyone at the GAP. I sent my resume over and I said, “I’m leaving investment banking. I would love to join your company. These are all the reasons why.”

Sure enough, he forwarded it on and a couple of weeks later, I had a job at the GAP. That’s one lesson I can give. If you want to get in touch with somebody and pursue something, don’t be afraid to just reach out and see what happens. The worst he could have done is not respond. Fine anyway.

The same result is not reaching out. The answers no if you don’t try. I’m sorry, but that was crazy. You were like 25 or 26 years old?

Not even. I was like 24.

Good for you. I wouldn’t have had that self-confidence. I’ll tell you if I ever get that level of self-confidence, but that’s fantastic.

I did that. I got the job of the GAP and it was fantastic. It’s a great company that works for the Banana Republic brand. I worked for GAP, Safeway and Albertsons. Even within those large companies, I was always attracted to the smaller piece of the business. Banana Republic was one of the smaller brands under the GAP portfolio.

When I was at Safeway, the private label portfolio is where I worked in that group. We were about $10 billion in revenue, so a smaller piece of the bigger Safeway pie, but so important to the margins and everything that the company was doing. I’ve always been in the smaller part of these larger companies, which is great because you can feel your impact. Coming over to e.l.f. is more of the same thing. Smaller style and smaller group of employees, but we’re able to accomplish so much.

You went from a colossal company like the GAP to BevMo!, which I had not heard of until you and I met. I don’t think we have them here in New England. It does make sense you were working in a smaller division for a large company, but what was that like going to BevMo with the whole company is small? 

In fact BevMo, from a revenue standpoint, was larger than what e.l.f. was when I first joined. Now we’ve grown the revenues at e.l.f., but I loved it because again, as I said, it was smaller employee base and everybody’s in it together. We’re all moving in the right direction. We want to see the company be successful. There’s not competing priorities. At BevMo, we were all focused on BevMo, our stores, our employees and how we were going to win.

It’s the same feel at e.l.f.. We’re all focused on how e.l.f. Beauty going to win. Some of those bigger organizations, you have the bigger brands and the matrix organization and all of those things that sometimes have competing priorities. In these companies that I’ve had the opportunity and pleasure of being the CFO of, we’re all moving in the same direction, which is great.

I love what you said about e.l.f. Beauty. When you decided to leave BevMo to join e.l.f., what was it about e.l.f. that was attractive to you? Is it like, “This is the great next move?”

We like to say there’s something that happens when you come over to e.l.f. Beauty. That is meeting our CEO and chairman, Tarang Amin. In fact, I like to say that I was Taranged into coming to e.l.f. Beauty. Tarang is an incredible leader. He is a phenomenal storyteller and is at the heart of what has been built at e.l.f. Beauty. He’s been CEO for many years and was a part of when TPG came in and acquired the company. He was a part of the team that they brought in to lead the company forward and took the company public in 2016.

Hearing his passion for the company and the tone he set in terms of our culture, we like to say, “We’re one team and one dream.” That is so true in everything we do. We have one number that every single person in the company is bonused on. Other organizations, I’m sure you’ve seen, there’s very complex calculations to get to the bonus. There’s one number for e.l.f. and everybody knows what that number is.

For our equity plan, we are the only beauty brand that gives equity to every single employee in the company. That also built a lot of wealth for our employees. In my time in joining the company, I’ve seen our share price move from high single digits all the way to close to $160 a share. I’ve seen wealth creation for our employees, which is fantastic to see.

That’s all his philosophy of this “one team, one dream.” When you incentivize everybody to have the company performance at the top of mind, you’re going to see incredible results and that’s exactly what we’ve seen at e.l.f. Beauty. That coupled with our mission of bringing the best and making it accessible to everyone, that theme of inclusivity and positivity. It creates something that’s very hard to replicate in terms of culture and engagement in the company. I felt that from the very first moment that I met Tarang.

Somehow, I’ve lived six decades without ever hearing the phrase “one team, one dream.” I’m going to start using it, though. That’s pretty good. When you and I have spoken in the past, I know you take a lot of pride in e.l.f. Beauty. I’ll call it the purpose-driven practices. They’re a great source of pride for you. What can you share about that?

We are purpose-led and results-driven. We are always going to be led by our purpose. You can feel it throughout the company. You think about something like a price increase as an example. We took a price increase back in 2022 in response to the inflationary environment.

