Her Story
About Leigh
Leigh Alter is a Vice President of Total Rewards in the consumer goods and beauty industry, currently with the Wella Company, where she rejoined in May 2024 after previously working with the organization from 2014 to 2018. She brings a distinguished background spanning financial services, media, and consumer goods, with more than a decade of prior experience in financial services. Her career has been guided by opportunities for growth, meaningful impact, and strong professional relationships rather than adherence to a single industry path.
In her role as VP, Total Rewards, Leigh specializes in Compensation and Total Rewards strategy within Human Resources, with expertise in compensation design, pay equity, job architecture, job grading, employee mobility, benefits, recognition programs, and equity compensation. She operates in a fast-paced, private-equity-backed environment where she leads compensation analysis, organizational structure reviews, benefits administration, and talent mobility initiatives. She views compensation as a balance of analytical rigor and human insight, combining data-driven decision-making with an understanding of organizational behavior and employee experience.
Leigh holds a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and a business degree from a state university in Buffalo, New York, an MBA from the Yale School of Management, and a master’s degree in Organizational Psychology from Teachers College, Columbia University. She also holds a Human Resources and Labor Relations certification from Cornell University and previously earned her Series 7 license while at Merrill Lynch. A strong advocate for continuous learning and adaptability, she encourages professionals to stay curious and embrace complexity. Outside of work, she is an avid traveler who has visited approximately 45 countries, enjoys reading, dining, and adventure activities including skydiving. She is married with a son and is passionate about expanding her involvement in professional organizations, nonprofit initiatives, and industry forums in the future.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Leigh
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to strong provider relationships and resilience. Throughout my career, I’ve worked across many areas of healthcare, and building trust with providers and colleagues has always been essential. At the same time, I’ve faced both professional and personal challenges that have strengthened my ability to adapt, stay focused, and continue moving forward no matter the circumstances.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
One of the most impactful pieces of advice I received came from a medical director who encouraged me to go back to school. That push changed the trajectory of my career. Earning my bachelor’s degree in healthcare management opened new opportunities for growth and leadership, and it reinforced the importance of continuing to invest in myself.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I think one of the hardest things about being in compensation is that balance between science versus art. If you're in financial services, it's very cut and dried - everything is pretty formulaic with distinct processes and guidelines. But when you start to get into the world of beauty or consumer goods, you're really focused more on the concept of what drives creativity and innovation. Because those things are inherently different than a formula, you're trying to tap into somebody's ability to think out of the box and be creative, and then incentivize them for it. You really have to be able to flex between the black and white and the gray. For somebody starting out, you want to learn and you want to grow, but you also just want to stay open and flexible and ask a lot of questions, even if it feels stupid doing it - it's never stupid.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
There's always the threat of AI, I think, that plagues everybody. But I don't necessarily see it as a threat - I see it as an opportunity. If you're hiring a number cruncher that is just looking at data and crunching and finding trends, okay, I can see it would replace that role. But it's what you do with the data and how you actually use it that, I'm sorry, no matter how you spin it, requires human intervention. It's a complement, not a takeover. The other challenging thing in my world of comp and benefits is the EU pay transparency directives, which is a huge shift in the way that we share data and communicate to our employees. But again, it frightens a lot of people, but I see it as an opportunity. If your goal is to pay people fairly and to pay them properly, then you should be striving towards doing that rather than fearing the transparency of it. These are all scary shifts that are going on in the world that affect my function, but I don't see them as threats - I see them as good opportunities.
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