EVELYN LAUDER & THE ESTÉE LAUDER COS. INC.
As the founder of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, Evelyn Lauder can be considered one of the inventors of the modern corporate social responsibility movement. Since its creation in 1993, the organization has raised more than $350 million for research, and funds 186 researchers globally. It was Mrs. Lauder, in partnership with Self magazine, who introduced the pink ribbon that has become a universal symbol to raise awareness for breast cancer; she also mobilized the entire power of the Estée Lauder Cos. Inc. in support of that mission.
When she died in November at age 75 from nongenetic ovarian cancer, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton summed up the feelings of many when she said, “Evelyn got the world closer to a time when no family will have to endure the pain of losing a mother, a wife, a sister, a daughter or an aunt to this terrible disease. We will never forget how much she did to improve the lives of others.”
