Estée Lauder Companies - CSR Program of the Year
Company: Estée Lauder Companies, New York City, NY
Company Description: Estée Lauder Companies is the global leader in prestige beauty — delighting consumers with transformative products and experiences, inspiring them to express their individual beauty. We are the only company focused solely on prestige makeup, skin care, fragrance and hair care with a diverse portfolio of 25+ brands sold in approximately 150 countries and territories.
Nomination Category: Company / Organization Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Corporate Social Responsibility Program of the Year - At Organizations With More Than 2,500 Employees
Nomination Title: The Estée Lauder Companies (ELC) Hack for Pink Hackathon
About
The Estée Lauder Companies is the global leader in prestige beauty — delighting consumers with transformative products and experiences, inspiring them to express their individual beauty. We are the only company focused solely on prestige makeup, skin care, fragrance and hair care with a diverse portfolio of 25+ brands sold in approximately 150 countries and territories. Infused throughout our organization is a passion for creativity and innovation — a desire to push the boundaries and invent the unexpected — as we continue the bold work of our founder Estée Lauder.
25+ Prestige brands / 150± Countries & Territories / $14.29 bn Total Net Sales / 48K+ Employees worldwide
Official website: Estée Lauder Companies - https://www.elcompanies.com/en
Executive Summary
The Estée Lauder Companies (ELC) started a new annual event in 2020 to bring the technical community together in the fight to end Breast Cancer. Every 15 seconds, somewhere in the world, a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer, our first "Hack for Pink" initiative brought participants from all over the world including technology and medical professionals, university students, and cancer survivors to drive innovation and new thinking in this battle.
The Hack for Pink Hackathon was created to make a difference in the fight against breast cancer by developing technology solutions and new ways of thinking that promotes and/or enhances the general welfare of millions of women around the world. The goal was to develop an innovative technology seed that can catapult a breaking idea in the fight to end breast cancer forever. Breast cancer affects us all and is the most common cancer in women worldwide and is increasing, particularly in developing countries where the majority of cases are diagnosed in late stages.
How Significant
The ELC Hack for Pink Virtual Hackathon resulted in an astounding 100 final submissions for ideas to accelerate breast cancer research, detection, treatment, fundraising, volunteerism, awareness and more. The success of the event was made possible by participation and generous support from our technology partners.
We were humbled by the massive global participation and support within the technology community. By the numbers:
- 100 final submissions
- 821 Total participants
- 160 Teams from 18 countries spanning 16 time zones
- 109 Coaches
- 16 Technology Partners, including: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Dell, Microsoft, Salesforce, Wipro and many more. For full list of partners, see https://www.elchackathon.com/#sponsors
To ensure that these ideas live on, we created a partnership with Amazon, a strong supporter of our efforts, to build an incubator and provide our Hackathon finalist teams with free computing power and mentors. This enabled teams to further develop their ideas and explore the potential for them to become products and even create startup companies to launch their products that help fight breast cancer.
How Unique
The Hack for Pink Virtual Hackathon approach was innovative because we thoughtfully created a collaborative environment that brought together technologists, medical and non-medical professionals across borders and cultures to generate new ideas in the fight against breast cancer.The ELC Hackathon team developed a multifaceted educational plan to ensure that technology professionals, without formal medical education or training, would participate and stayed excited throughout the two-week event.
If judged by traditional measures such as participation, engagement and quality of submissions, ELC's Hack for Pink Virtual Hackathon would be considered a very successful event and a solid contender for the award. We are proud of what our global technology community has achieved. However, the reason our project is worthy of this award is because we've shown that technologist can make a positive human impact in an area which may seem unrelated- the fight against breast cancer.
After presenting the Grand Prize winner during the award ceremony, judge Heidi Floyd, a breast cancer patient and survivor (https://www.linkedin.com/in/heidi-floyd-b89b179/), announced "It was tough choosing a winner because all these ideas are so amazing and they would have helped me."
The success of this project was only possible with the support and commitment from ELC's CIO Michael Smith. Michael is adept at defining culture, building high-performing teams, driving innovation, and fostering an environment of continuous growth. His innovative thinking and unparalleled commitment to team members and stakeholders raises IT’s voice in helping define overall corporate strategy, opening additional market segments, revenue sources, and improving margins and revenue. Michael also inspires and encourages us to make an impact outside the organization.