We went out on our social media and told our consumers, our community, “We are taking a price increase by about a dollar on certain items and here’s why. We were very transparent with our community. This is what I’m talking about, the engagement and the transparency. All of those things are super important to us. We had tremendous response to that from our community. “Thank you for not just doing it.” Small things like that you wouldn’t even think a company would be so transparent about. We certainly do that every single day in everything that we do.

Also, another source of pride for you is the ethical practices the company has.

We are very proud to be clean, vegan and cruelty-free for every eye, lip, face, paw and fin we’ve added to our mission. We are animal friendly. We feature a lot of our furry friends in our advertisements and things like that. We’re also Fair Trade certified, which is important. We’re the only beauty brand to be Fair Trade certified.

You hear a lot about fair trade in more of the agricultural space. Coffee tends to come to mind and things of that nature. For a beauty brand, we thought it was important as well to make sure that the manufacturers and the suppliers that we’re using have gone through rigorous audits. We’re making sure that there’s fair labor practices in what we do because that also super important to us and our community.

It’s great to see the CFOs are taking pride in this. One of my earlier guests was the CFO of Chipotle. Their original mission is, “To make the world a better place to live,” which is interesting for casual dining. He took such pride in the fact that they had the best sustainability practices in the industry. I see the same thing with you, that it isn’t about working for a fast-growing and profitable company.

They have to go hand in hand. It’s important for us, personally, and our communities that we serve to make sure that we’re doing right by the planet and our furry friends. Everyone is impacted. We do take great pride in that.

You’ve mentioned a couple of times the CEO, Tarang Amin. There’s been a lot of talk. The most important relationship in the C-Suite is between the CEO and the CFO. You work for him, but at the same point, you’re his partner. I’d love to chat a little bit about what that relationship is like. Does he know that you’ve made a verb out of him?

He does know that he’s a verb. The more I have used it, others have used it as well. We leverage him when we’re trying to land candidates. It’s time to be Taranged. Send them into Tarang. I have a great relationship with Tarang. He is a great mentor to me. I go to him for so many things, even personally, and professionally outside when I’m making different decisions even outside of what I do every day at e.l.f.. He’s always there.

We are tied at the hip in all things. We spend a lot of time with investors together. It’s important for us to be on the same page. Even with our board, he has helped me in how we communicate with the board, how we stay ahead of some of the things that they’re thinking of and making sure that we’re engaging with them at the right points with the right information. It’s been a fantastic five years. We’ve been building our relationship. It’s evident in the results, in our communication and what we do with our earnings calls. We try to incorporate a lot of fun in what we do, but also making sure that we’re being intentional with our communication and stay in align.

You’ve been with the same company for years. The average tenure for a public company’s CFO is somewhere around three or three and a half years. You’ve already beat the average, and I’m sure given the success of e.l.f. in recent years, you perhaps get phone calls from recruiters.

Not so long ago, you did what was a sizable acquisition, a company called Naturium. I love to chat what that was like. What was attractive about that company to you? Are there any fun war stories with the transaction? How it’s going so far?

We acquired Naturium. We closed the acquisition in October. Why we pursued that acquisition? We been pretty choiceful with M&A as we’ve gone through. We acquired a company called People back in February of 2020. That was a clean color cosmetics brand. It taught us a lot about how to go on our clean journey, so we are pleased with that acquisition.

We’ve seen a lot of things come across that are high growth, but they have no profit, or things that are slower growth and half profit, but because of the growth trajectory that we’ve been on at e.l.f., It’s hard to dive in something like that. We are on our trajectory of having e.l.f. in skin care as well. We now have e.l.f. Skin that we broke out as its own brand a couple of years ago.

We saw Naturium as highly complementary to what we were doing in skin care. When we saw them come across, the growth rates were fantastic. They had strong profitability as well and we met the team. That’s what it comes down to. When we are looking at brands or companies, it comes down to the team and how that interaction is because our culture at e.l.f. is so important. We want to make sure that we’re not disrupting or distracting from our culture bringing in another company.

We have a list of criteria that we go through for targets that we’re looking at. At the top of that list is values alignment. If we can check that box early on, it makes the rest of the process a whole lot easier. Again, it goes back to the uniqueness of e.l.f. Beauty. I don’t know that other companies have values alignment at the top of that list but it’s one of the first boxes we need to check.

