Ron Robinson is the founder of BeautyStat and the cosmetic chemist behind Hailey Bieber’s skincare line, Rhode. Robinson began his career at Clinique in the ’90s and, over the past two decades, has worked on products for industry giants like Revlon, Avon, L’Oréal, and Lancôme. He launched BeautyStat as an educational platform for beauty enthusiasts in 2009 but ultimately moved into developing his own product line in 2019 with the launch of his groundbreaking, ultra-potent vitamin C formulation. Celebs took notice, and Hailey Bieber quickly reached out to bring him on as a partner in what would become Rhode. In this episode, Robinson chats with Who What Wear Beauty Director Erin Jahns about the science behind successful products and which ingredients are worth the hype.

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Alyssa Wasko Stein is the founder and designer of Los Angeles–based womenswear brand Donni. Stein has had entrepreneurial tendencies since childhood, but she didn’t always know her love of fashion would take her down the designer path. She studied a different part of the fashion industry (retailing and consumer sciences) and secured a coveted internship in Chanel’s visual merchandising department during college. But after her father’s passing at the beginning of her sophomore year, Stein sought out a creative outlet for her grief. She began handmaking and selling scarves, naming the business Donni Charm after her father, Donald. Stein slowly grew her side business while continuing to work at Chanel after graduating, but after some early wholesale success, she decided to focus on Donni Charm full-time. She moved operations to Los Angeles and rebranded to simply Donni. Most significantly, though, she stumbled into designing ready-to-wear clothing, as she wanted specific pieces to style with her scarves. While Stein had no prior clothing design experience, it came naturally to her, and she surprised herself with a full line of 30 SKUs within four weeks, laying the groundwork for the Donni we know and love today.

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For our second annual Who What Wear 100 Beauty Awards, Beauty Director Erin Jahns is joined by beauty editors Jamie Schneider, Kaitlyn McLintock, and Maya Thomas for a roundtable discussion about all of their favorite products. After spending months testing items from the buzziest new brands and the industry giants, the team has narrowed their top picks down to 100 items across haircare, skincare, makeup, bodycare, tools, nails, and fragrance. Warning: You may want to listen to this episode with your beauty retailer of choice’s website open for easy, add-to-cart access. 

The Who What Wear Beauty 100 story is live, so check out the full list here!

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Katie Sturino is the founder of Megababe, the innovative beauty brand known for nontoxic, cult-favorite products like Thigh Rescue and Bust Dust. She's also a body-acceptance advocate with a highly engaged community of close to one million supporters across platforms. Sturino joined Hillary Kerr on Second Life back in 2020 to talk about her winding career path from PR to social media to beauty (listen to her first episode here), but we had to have her back on to discuss her most recent pivot to fiction writing. In this episode, Sturino shares why she decided to write her debut novel, Sunny Side Up, and gets refreshingly candid about the challenges of continuing to transform your career when everyone has feedback. She opens up about what it's like to work with a ghostwriter and where she hopes to take this creative endeavor moving forward. Of course, she also catches us up on the last five years of bootstrapped growth for Megababe and shares what's on the horizon for the business.

Buy Sturino's new book, Sunny Side Up, here! (It's Hillary Kerr approved.)

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Ann Foley is the costume designer behind the grounded and detailed wardrobes of the hit show The Last of Us. In this episode, Foley (whose extensive career also includes work on Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and She Hulk) sits down with Who What Wear Senior Fashion and Social Media Editor Tara Gonzalez to discuss the costume design process for The Last of Us season 2. Foley shares the journey of developing character-driven styles, the inspiration behind the apocalyptic fashion and how it reflected the different environments, and the subtle styling changes that marked character growth after a five-year time jump. She reveals the challenges of costuming an apocalyptic world, why The Last of Us is technically a period piece, the significance of specific items like Joel's jacket and Ellie's Converse, and the collaborative process with actors and showrunners that brought the characters to life.

