Calm in Chaos: Leadership, Supply Chain, & The Future of Beauty
What if the most important job in the beauty industry was one you'd never heard of? And what does it take for a Black woman engineer to walk into a room she wasn't expected to lead — and build the systems that keep it running?
Kinta C. Gates didn't follow a conventional path into beauty. She followed curiosity — through an industrial engineering degree at NC State, through additional study in paralegal science and strategic communications, and through more than two decades of leading complex organizations across beauty, food, and CPG. Today, as VP of Supply Chain and Operations at Glossier, she oversees the entire product lifecycle: procurement, planning, fulfillment, logistics, and the integrated systems that make a global beauty brand run. She's also a trusted advisor to the CEO and CFO, a mentor to Black beauty founders through the Glossier Grant Program, and an active voice for building the HBCU pipeline into STEM leadership.
On Tuesday, April 21, at 7 PM EST, Kinta joins Unlock The Science of Beauty founder Sakeya Donaldson for a LIVE conversation about what it really means to build a STEM career — not just in a lab, but in the operational infrastructure that shapes what beauty looks like at scale. This is the conversation that opens up a world most people never see.
What We'll Cover:
We'll explore how Kinta built a multi-disciplinary career from an engineering foundation — and why the combination of technical expertise, people-centered leadership, and strategic communication has made her one of the most distinctive operators in the industry. From global supply disruptions to leadership transitions, she's navigated complexity with the kind of calm and clarity that defines transformational leadership. We'll also dig into what supply chain actually means in beauty, and why it represents one of the most overlooked — and most critical — career paths in the industry for the next generation of STEM leaders.
We'll also hear about Kinta's deep commitment to representation and pipeline-building: her work mentoring Black beauty founders, her advocacy for HBCUs, and her belief that high performance and holistic well-being are not competing values — they're inseparable ones. This episode is for every young woman who has ever wondered whether engineering, business, and beauty could all exist in the same career. The answer is yes. And Kinta C. Gates is proof.
Kinta C. Gates BIO
Kinta C. Gates is a transformational operations leader and VP of Supply Chain and Operations at Glossier, where she oversees the end-to-end product lifecycle — from procurement and planning to fulfillment and logistics — while serving as a trusted advisor to the CEO and CFO. With an engineering foundation and more than two decades of experience leading organizations through complexity and growth across beauty, food, and CPG, she brings rare technical precision and people-centered leadership to every challenge she takes on. A lifetime member of NSBE, Kinta has been recognized as one of the "50 Phenomenal Black Women Engineers" by the Los Angeles Council of Black Professional Engineers and honored with the Voice of Change Award by the California Multicultural Business Alliance.
Beyond operations, Kinta serves as a key advisor for the Glossier Grant Program — mentoring Black beauty founders across the U.S. and U.K. — and is a passionate advocate for building the HBCU pipeline into supply chain and STEM leadership. Her insights have been featured in Bloomberg and the eCom Logistics Podcast. She holds a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from NC State, a B.S. in Paralegal Studies from Kaplan University, and an M.S. in Strategic Communications from The George Washington University.