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To get to Estée Lauder's sprawling Northtec manufacturing complex in Bucks County, you first have to turn down Wharton Road. It's a bit of irony as William Lauder and his family's path through the Wharton School continues to draw them back to the Philadelphia area — and specifically its higher education scene.
Lauder is the executive chairman of New York-based Estée Lauder (NYSE: EL), and the grandson of the cosmetics giant's namesake. He's also a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where there's a residence hall, a management institute and major gifts in the Lauder name. A long list of family members have graduated from the Ivy League school.
Estée Lauder is also one of the largest employers in Bucks County, where it boasts a six-building, one-million-square-foot complex, employing 2,500 in Bristol. Lauder's latest investment in the Philadelphia area is one that could be symbiotic for Estée Lauder and a pair of higher education institutions in the region not named Penn.
Boosting Bucks County
Estée Lauder is partnering with Temple University and Bucks County Community College on its newly launched Supply Chain Scholars program. The company donated $200,000 — the largest single corporate investment ever made to Bucks County Community College — to jumpstart the program earlier this year. The gift will fund scholarships for students going into supply chain management.
In the program, students receive an associate's degree from the community college in supply chain management, intern at the Northtec complex, then move onto Temple to complete their bachelor's degree with a high likelihood for employment at Estée Lauder upon graduation. The first cohort of students is beginning its internships at the Northtec facility this summer.
"Especially for first-generation kids who are in school, they don't know what the future holds," Lauder said in an interview with the Business Journal. "They know they're told to get a good education, but having somebody be able to say, 'Look, this is how your career could develop.' Not will develop, but could develop, because you're somewhat in control of it. We offer you the opportunities, then what are the ways you can make the most of it? It's a great way for us to tap into both local educational institutions that are preparing people for the kinds of careers that we can offer. It's a great natural combination."
Craig Shand, who heads human resources at the Northtec facility, said that a simultaneous drop in college enrollment and challenges in recruitment for supply chain jobs pushed action to bolster both. He called the program a "win-win-win" for Temple, Bucks County Community College and Estée Lauder.
"It was those two things coming together when the lightbulb went off," Shand said. "I had a conversation with Temple [about] how do we meet students where they're at and really start to generate interest in careers in supply chain? That's where the idea was, let's start investing in the local community in Bristol where we're at and which we knew would also be a diverse talent pool for us."
The aim is to replicate the program at other Estée Lauder manufacturing facilities in New York, Minnesota and Ontario.
The company originally landed in Pennsylvania following a stint where it exclusively had manufacturing operations on Long Island. Anything being distributed from those facilities would have to go through Manhattan, Lauder said, which became a burden on operations. They had also "tapped out the employee population on Long Island for distribution and manufacturing." Estée Lauder first had a presence in Bucks County in 1989 and it has since grown.
"It's much more logistically successful and we've got access to a great employee population here as it's evolved, we've built a deeper connection," said Lauder, who is a grandson of Estée and was CEO of the namesake company from 2004 to 2009. "As we were building that deep connection, we realized we have to start not just hiring people who've worked elsewhere, but cultivating people who would really want to make their careers with us here. We're one of the largest employers in Bucks County and Bucks County Community College has programs that will prepare people for the kinds of careers that we could offer them and Temple University also has a supply chain program, which is very important."
A Penn family
Though the company hopes the Supply Chain Scholars program is a new avenue to impact higher ed, the family's roots in Philadelphia are inextricably linked to Penn. Standing in an Estée Lauder company store, William Lauder rattles off the long list of family members to attend the University of Pennsylvania. It began with his father, Leonard A. Lauder, who first arrived in West Philadelphia for school in 1950. Eleven years later, William's uncle Ronald Lauder attended Penn. William Lauder and his brother Gary Lauder were both Penn Quakers, and each had one of their children attend the school as well. William Lauder's cousin attended Penn, met her husband there, and both of their children went to the school.
"We've got a strong connection to the University of Pennsylvania," William Lauder said, though that may be an understatement. There's the Joseph H. Lauder Institute of Management & International Studies, Lauder College House, hundreds of millions in gifts to the school from the family, and now William Lauder is in his 11th year teaching second-year MBA students as part of the William P. Lauder Wharton Leadership Fellows program. He is also on the board of trustees and Leonard Lauder is an emeritus trustee.
The investments the family has made in Penn are an effort to give more people the opportunity to experience the Ivy League education that has helped propel many of Estée Lauder's leaders.
"I learned a great deal and I find that I often refer to what I learned still today, some of the basic principles of what I learned and some values and systems I learned. I thought it made a difference in my life," William Lauder said. "I feel, and we feel as a family, that to give to an institution that has been around for a few hundred years, founded by Benjamin Franklin, we can help others. A lot of the initiatives that we've supported are initiatives that we feel that can help further the mission of the institution and help those people who would like to be a part of the institution."
One of the landmark gifts from the Lauder family came last year from Leonard Lauder. The $125 million gift is the largest given to a nursing school, and covers fees for fellows selected into the Leonard A. Lauder Community Care Nurse Practitioner Program. It was designed to bring more nurse practitioners to underserved communities. Health care hadn't been a major part of the business-forward cosmetics moguls' philanthropy in the past, but the pandemic "taught us that however many people there are in health care is not enough," William Lauder said.
Like the Supply Chain Scholars program, William Lauder thinks the nurse practitioner program is one that can be replicated across the country.
"We felt it was something that we could make a difference and set a model that can make a difference," he said. "It's not just saying, 'Let's do this at Penn and it's done.' We hopefully created a model that other nursing schools could follow in other major metropolitan areas."