Surely, they should. The majority of reasons that mergers and acquisitions don’t work are they’re cultural. They’re not business reasons. It’s very wise of you to consider that but getting back other than the acquisition. What are some of the biggest challenges or some of the opportunities that you’re facing on a day-to-day basis in your old running finances for this extraordinarily fast-growing company?

We have a wealth of riches. Many things and so much white space to go after as a company. It’s about focus. I pick a word of the year every year. This year’s word is focus, because we do have so many great things going on. I want to make sure that at least I’m keeping my team focused on the big things that we have going.

We’ve talked about our transition of our ERP system over to SAP. That’s going to be a big undertaking. We want to make sure that we have the right testing and the training and all of those things going on while the team is also watching their day job. That will be super important to be focused on and other things that we are looking at growth and where we place our bets. We see a lot of opportunity.

We’ve talked a lot about international being a big opportunity for us as a company. A lot of other beauty brands, you have a majority of their business outside of the U.S.. At e.l.f., the majority of our business is in the U.S.. We have a huge white space outside of the U.S.. We’re making progress in the UK and Canada, but certainly see many other countries as an opportunity for us. Keeping our focus on the white space opportunities in color, cosmetics and skincare I’ve talked about now that we’ve brought Naturium into the fold. That will be a big area of focus for us—how do we continue to build share in color cosmetics and pursue what we want to do internationally.

I wasn’t aware that you were that U.S. dominant.

Only about 15 percent of our sales are outside of the US. Everything else is here.

That’s remarkable. There are 6 billion or so people in the world and only about 350 million of them are in our country. That’s a tremendous opportunity. That’s exciting stuff. I want to chat a little bit about the industry that you’re in and your position in it. Never having worked in the industry, do correct me if I’m wrong, but it evolves at an extraordinarily rapid pace, with market conditions and consumer preferences. As a leader of the company, how do you adapt continuously? What are some of the innovations that you have to pull?

The key word is innovation. In the beauty industry, innovation is so important. We often say, “It’s like the lifeblood of any brand.” We have done an incredible job delivering on innovation that is relevant to our community and responding to our community when they’re asking us for innovative items. When I look at the last several years and the innovation that we’ve launched, we’ve been able to build upon those items.

Now we have franchises. We have our Putty Primer. I’m going to start saying things you may not know anything about, but the Putty Primers, Power Grip Primers and Camo Concealers, these are franchises that we’ve now launched. We call them franchises because we’ve launched an initial innovation, but we then launch more on top of that year after year.

The unique thing about these franchises that I’ve seen is when we launch new items, in that Camo franchise as an example—we have a camo concealer and a camo blush—we see that base item continue to grow year after year, which is rare from an innovation standpoint. Usually, when you launch an innovation item you see some decay, then you have to launch something else the following year to make up for the sale that you had in that item.

We don’t see that at e.l.f. Beauty. We’ve continued to build on these items year after year, which speaks to the growth and awareness opportunity that we have in front of us. We have about half of the awareness levels of the largest player in the beauty space, on the mass side. It’s a big opportunity for us to continue to introduce people to our items and continue to see that growth. Innovation is a big piece of that.

That makes a lot of sense. In addition to not only being an industry that’s constantly evolving, I’ve learned it’s like hyper-competitive. How do you compete against, forget 800-pound gorilla, there are 1,300-pound gorillas that you’re competing against. You’re doing something right, but what’s that like fighting people that are three times your size and more?

Not just three times our size, but also have been around way longer than us. As I said earlier, we’re celebrating our 20th anniversary. The next youngest brand in this space is maybe 60 years old and it goes up from there. More than 100 year-old brands in this beauty space and I’m talking on the mass side. There’s a lot of learnings and infrastructure and all of those things that those companies have that are sitting in front of us.

We’ve made tremendous progress over these past few years. We’re now the number three beauty brand in mass. We have continued to build share. We have 19 consecutive quarters of share growth and sales growth. We just continue to build strength upon strength. Back in 2019 when I came in, we were only investing about seven percent of our net sales behind marketing. Now, we’re investing about 22 percent of net sales behind marketing. That has been a real strategic shift in the company. We’ve gradually taken those levels up over the last years, but investing those dollars largely digital. We call it marketing and digital that we’re investing in, it has been tremendous for us.

We’ve also not been afraid to test new things. TikTok, as an example. We were on TikTok before the pandemic hit back in 2019. In the late 2019, we launched our first song. These are also different things that we’re doing in beauty. We launched a song about eye, lips and face, which was all about e.l.f., on TikTok and had a hashtag challenge. Billions of views later, we’re now considered a pioneer on TikTok.

