26 APRIL 6, 2020 |^ ADWEEK
®ADWEEK CHAMPIONS
Adebayo Owosina
co-founder,
creative director
The Hook
The intro call between
Owosina and Berndt was
scheduled for one hour but
turned into three, Owosina
recalls, making it clear
Bernt would be a hands-on
mentor. Then Berndt invited
him to New York from his
home base in Nigeria. “I
ended up spending almost
a week at Google,” Owosina
says. “It was inspiring.”T
here’s nothing quite as sobering as
being called out on your privilege, but
Berndt welcomes it. In fact, he’s asked
for unvarnished feedback from some of his
trusted advisers and friends through the
years and even today, when he considers
himself “about 30% up the learning curve,”
Berndt says. Although “I’m not suggesting
I’m woke—that would be presumptuous.”
The shout-out list would be long, he
says, and would feature Donna Pedro,
chief diversity and inclusion officer at
Ogilvy, where Berndt was previously
co-president, and William Floyd, Google’s
director of government affairs and public
policy, among many others.
“People have been gracious and
patient enough not to write me off if I
did the wrong thing,” Berndt says. “I’ve
had some really great peers who are
extraordinarily blunt with me about what
I’m doing poorly or correctly. Because of
them, I learn something every day that I
hadn’t thought through before.”
Berndt’s advocacy work, going back
nearly two decades, includes his longtime
involvement in DreamYard, a Bronx, N.Y.-based group that provides art supplies and
classes to cash-strapped public schools.
He’s brought students from West Side High
School in Newark, N.J., to Google’s offices in
Manhattan for meetups with his staff as part
of his ongoing relationship with an urban
campus that’s “a few miles from my house,
but in a completely different world,” he says.
With the resources of Google’s
Creative Lab, he’s spearheaded AI and VR
projects and data visualizations based on
global searches of topics ranging from the
#MeToo movement to mass incarceration.
Those accompanied visits he hosted from
#MeToo founder Tarana Burke and prison
reform activists.
A veteran creative exec from Wieden
+ Kennedy and Chiat\Day, with Apple’s
“Think Different,” Nike and Microsoft
campaigns on his CV, Berndt wants to
deploy Google’s technology for social
good. “We can use the platforms we have
to create interesting content and help
get these messages out,” he says. “And
we need to understand and represent the
people behind the causes. That’s when we
have the most value.” —T.L.S.Andy Berndt
managing director
CREATIVE LAB
Erin Goldson
global associate brand
manager | Dove Hair, Unilever
Goldson joined Unilever as an associate
brand manager in 2016 and was promoted
to her current role at Dove Hair two years
later. Bracey notes that after “almost 30
years in the industry, as you can imagine,
there’s a big web of people I mentor,” but
she chose to highlight Goldson in Adweek
because although “she’s probably the
youngest and the most junior,” she’s also
“probably the most thirsty.”B
racey spent more than 25 years at CPG giant Procter & Gamble before joining beauty
company Coty in 2015 and then Unilever in 2018.
For eight years, as the svp and global manager of cosmetics at P&G, Bracey lived
in Geneva, Switzerland. And it was when she returned to New York in 2017 that she
realized how much the U.S. had changed since her career began—notably, a shift from
multicultural marketing to marketing for a world that’s more diverse.
“America is a different America today: 40% of Americans are people of color, and if
you look at Gen Z, 48% of Gen Z are people of color. And when you look at marketing,
it’s not only representation, but a mindset: ‘Don’t put me in a box. I’m an individual ...
speak to me,’” Bracey says. “So the work that I try to do in my business ... is making
sure even though we work in the mass market, we are ... [offering a] more personalized
assortment and programs that address different cohorts of constituents of people.”
That includes efforts like the Crown Coalition, which was co-founded by personal
care brand Dove to create a more equitable and inclusive beauty experience for black
women and girls. The Crown Coalition also sponsored the Crown Act, which made
California the first state to make hair discrimination illegal in January 2020.
Bracey runs Unilever’s beauty and personal care business, which includes brands
like Dove. That’s where she met Erin Goldson, who works on Dove Hair and runs the
Crown Coalition program.
“It’s surprising today that in 2020, it’s actually legal in most states for someone to
be denied employment because of textured hair. It’s OK for an employer to say, ‘You
can have this job if you don’t wear braids or locs,’” Bracey says. “And it’s similar for
kids in school—they can be suspended or expelled if their hair doesn’t comply with
grooming policies.”
Bracey says she herself has succeeded because she discovered early on how to
match herself with her workplace without compromise. “It took me five years to get to
that point when I didn’t have to hide myself or do something different—when I cracked
that, I was not only happier, but able to contribute more,” she says. “That’s what I want
for [mentee] Erin [Goldson]—to bring her magic and not hide her magic to fit into the
workplace and to be as successful as she can imagine.” —L.L.
Esi Eggleston Bracey
evp and COO, North America beauty
and personal care UNILEVER