L’Oréal Chief Corporate Responsibility Officer Shares Her Vision

PARIS — “ Sustainability is a team sport,” said Ezgi Barcenas , chief corporate responsibility officer at L’Oréal .

She was speaking from her office in the Paris suburb of Clichy just days before Climate Week NYC begins, in her first interview about strategy since starting the job in March 2024.

At L’Oréal, she wears many hats: Barcenas is a member of L’Oréal’s executive committee, chief executive officer of its foundation, plus steers the company’s Fund for Nature Regeneration, Fund for Women and Climate Emergency Fund. But a guiding force for Cyprus-born Barcenas is the fact that she’s a trained engineer.

“That has really stayed with me over time,” she said. “How I see the world, and how I think of sustainability as a design problem in everything we do — in how we design our