CEW Spotlights Danika Berry and the Business of Opening Doors
The beauty industry’s leading executive organization profiles the Black Beauty Founders CEO on why winning only counts when everyone gets a real chance to play.
By Black Beauty Founders Staff
Cosmetic Executive Women, the organization that has convened beauty’s leading brands, retailers and executives for more than seven decades, has profiled Danika Berry, Founder and CEO of Black Beauty Founders. The feature, Danika Berry: A Woman of the People, published October 21 for CEW’s membership of more than 8,000 beauty industry leaders.
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Inside the CEW Profile
The profile centers on the belief Berry built Black Beauty Founders around. Business can be an isolating game, especially for founders of color who are left searching for the tools, rooms and relationships others inherit. As CEW frames it, Berry’s view is simple: the game is only worth playing when every player has a real chance to win.
CEW is one of the most respected organizations in beauty, bringing together the women leading the industry, from rising talent to the C-suite, across brands, retailers, fragrance houses, suppliers and media. It is also home to the CEW Beauty Awards, the industry’s most prestigious recognition of product innovation, celebrating standout launches across more than 30 categories. This year’s winners will be celebrated on November 10 at the Hilton Midtown in New York.
Twenty Years of Opening Doors
That conviction comes from experience. Berry spent more than twenty years in beauty, celebrity and sports publicity, producing unscripted television for the OWN Network and building a PR career that served brands including Mielle, CURLS and Camille Rose. Over those years she saw the same pattern again and again. Talented Black founders had strong products and loyal customers, but not the access to the buyers, investors and executives who decide what scales.
In 2023 she created National Black Beauty Founders Day, observed every August 30, to put that gap in front of the industry. Black Beauty Founders grew from there into a national trade platform and private ecosystem that connects Black beauty founders with the retailers, investors and corporate leaders shaping the business of beauty. Today its editorial reaches more than 400,000 beauty consumers.
A Season of Recognition
The CEW profile caps a strong season. In August, Forbes examined how Berry is moving founders past visibility and into real business outcomes. In September, she was featured in Inc. on how emerging brands are rethinking creator deals, and October opened with her expertise in Byrdie.
For Berry, the recognition matters most for what it signals to the founders in the ecosystem: the rooms are opening, and they belong in them.
Read the full profile on CEW (CEW member access).
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