IBA Member Spotlight: Gracee Shorter

Celebrating Earth Month with Gracee Shorter

How can members of the beauty and skincare industry re-think how they make and present products, do business, and prioritize resources to engage in environmental stewardship, all while using good manufacturing practices to create a good product and make a good living?

Building a sustainable supply chain is a big part of the solution.

As Senior Enterprise Account Executive at EcoVadis, Gracee Shorter has the rare opportunity to synthesize her work experience and personal passions, combining her interest in business, enthusiasm for cosmetics, and dedication to sustainability. Armed with a degree in Commerce from the University of Victoria, she has built sales and marketing programs for financial services clients, recruited tech talent, and identified new projects for cloud-based technologies. This works in tandem with her makeup artistry and retail experience with MAC Cosmetics.

Today, Ms. Shorter helps clients evaluate and improve the sustainability of their supply chain. EcoVadis was formed in 2007 to help companies manage their supply network, upstream and downstream. Custom, evidence-based assessments lead to an ESG performance scorecard, Corrective Action Plans, and reporting metrics on an ongoing basis. Similar to a Plan-Do-Check-Act quality initiative, the process is evolving and transformative.

Ultimately, the sustainability of an organization is a combination of many factors, including corporate and social responsibility, actions, and governance. The EcoVadis methodology evaluates the strength of a supplier’s management systems around topics under four themes: environment, labor, human rights, ethics, and sustainable procurement.

Buy-side clients can be part of the Responsible Beauty Initiative, a safe place to create agnostic, continuously improving best practices for the industry.

EcoVadis serves over 750 clients in beauty, fashion, consumer goods, agriculture, food, and chemicals in over 160 countries. These sustainability best practices are repeatable, effective on multiple occasions, and scalable. Hence, they work for enterprise clients and smaller businesses and are transferable, so they work for different industries. Fortunately, smaller companies can piggyback onto the findings of their suppliers due to larger companies already engaging their suppliers via the EcoVadis Scorecard Network.

Consumers want more demonstration of environmental stewardship, and regulations more frequently demand it. Ms. Shorter says she has seen an uptick in the supply chain sustainability guidance request in the beauty industry. All segments of the industry — Brand, Manufacturer, Packager, and Retailer — have an opportunity and a responsibility to step up.

This, in part, explains her involvement on the IBA Supply Chain and Sustainability Committee. Desiring to give back, she believes in service and looks forward to sharing solutions on a topic to which she is deeply committed.