Her Story
About Lauren
Lauren Riley is a Senior Design Director at Procter & Gamble, currently leading design strategy for North America Personal Care within the company's Beauty organization. Over more than two decades in the industry, she has built a reputation for merging creative vision with business strategy, helping some of P&G's most recognizable brands — including Old Spice, Secret, Olay, Ivory, Downy Unstopables, Native, and Gillette — evolve and grow. Her career at P&G spans nearly two decades, during which she has steadily advanced from design manager to senior creative and design leadership roles, all while playing an instrumental part in establishing the company's internal design capabilities from the ground up.
Before joining Procter & Gamble, Riley spent several years working agency-side, including a stint at Arc Worldwide and Leo Burnett, where she served as an art director on P&G's Pantene and Olay accounts. Her foundation in design was shaped early on through her studies at Indiana University Bloomington, where she earned a degree in Art and Computer Graphics, as well as through formative summers spent at the Nazareth Summer School of the Arts in western New York during high school. This blend of agency experience and formal training equipped her with both the creative instincts and strategic thinking that would come to define her career.
Beyond her brand work, Riley is deeply invested in organizational growth and talent development, viewing the cultivation of strong teams as equally rewarding as building successful brands. She has played a central role in growing P&G's internal design agency to a team of roughly 40 designers, demonstrating how design can serve as a genuine business capability rather than a purely creative function. Guided by values of kindness, teamwork, and perspective-taking, she remains committed to mentoring the next generation of designers and expanding the influence of design across the organization. In recognition of her contributions to the field, she has been selected for feature in Influential Women for 2026.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Lauren
01What do you attribute your success to?
I owe much of my success to the unwavering support of my parents, especially my mother. She was always my biggest champion when it came to my interest in art and design, even though it wasn't a conventional path to a stable income. Her encouragement and belief in me gave me the courage and confidence to pursue this career.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best advice I've received is to be persistent. If you know what you want, you have to be the one to make it happen. I landed my first job by consistently following up with HR at Leo Burnett and Arc Worldwide for eight months until a position finally opened up.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I'd tell them it's all about attitude and effort. Approach your work with a positive mindset, try your hardest, and make meaningful connections along the way. Don't let obstacles become roadblocks — instead, find what you truly love and lean into your strengths.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
One of the biggest challenges is keeping pace with fast-changing beauty trends while competing against smaller, more agile businesses. On top of that, building an internal design studio within a marketing-led company can be difficult — making the challenge to drive influence within the business to prove the value of Design.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Kindness matters most to me, because you never know what someone else is going through. I also value looking at situations from different angles and multiple perspectives, and I believe strongly in teamwork where everyone operates on equal footing. Faith is central to how I live as well — I believe that doing the right thing leads to good outcomes.
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