The CEO You Hire When Your Brand Is in Trouble

Milani Cosmetics chief executive Mary van Praag lives by a mantra: In tough times, the best leaders have an appetite for change.

She should know. Her stint at the top of the Southern California-based makeup brand, which began in 2020, would mark her 17th move in a three-decade career.

Van Praag is a turnaround expert — though she prefers the more optimistic-sounding “transformational leader” — often brought in to help companies engineer a comeback, or navigate a particularly thorny challenge. Milani tapped her at the height of the pandemic, as supply chain disruption and lockdowns made the brand’s signature blush temporarily obsolete and stalled business momentum. Over the past five years, she’s overhauled the executive team — including adding a new marketing chief who orchestrated breakout campaigns featuring the Olympic gymnast Jordan Chiles and WNBA star Sabrina Ionescu. Milani has grown in 14 of the past 15 quarters and, with roughly $200 million in annual sales, is the only independent brand to crack the top 10 in US for eye, lip and face makeup by sales, according to data from Nielsen.

“I’m the kind of leader that likes to come into a messy situation and create transformation,” van Praag said. “I can see the possibility, and I help drive people towards that.”

These days, fixers like van Praag seem to be everywhere. Last month, Kering — which has shed 75 percent of its market value as Gucci struggles to regain its footing — appointed Luca de Meo, an automotive executive with a track record for pulling companies back from the brink, as its CEO. From Nike to Victoria’s Secret to Dr. Martens to Everlane, boards are betting on new leaders with a mandate to shake things up.

But what exactly is a turnaround leader?

The role calls for the ability to handle enormous pressure and shifting expectations. Turnaround assignments often require navigating internal dysfunction, external market shifts and brand stagnation alongside the usual business decisions. Depending on the challenge a brand faces, it may need a leader who’s a whiz at envisioning new products, cleaning up messy back-end operations, or resetting a broken corporate culture.

Expertise in fashion or beauty can help — Victoria’s Secret recruited chief executive Hillary Super from its rival at the time, Savage X Fenty — but it’s not a requirement, as Kering’s enlisting of De Meo shows.

“Fashion turnarounds are unique… you’ve got to be a translator between the creative vision and the commercial reality,” said Kyle Rudy, senior partner at Kirk Palmer Associates, an executive search firm. “The best turnaround leaders understand that fashion is both art and science.”

Here, BoF unpacks the anatomy of an effective transformational leader, the most common pitfalls — and how success is ultimately measured.

What do companies really mean when they say they’re hiring a “transformational leader”?

Not every transformational leader is brought in to rescue a company on the verge of collapse. Sometimes, it’s about guiding a business from one phase to the next, or addressing a specific disruption, like Trump’s tariffs, or to navigate a major change in the market, like the rise of e-commerce. Burberry’s appointment of former Coach CEO Josh Schulman in 2024, for instance, wasn’t about saving the company, but responding quickly when its “elevation” strategy stalled and needed a course correction.

Still, most transformational hires are tasked with fixing something — and more often than not, that “something” is financial, said Rudy. That might mean reversing declining profits, reigniting stalled sales or stabilising cash flow. Transformation can also mean restoring brand relevance and driving product innovation (as Nike is attempting).

In other cases, it’s about rebuilding morale and repairing internal culture after periods of turmoil — as was the case at Glossier, where founder and CEO Emily Weiss stepped down in 2022 following allegations of a toxic workplace. Similarly, Lululemon brought in Calvin McDonald in 2018 to lead a cultural reset after years of controversy, including founder Chip Wilson’s history of inflammatory comments and the resignation of his successor Laurent Potdevin amid misconduct allegations.

Who makes for a good turnaround chief?

The most effective transformational leaders blend financial discipline, long-term vision and crisis-tested judgement with strong people skills, experts say. They must not only make sharp strategic calls, but also rally the board, key executives, staff — and often, customers — around a new direction.

Even more than a traditional CEO, a turnaround leader must “deeply understand their business model and profitability levers,” said Monica Okusa, a consultant in Egon Zehnder’s consumer practice. That includes the ability to triage quickly from a long list of problems — and focus on the few that will move the needle fast.

“It requires the ability to be extremely disciplined and prioritise urgently in terms of the hundreds of things that they could do to fix the organisation — what are literally the top three things you’re going to do now?” Okusa said.

For Milani’s van Praag, the starting point is a three-year strategic road map built around three questions: “What’s possible? How will we measure success? What’s in our way?”

“The most important step of all is to ensure that people feel like they’re a part of the plan,” van Praag added.

A new exec at the top almost always means there will be some job cuts. But van Praag, a self-described “HR leader” who’s big on “people and culture,” said she avoids going in with an axe. Instead, she focuses on identifying who within the organisation is willing — or unwilling — to embrace change.

“I always say it’s hard to move the walls around on a house you built,” she said. “You have to have people that are willing to do that, and if they’re not yet capable of that, you may need to make a change.”

Prior turnaround experience is helpful, but not always enough. Both Rudy and van Praag cautioned that boards often over-index on whether a candidate has worked through a downturn — without properly evaluating how well they actually led through it. After all, as Rudy noted, “nearly everyone has been exposed to downturn at this point.”

“Have they restructured significant parts of an organisation?” said Okusa. “Have they transformed business units under intense market pressure — and how do they do that? Are they bringing people along? Are they communicating effectively?”

Many companies turn to people outside their core business to get them back on track. Lululemon brought in McDonald from beauty giant Sephora; JCPenney tapped home improvement retail leader Marvin Ellison in 2015 amid stumbling sales and an eroded stock price.

Outsiders also tend to spot opportunities insiders may miss, particularly in areas like technology, supply chain or digital customer experience, Rudy said. In fashion specifically, experts say external leaders can also help companies push past some of the gatekeeping and elitism that often stifle innovation and cultural relevance.

How is success measured?

The most critical markers of success are financial. Boards and stakeholders want to see revenue growth, margin improvement, stronger capital efficiency — and increasingly, indicators like digital penetration and market share gains.

“Ideally within their first year, [improved] stock price outperformance relative to industry peers is really visible evidence that the CEO strategy is taking hold,” Okusa said.

Still, short-term financial wins can come at a cost. A common misstep is going too hard on cost-cutting or process overhauls that end up alienating top talent. Companies should keep a close eye on employee engagement scores, gathered through regular surveys, said Rudy.

“Turnarounds will fail if you lose your best talent,” he said.

In cases where product innovation is a key focus, metrics like faster product cycle times — how quickly new, innovative ideas move through the pipeline — can also signal progress.

In fashion specifically, the most difficult — and most critical — measure of success is a CEO’s ability to reignite consumer desire.

“You can’t just mandate cultural relevance,” Okusa said.

Even leaders with strong track records can falter if the conditions aren’t right or the odds are stacked too high. JCPenney, for instance, continued to struggle despite high-profile appointments like Ellison and former Apple retail chief Ron Johnson in the early 2010s. Much depends on how much leeway these leaders are given to drive change — and their ability to build trust and buy-in among industry insiders.

Whether a turnaround is gaining traction also comes down to qualitative signals: improved consumer sentiment, increased organic buzz or a significant lift in social engagement — like gaining a million new TikTok or Instagram followers in year one. A breakout campaign with cultural impact can be just as telling as an earnings beat.

“The CEO isn’t the sole visionary. Their job as a leader is to set the conditions for creativity and innovation,” Okusa said. “They’re clearly shaping strategy, allocating resources behind the most resonant strategies and creating the environment for creativity to thrive.”