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Estée Lauder's Aude Gandon Says Leaving Adland for Google Was Her Biggest Career Gamble
The Estée Lauder Cos.' global chief digital and marketing officer traced a career that ran from advertising to Google and Nestlé before beauty, telling a Women in Power audience that her riskiest move also reshaped how she approaches digital change.
Gandon, executive vice president and global chief digital and marketing officer, is responsible for driving the beauty group's digital transformation and spoke at the 2026 Women in Power conference about how risk-taking has shaped her growth.
Her first industry was advertising, which she described as formative training in brand strategy, creative development and production. Sitting across from clients, she said, taught her to listen closely to what they say and to what they leave unsaid.
From there she moved to Google and later Nestlé before joining Estée Lauder. She called the jump from advertising to Google the riskiest decision of her career, because it meant walking away from an industry where she had built seniority and trust to enter one where she was unknown.
The compensation shift made the move harder. Much of the pay was tied to dollars and stock rather than a large base salary, and as a mother of two young children she said she took a significant hit to her base pay.
She made the transition in the mid-2010s, when Google was among the biggest disruptors in technology and culture. Lessons from that period now inform her efforts to bring similar digital disruption to Estée Lauder, which marks its 80th anniversary this year.