LUBNA KHALID, CEO AND FOUNDER

Social activist, marketing marvel, film-maker, former fashion model, 29-year-old Lubna Khalid is a modern, renaissance entrepreneur with high ideals, high energy and high ambitions.

Founder of Real Cosmetics, Lubna has channeled her personal quest for worldwide acceptance of cultural diversity into a hot, contemporary make-up brand that truly delivers “beauty without boundaries.”

Her professional passion grew from personal frustration. A part-time model in high school, Lubna, a Pakistani-American, was unable to find foundations and powders to match her skin tone. There were no consumer products in stores, and even professional make-up artists had difficulty mixing realistic skin shades. Lubna noted a conspicuous lack of cosmetics designed for women who did not fit neatly into typical categories of beauty and skin color. Likewise, she noted a conspicuous lack of aspirational, multi-racial imagery in beauty and fashion media.

After graduating from U.C. Berkeley in 1997, where she majored in business and ethnic studies, Lubna gathered classic marketing experience at Proctor & Gamble. Her own analysis of demographic shifts and the cosmetic marketplace confirmed the need for an “all-encompassing” product line that broke barriers and offered expansive, “real” representations of beauty.

In 1999, Real Cosmetics — real make-up, for women of all skin tones -- was established. More than just a successful, prestige product company, Real Cosmetics is a platform for Lubna to promote self-esteem and empowerment to women everywhere. An outspoken advocate for diversity, Lubna produced an anti-racial-profiling documentary called “Haters” in the wake of September 11. A published author and public speaker, Lubna frequently addresses business meetings and college audiences to share her views on contemporary beauty culture, stereotyping, and the social context that fosters these ideologies.

“My lifetime goal is to revolutionize the way society views beauty.”