Michael Smith, Estee Lauder CIO: Dedicated Leadership

Michael Smith is passionate about transformational leadership with an excellent reputation as a dedicated leadership professional with colleagues, team members, and clients. Since August 2017, Michael Smith has been the Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer for The Estee Lauder Companies Inc.

In a recent interview, Michael Smith discussed what piqued his interest in joining Estee Lauder. "I get excited about working with great leaders and great leadership teams - visionaries who want to transform their industries, who aspire to inspire. I had the privilege to work with some pretty impressive and visionary leaders up to that point, like Phil Knight at Nike, although I never reported directly to him, Mark Parker at Nike and Heather Bresch at Mylan. Everything I heard and read about Fabrizio Freda, President and Chief Executive Officer of Estée Lauder, placed him in this league of dynamic, engaged, curious CEOs."

When asked what Estee Lauder found attractive about his professional background, he responded, "I have a strong track record for leading transformation, and a lot of experience with digital marketing and innovation in areas like eCommerce and mobile, such as my work with Nike ID. I ran Nike.com, Nike+ and NikeFuel, the fitness-tracking ecosystem. Also, I had done a lot with analytics both at Nike and at Mylan."

Estee Lauder liked that Michael Smith was well rounded in leadership responsibilities. At Nike, he started in IT and ended in IT, but did many other things outside of IT in the middle. At Mylan, he led several global business services during a time when the company went through tremendous growth. 

"I think they [Estée Lauder] also appreciated the fact that I had experience in different industries, including pharma, retail, and fashion.  There are numerous similarities between Nike and Estee Lauder. For example, at Mylan we owned a vast majority of our own manufacturing and R&D, which Estee Lauder does as well."

Visit https://profilemagazine.com/2017/mylan-2 for more information about him.