For Unilever‘s Tiffany Yizar, wellness is the name of the game professionally and personally.
While Yizar has been working across beauty and wellness at Unilever for more than eight years, her career in research and development began in the food and beverage sector. She previously worked at companies like PepsiCo and General Mills. Prior to starting at Unilever in 2017, she had most recently worked as the the global dairy packaging research and development manager. However, upon pivoting her career, she has held several roles across at Unilever across personal care categories and brands like Nexxus, SheaMoisture, TRESemmé, Dove and Vaseline. She is currently the head of research and development for beauty and well-being North America.
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As she reflects back on her career and looks toward the future of the personal care industry, Yizar predicts that the intersection of beauty and wellness will only become more prominent, an arena she believes Unilever is poised to play in given its portfolio.
“There’s a really nice coming together of recognizing that beauty from the inside out brings in this aspect of wellness. We’re tapping into [it] across our various brands of supplements that help your hair grow thicker or targeted supplements for different life stages,” she said, as an example of how the category is evolving. “Pairing [them] with beauty solutions is definitely something that I can see energizing the market.”
When it comes to discovering what will energize the market going forward, her approach to staying in the know and ahead of the game in her career is multifaceted.
“To me, staying three steps ahead is looking at trends, but looking deeper into our consumer insights that really drive those trends,” she said, which can look like researching macrotrends, reading books, listening to podcasts and more for Yizar.
This approach has led to major career wins at Unilever that she still reflects on today.
“[One of my favorite projects] was back in 2018 [when] we made the commitment to move Dove to 100 percent recycled plastic bottles….To do that on a brand like Dove, that is white [packaging] and have to deal with the challenge of a plastic material that’s variable in color, we were building the plane while we were flying it a bit,” she said. “The other [favorite project[ for me is an example of a new brand that we started that’s no longer in the market. It’s a brand called Mele, which was really focused on the science of melanin-rich skin.”
However, being so engrossed in the wellness industry, Yizar finds she really has to walk her talk and prioritize her own well-being in order to be successful. For her, this looks like a combination of connection with friends and family and personal time.
“For me, the keys to success are having my personal board of directors. It takes a sizable village to keep me going,” Yizar said. “It’s both having those family members, friends, colleagues, mentor, sponsors, who are my sounding board for decisions big and small.”
She continued: “I take my vacation days and I take them seriously. I log all the way off, and I use that as time to reconnect, whether it’s with myself, my friends, my family. I have lucked out to have literally the best life partner for me. so my husband is my number-one cheerleader. He believes in my potential, even if I can’t see it sometimes, and is very good at supporting my rest and well-being too.”