We have done a lot of fun and innovative things with them over the years. It’s about staying ahead of the game. You said it’s a very competitive space. It is quite competitive. We have been enabled with that marketing and digital investment, and the ROIs that we’re seeing on that spin are incredible. Multiples above on average in the category. It has encouraged us to continue to invest behind marketing, which is what we’ve done over these years.

I sometimes feel like I live on a different planet than the TikTok generation. It took me quite a while to even get on Facebook. I’ve always been on LinkedIn though. I’m guessing also one of the big parts of competition is for your employees. You’re growing fast. That means you’ve got to keep adding people. They have to be committed, talented and motivated. A lot of people want to work in the beauty industry. Again, you’ve got a lot of competition who can throw a lot of money at them. What’s your philosophy on building a team in such a competitive environment?

Team is the most important thing. I talk a lot about culture at e.l.f., but team is the central point of that culture. We have had the great pleasure of picking the best talent to bring into e.l.f. Beauty. We talked about the “one team, one dream” philosophy. Once people understand what we’re doing and how we think about compensation and giving equity to every single employee. That’s very attractive to attracting the best talent, the growth that we’ve seen and the investment that we made behind our employees.

I think back to the pandemic in 2020. The very first thing that we did as a team is to say, “We want to hold on to every single employee. That’s one thing that we do not want to disrupt. It has taken us a long time to build this culture and this team. Whatever else we have to do, let’s just hold hands and do that.” We brought the team along and said, “We’re not going to do a layoff during this pandemic. We’re going to hold on to everybody, but we need everybody to hold hands and find other ways to cost save so that we can weather this time.” Some of that is motivating to the team. They understand how important we believe them to be. They are the reason why we are at where we’re at and why we are top performing company and had all of these quarters of growth is 100 percent because of the team that we’ve built.

No one, no matter how talented they are and how much of a prodigy they are, can do it at this level by themselves. You’re on, I believe for the first time, a public company board, Allbirds. I’ll assume you’re the head of the audit committee.

Of course.

What a shocker. What’s your relationship with the CFO at Allbirds? Since you yourself are present CFO too.

Being a CFO, an operator brings a different perspective to a board. Annie is the CFO at Allbirds. She’s fantastic. I have a lot of insight into what she goes through every day. That helps me be a better audit committee member. You have to ask Annie, but I am very supportive. When she needs something, she feels free to reach out. I feel the same way about my audit committee chair, Rick Wohlford. He’s fantastic. He’s has been with e.l.f. and on our board for a very long time.

Prior to him, Sabrina Simmons was our audit committee chair and she also was fantastic. I worked for Sabrina back at the GAP many years ago. It’s a small world here. I try to be supportive. I always say as a board member, “You are not the operator. You are there to advise and guide.” That’s exactly what I try to do in my role as audit committee chair.

That’s a healthy approach. You mentioned, if I heard you right, being on the audit committee has changed how you approach the role of the CFO a little bit. Even though she approached you, it sounds like you’re learning some things from her. How has it changed your perspective in your day to day job?

I have more appreciation for how our board interacts with us as a management team. That’s an important dynamic to keep in mind. Being on a board helps me understand how to better communicate with my board as through what things might be important, what things are coming up on the horizon, where are risks in the company, and how do those need to be elevated and discussed. It certainly has helped me frame that in a clear way for my audit committee as well.

That makes a lot of sense. At the CFO Leadership Council, one of the most popular programs we can do is how CFOs can attain a seat on a board of directors. Do you have any thoughts on how they can, because it’s not like these jobs are posted.

There are no job postings. It’s for board members. My connection to Allbirds came because we, at one point, shared an audit partner and he introduced me to the team over at Allbirds. That’s one way. You never know what other companies your audit firm might be covering and might need assistance in building out boards or whatever they might be doing. There’s a ton of recruiters out there that when you get the calls on CFO roles, just mention, “I’m not interested in CFO,” or if you are interested, you can say that.

If you’re not interested in CFO roles, you can tell them, “Please do connect me with your board practice. I would love to hear more about board opportunities.” There’s so much need for audit committee members and chairs across these public companies. There’s an opportunity to get your name out there. That’s where I would start. I would start with some of these bigger firms like Russell Reynolds and Korn Ferry. All of those guys have board practices that you could connect with.

