Mandy Fields has served as the CFO of e.l.f. Beauty since April 2019.
Mandy Fields is the CFO
Recently, Fields and I shared a great conversation about what has made e.l.f. Beauty not only a leader among its competitors, but a supportive place to work and a company that has experienced 20 consecutive quarters of growth.
—
As a Midwesterner growing up in Indianapolis, Mandy Fields did not imagine herself going to San Francisco to become the CFO of a top beauty brand. But, as a child, she did know that she always wanted to go into finance.
Before attending Indiana University to study business, Mandy recalls a memory from her early childhood years that shaped her future career. When she was about 10, thanks to the experience of helping her mother with the monthly budgeting, she knew that she had a future in finance.
“I remember sitting with my mom and balancing everything out,” Fields said. “I’d sit there and write everything down for her. 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 she got to Indiana University, choosing business was easy; the harder choice was deciding on the route. At the time, when faced with going down the accounting or investment banking paths, Fields eventually chose investment banking, moving to New York after graduation to work for JP Morgan, covering the oil and gas industry.
In addition to the valuable work experience, Fields learned another valuable lesson: She loved banking and everything having to do with finance, but she did not like the industry that she was covering. With that in mind, she set out to pursue the consumer sector.
“It was one of those things where I wanted to be close to a tangible,” Fields said. “[I wanted] something that I could touch, feel and interact with. I felt that in consumer finance, 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.”
So, she took a leap. She left banking without having a job in hand and moved to the Bay Area because her boyfriend at the time (now husband) was relocating. In addition to pursuing the move, the period of transition was exactly what she needed to make her goal a reality. She set her sights on the GAP.
She did not know anyone at the company, and these were the days pre-LinkedIn. So, she leapt again: She decided to reach out to the CFO of the GAP, Byron Pollitt. Not having his email address proved yet another challenge.
“I sent an email to every single combination of email addresses 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.’”
Her tenacity and resourcefulness paid off–he forwarded on her resume, and a couple of weeks later, she had a job.
“That’s one lesson I can give,” Fields said. “If you want to contact 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. It’s the same result as not reaching out. The answer is no if you don’t try.”
She worked for the Banana Republic brand, one of the smaller brands under the GAP portfolio, then Safeway
Fields was originally attracted to the company’s mission. She explains that in addition to e.l.f. setting out to make the best of beauty available and accessible to every eye, lip and face, the company lives out its mission in everything it does, with community ties remaining high on the priority list.
“Our community is reflected in our employee population, with over 70 percent women, and young, diverse beauty enthusiasts,” she explained. “Even our board of directors is one of the most diverse. We are one of only four public companies out of 4,200 that has a Board of Directors that is 2/3 women and 1/3 diverse.”
That mission is one that she understood right away because of e.l.f. Beauty’s CEO, Tarang Amin. Fields describes him as an incredible leader, phenomenal storyteller, and someone who is at the heart of what has been built at the company.
“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,’” she continues. “That is so true in everything we do. We have one number that every single person in the company is bonused on. Other organizations have overly complex calculations to determine the bonus. There’s one number for e.l.f. and everybody knows what that number is.”
“When you incentivize everybody to have the company's 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,” Fields said. “That, coupled with our mission of bringing the best and making it accessible to everyone, that theme of inclusivity and positivity, 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.”
Years later, that sense of culture and engagement within the company, as well as the inspiration she feels from Amin’s leadership style, is something that has created a solid working relationship between them. In fact, he is someone she looks to as a mentor.
“It’s important for us to be on the same page,” Fields said. “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. 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 make sure that we’re being intentional with our communication and stay in alignment.”
That alignment has allowed the company to acquire other brands along the way. They acquired a pioneering clean beauty brand, Well People, in February 2020 and skin care company Naturium in October 2023. It’s what Fields calls “choiceful M&A.”
“We saw Naturium as highly complementary to what we were doing in skin care,” Fields explained. “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 by bringing in another company.”
e.l.f. has a list of criteria that they go through for targets they are looking to acquire, with values alignment at the top of the list. It’s something that Fields believes makes the rest of the process easier if that is present early on, and it helps them preserve the uniqueness of e.l.f. Beauty.
Being intentional about those mergers and partners is also something that aids the company, and Fields herself, as e.l.f. experiences the company’s current embarrassment of riches. As someone who chooses a word of the year, her biggest challenge as CFO goes back to the word she chose for 2024: focus.
“It will be super important to be focused as we are looking at growth and where we place our bets,” she said. “We see a lot of opportunity. We’ve talked a lot about international being a big opportunity for us. 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.”
Opportunity is not something that e.l.f. is short on. Over the past few years, there has been tremendous progress–they are now the number three beauty brand in mass, and they have continued to build share. They have had 19 consecutive quarters of share growth and sales growth. When Fields joined in 2019, they were only investing seven percent of net sales behind marketing; now, they are investing about 22 percent of net sales.
Bringing in such fresh energy to the industry has also allowed the company to forget about fear. They were on TikTok (and launched a song) before the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2019 to the point that they are now considered TikTok pioneers. And that’s just one example of something fun and innovative they have done over the years.
“It’s about staying ahead of the game,” she said. “It’s a very competitive space, but we have been enabled with that marketing and digital investment, and the ROIs that we’re seeing on that spin are incredible.”
Another ROI the company has seen is in its employee base. Fields says that team is the most important thing and central to the company’s culture. But, to her those are not just concepts. She recalls the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic when the company made a critical decision about employees. The first thing they did as a team was announce that they wanted to hold on to every employee.
“That’s one thing we did not want to disrupt,” Fields said. “It had taken us a long time to build that culture and this team. Whatever else we had to do, we just needed to hold hands and do that. No one, no matter how talented they are and how much of a prodigy they are, can do it at this level by themselves.”
Fields’ success is not something that she has done by herself either. Outside of work, she is a busy wife, mother of two and serves as the head of the audit committee for Allbirds. As her kids have gotten older, they have recognized her role and how present she is at either task–whether she is prepping for a big meeting or watching them play in a basketball game. They appreciate it, too–her oldest son has told her he wants to go into business like her. She hopes that they are inspired to see her doing more than one thing. Additionally, finding the right partner has been an essential part of making it all work.
As she thinks about her son’s future in business, or any young person who aspires to be a CFO, she does have advice for future generations.
“The best advice that I would give is to find an industry that you have a natural interest in,” she said. “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 feel like it makes everything that you do easier. At e.l.f., I can’t tell you how much makeup and skincare products I now have. I am an enthusiast, and it is so much fun. That makes me that much more connected to what I do every single day.”