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Shannon Watts is the founder of Moms Demand Action, a prominent grassroots organization fighting gun violence in the United States. She initially aspired to be an investigative journalist, and she earned a journalism degree but transitioned into a career in public relations, spending nearly two decades in corporate communications at companies like Anthem and GE Healthcare. After taking a step back from her career to become a stay-at-home mom, the Sandy Hook tragedy in 2012 spurred her into action, and she founded Moms Demand Action with a simple Facebook group. She leveraged her communications and branding expertise to transform the group into a powerful nationwide movement, now part of Everytown for Gun Safety, the largest gun violence prevention organization in the country, with nearly 11 million supporters. She has since been recognized as one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People and a Forbes 50 Over 50 Changemaker. She’s also authored books including Fight Like a Mother and Fired Up.

Buy Shannon’s new book here.

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Emilia Wickstead is a New Zealand–born, London-based fashion designer known for her refined yet playful approach to feminine dressing. Since launching in 2008, she’s evolved her namesake brand from a made-to-measure model to producing seasonal ready-to-wear collections, shown at London Fashion Week for the past 13 years, and expanded into bridalwear. In this episode, Wickstead joins Senior Fashion Editor Anna LaPlaca to discuss her early design influences, the trademarks of an Emilia Wickstead piece, and how she selects artistic muses for her cinematic collections. Wickstead also shares which pieces to shop from her pre-fall collection and details on her upcoming collaborations with the Palm Heights Hotel and Paperless Post.

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Jessica Malaty Rivera is an infectious disease epidemiologist and science communicator renowned for making complex public health information accessible, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. While initially premed at USC, she pivoted to studying health promotion and disease prevention, and worked in the nonprofit sector after college. She was later recruited to research emerging biological threats at Georgetown University and simultaneously decided to pursue a master’s degree there in biohazardous threat agents and emerging infectious diseases. While she’s always loved science, she began to realize that where she truly excelled was in “speaking science.” And the deeper Rivera got into infectious disease epidemiology—whether through work or academia—the more she realized how critical the communications aspect of science was to public health. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, she joined The Atlantic to lend her expertise to the COVID Tracking Project to provide publicly available, comprehensive data on COVID-19 cases in real time. She then began using Instagram to explain and interpret global health news, unexpectedly gaining a large following for her easy-to-understand information. Over the past five years, she has grown her platform, launched a Substack, and is currently completing a Doctorate in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University, all while remaining dedicated to science facts and public health literacy.

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Kathleen Felix-Hager is the Emmy Award–winning costume designer behind the vibrant and evolving wardrobes of the hit show Hacks. Felix-Hager, whose extensive career also includes work on Veep and Dexter, sits down with Who What Wear Editorial Director Lauren Eggertsen to delve into the sartorial world of Deborah Vance and Ava Daniels. In this episode, Felix-Hager shares the journey of developing distinct styles for each character, the inspiration behind Deborah's maximalist looks drawn from her own grandmother, and the thoughtful elevation of Ava's wardrobe through four seasons. She reveals the challenges of costuming a comedy, the evolution of Ava's infamous cropped pants, and the collaborative process with actors and showrunners that brings these characters to life.

Shop our editor's eBay picks here!

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Anushka Salinas is the CEO of the parenting tech company Nanit. Salinas began her career as an assistant buyer at Lord & Taylor, discovering her love for fashion and business data. She then pursued her MBA and serendipitously met the founders of the groundbreaking clothing rental company Rent the Runway when it was still just an idea. She began working for the company as an unpaid intern during business school, and then, upon graduation, left a secure job offer behind to continue growing the business, eventually becoming Rent the Runway’s VP of merchandising. She went on to apply her e-commerce expertise to Hudson’s Bay and a start-up called Resonance before returning to Rent the Runway to run its subscription business, and then ultimately become its president. Then, in 2024, Salinas pivoted again to lead yet another groundbreaking company, this time in the parenting space. Salinas joined Nanit, a technology company revolutionizing baby monitors with AI insights, offering a data-driven approach to modern parenting. Under her leadership, Nanit continues to innovate and expand, becoming an essential tool for families navigating the joys and challenges of raising children.

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