MAC's Aïda Moudachirou-Rébois On The Power Of The Beauty Industry

Beauty exec Aïda Moudachirou-Rébois shares how she prepares for meetings, copes with stress, and what's next for the brand's Viva Glam initiative.

In Bustle's Quick Question , we ask women leaders all about career advice, from the best guidance they've ever gotten to what they're still figuring out. Here, Aïda Moudachiro-Rébois , the senior vice president and global general manager of MAC Cosmetics , talks about Viva Glam, her morning routine, and how she stays balanced.

While she may be the head of MAC Cosmetics today, Aïda Moudachirou-Rébois was a self-proclaimed tomboy as a kid. Growing up in Benin in Western Africa, she was surrounded by family members who got dressed up for every occasion — dinners, weddings, ceremonies — but she had three brothers, and wasn't exactly begging for her own makeup bag.

"I was always observing my mom, my aunt, and the women around me putting lipstick on and doing their eyes and their hair and putting on all these amazing hats," she tells Bustle. "I was very inspired by how transformational and empowering it felt. Some of them didn't have much, but they always looked put together, and that made them feel good."

At 14, Moudachirou-Rébois moved to Paris, and later landed her first internship at L'Oréal. That's when the power of beauty clicked. "I saw how things were made behind the scenes," she says. "That's when I fell in love with it." She's worked in the industry ever since.

Among her many roles as global general manager, she leads the Viva Glam campaign , which was created in the mid-'90s during the HIV/AIDS crisis. MAC's founders, Frank Toskan and Frank Angelo, wanted to help those affected, so they created a lipstick — a bright blue shade now called Viva Heart — and used 100% of the proceeds to provide food, shelter, treatment, and prevention efforts to communities in need.

Jump to today, and MAC has raised nearly $540 million. In honor of World Aids Day on Dec. 1, Moudachirou-Rébois's team is focusing on the next $500 million. Among the campaign's grantees are the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation , Elton John AIDS Foundation , and American Foundation for AIDS Research . They've also expanded the scope to include women's rights, racial injustices, gender equality, and environmental causes.