Kelly Kroger

For me, it was about making everyone around me proud. Which is probably a really wrong thing to say to girls growing up, but I just wanted to make my family proud, my kids proud, people around me proud. It's never been for myself - it was more like if I made a shampoo that made some woman feel beautiful, then I did my job. It's just to make everybody else around me proud and happy. I'm very independent, like my grandma yelled at me the other day about being so independent and not asking for help. So it's just to continue to be that person so they don't have to worry. When they go to bed at night, they don't have to worry about me. My surgeon even told my dad after my shoulder surgery last August that I'm one tough cookie, because I'd been in pain for a long time and never told anyone.

The best career advice I've ever received is to trust my gut. I had a mentor say to me a long time ago that I'm really good at trusting my gut, and to just always trust it because I'm good at it. It doesn't have to be just about chemistry - it could be whatever in your career. When your gut's telling you something, I think it's true. I even went through a divorce a couple years ago, and that was a decision where I trusted my gut. But also, you don't have to be the smartest person in the room. I've worked with some of the smartest people, and you can still prove them wrong with data or logic. You don't have to be the smartest person in the room, you really don't.

Be bold. Be confident. Have the data, get the data, and then be bold and confident in what you're saying. The beauty industry, the cosmetic industry, especially the beauty industry, is changing all the time. If you have an idea, go for it, but get the data and be bold, and don't back down. And believe in the data that you have. I also think it's important for young girls coming into chemistry to understand that failure is okay. You can't go into the lab and expect to succeed every time - it's just not gonna happen. I've failed more times than I can count. I broke a beaker my first day on the job. But in science, in chemistry especially, you do an experiment and most of the time you're gonna fail. And I think young girls coming in need to understand that's okay, because they've grown up in a world where you're not supposed to fail. But that's not failing, that's actually learning. You learned what doesn't work. Products like Swiffer and Febreze all happened because somebody failed in the lab and discovered something else. You're only failing if you keep doing it again and again without learning from it.

I'm a big advocate for equal pay - we get paid differently than a man versus a woman at the same job, and that needs to go. I don't say it out loud often, but it's something I secretly fight for. If I'm doing the same job as you, doesn't matter, I should be paid the same. The wage gap needs to go. I get frustrated especially in my industry where if you're an engineer versus a chemist, sometimes you get treated differently, but in my line of work we do the same job. Just because I got a chemistry degree versus an engineering degree doesn't mean I'm less than - it's just a different degree. Another challenge is the corporate culture where people kiss their boss's ass, and I see it all the time. I'm not the loudest person in the room and I never will be - that's just not who I am. I can silently lead, lead by example, lead by meeting with people personally. But I'm not gonna be somebody in a meeting that's like 'look at me, look at me.' The biggest challenge in the industry itself is all these laws coming down on materials, what we can put in shampoos, what we can say and not say. You have these influencers out there now saying materials are bad when they're not, but everyone believes it, so we have to shift how we do our work because we want to sell stuff. As a chemist, I would never make something that's gonna harm somebody, but people research stuff and go down a rabbit hole, and it's reality now.