Hi, I’m Elise – Let's Design Products That Actually Center Their Intended User

I began my career behind the chair, not in a strategy meeting. For years, my work revolved around making products function in real life on different hair textures, across varying climates, within routines that were imperfect and deeply personal. I wasn’t evaluating formulas in theory; I was watching them perform under pressure. I saw how a styling product behaved on high-porosity curls versus low-porosity coils, how a moisturizer interacted with layered skincare, how a claim held up after a full day rather than the first fifteen minutes. When something worked, it earned loyalty. When it didn’t, no amount of branding could compensate. Those early years shaped how I understand beauty: performance is not abstract, and consumer trust is not automatic.

As I moved deeper into the industry, I became increasingly interested in the decisions that led to those outcomes. Why did some products consistently hold up across environments while others felt promising but unreliable? Why did certain brands cultivate long-term devotion while others depended on constant novelty? My background in sociology and psychology had already trained me to look at behavior, identity, and motivation beneath the surface. Retail cosmetics management exposed me to the commercial realities of what converts and what repeats. Over time, I began connecting those layers: performance, perception, purchasing behavior, and strategic decision-making.

That curiosity ultimately led me back into formal study. I am now completing my MBA, with concentrated training in consumer behavior, research methodology, and marketing. The academic work did not replace my hands-on experience; it structured it. It gave language and analytical rigor to patterns I had observed for years. It reinforced something I had already learned intuitively: product failures are rarely creative failures. More often, they are the result of early assumptions that were never fully examined. An audience is defined too broadly. A competitive standard is misunderstood. A claim stretches slightly beyond what the formula can consistently support. A product performs well in controlled testing but has never been evaluated within the complexity of real routines.

Today, my work sits at that intersection; between the idea and the lab, and between the formula and the market. I partner with founders and product teams to bring structure to early and mid-stage product decisions. That may involve designing and interpreting consumer research to clarify who the product is actually for, benchmarking ingredient architecture and claims against category leaders, coordinating real-world performance testing, or diagnosing the root cause of underperformance before resources are redirected in the wrong direction. The work is analytical, but it is also deeply practical. It is grounded in what happens when a product leaves the sample jar and enters someone’s bathroom.

I believe products earn their place in a routine; they are not granted loyalty simply because they exist. When a product is designed from the beginning with real consumer behavior, performance standards, and competitive context in mind, development becomes more intentional and capital is deployed more wisely. My role is to help teams make those decisions with clarity, evidence, and discipline, not after something has gone wrong, but while there is still room to build it correctly.

If you are building, refining, or re-evaluating a beauty product and want the strategic layer behind it to be as thoughtful as the idea itself, this is the work I do.