I want to switch gears a little bit because I know you’re CFO fast, growing, and very busy with that and being on a public company board. I know you’re the mother of two. They are very active and involved in a lot of sports. What’s your approach to balancing all the things you have going on in your life because they’re legion?

They all take up a lot of space. What I tell folks is, I do not believe there’s any such thing as balance when it comes to work in life. You are constantly making choices of where you want to spend your time and focus. That’s how about it. If I am at a basketball game or a football game for one of my kids, I am focused and I am present in that moment. When it’s time for earnings and I’m in a board meeting, I’m focused and present in that moment.

It’s finding and being honest with yourself because you can’t be dishonest. I can’t be in a board meeting and also going to school to pick my kids up. It’s not going to happen. I have to be honest with myself. I’m going to be at a board meeting and an earnings call. I’m present in that moment.

As my kids have gotten older, they see that and they appreciate it. They know, “Is earnings coming up? Is a board meeting coming up?” They see the patterns now. My oldest son has told me he wants to be a businessman like his mom, which I love. It’s inspiring on some level to be able to see mom doing more than one thing. “A great mom,” I hope they would say that. I’m sure they will. Maybe one day they will say that.

I try to be present with my husband and my partner. Without him, half of this would not be possible because while I’m present in the work moment, he has to be present in the kid moment. Finding the right partner to do this with as well has been incredible. I am very fortunate and very blessed to have him. The kids, now being of an age where they understand things, I don’t have as much of the guilt as I used to when they were little kids, because now they can talk. I can talk to them and communicate. Communication is a huge part of making it all work. Being honest and transparent with what you have and what you’re doing can be all good.

Do you have two sons?

I have two boys.

You previously told me they do sports. What sports are they into?

Noah, my oldest is in basketball, flag football, regular football, tackle football and track. I do let my kids play tackle football. That’s it for him. They run track.

Only four.

My youngest, Nathan, also does all of those sports plus swim team.

That’s a great mix. Sports aren’t everything. Sometimes culturally, we put too much emphasis on them.

I put an equal emphasis on academics because I also make them go to extra tutoring, which I say, “One day, you will thank me for.”

It’s one in a million make the NBA. I played against a guy, he played division I college and he was killing all of us. We’re pretty good and he didn’t even get drafted. It’s like, how good do you have to be to make an NBA team if there’s so much challenge? They won’t even consider giving them a tryout. Academics are what it’s all about. Anyway, I’d like to ask as we bring this to a close. If you have any advice for the next generation of CFOs, the ones that are coming up or maybe haven’t yet achieved their first CFO role. Where should they be focusing?

The best advice that I would give is to find something. This is what I attribute a lot of my success to, is find an industry that you have a natural interest for. When I went into consumer and wanted to be a part of the Banana Republic brand at the GAP, it’s because I had a natural interest. I lived in New York City. I would go to Banana Republic on the weekend, shop and enjoy myself. I said, “This would be a great company for me to be a part of.”

I’ve always taken that with me. I feel like it makes everything that you do way easier. If you have a natural inclination for things in technology, you should do something in technology. Don’t go and do oil and gas, or go into consumer if your natural inclination is toward something else. That is step one, making sure that you’re going to be successful in your career. Even at e.l.f., I can’t tell you how much makeup that I have now and skincare products. I am an enthusiast and it is so much fun. That makes me that much more connected to what I do every single day.

You had your dream job at a pretty young age. Most people have to wait a couple of decades to get there.

I’m still living that dream. E.l.f. is a fantastic company. I get to work with incredible people. I’m so grateful.

I’m looking forward to watching the next things for you, but I always like to close on a little bit of a lighter note. If you have a fun fact about you or maybe a hidden talent or something about you that people might find surprising and that you’re willing to share on a somewhat public forum.

Let’s go ahead and share. Fun fact about me is that I love to sing. I was in choir when I was growing up. If I were not a CFO, my career would have been on Broadway. I do think that I would have pursued something completely different.

That’s a great challenge. Can you sing us a little something?

No way. I didn’t say I was a good singer. I said I like to sing.

Fair point. Mandy, this has been great. I know our readers are going to be inspired and learn a lot from your journey. It’s fun for me as well. Thanks for being part of it and I want to give you the final word.

Thank you so much, Jack. This has been so much fun and I’m thankful for you having me on.