Estée Lauder CFO on the benefits of a globe-spanning career

In his early career, Akhil Shrivastava was collecting stamps on his passport.

Before taking over as CFO of Estée Lauder in November 2024, Shrivastava went out of his way to build a uniquely global career. He estimates that in his nearly two decades at Procter & Gamble, where he worked until he moved to Estée Lauder in 2015, he lived in approximately eight to 10 different houses around the world.

That’s what happens when your resume reads like a travelogue: Shrivastava has jumped from India to Thailand, Singapore to Cincinnati, Boston to New York, and the distant land of New Jersey.

“Living in so many houses and cities and schools for the kids, you become a global nomad, but you kind of consider everywhere your home, and you really develop a deep love and admiration and reliance on people,” he told CFO Brew.

For those looking to make a career jump at some point, your passport doesn’t need to be quite as well-worn. “Raising your hand” for opportunities to build a “diversity of experiences” should do the trick just as well, Shrivastava said.

Still, he cautions that a wide range of experiences isn’t enough by itself. “You [also] have to build depth,” he added. “You have to go to the bottom of the ocean before you can be the captain of the boat.”

If you happen to be reading this while working from home in sweatpants, sure sounds like the kind of CFO you could learn a thing or two from.

Globetrotting. Shrivastava has certainly been the captain of his ship. He started his career at Procter & Gamble in Asia, landing in internal auditing despite an engineering and finance background. The heads-first experience taught him about how a company lays its foundations, he told us. From there, he moved to roles within P&G focused on the foundations of the business: a shampoo factory; a paper factory; and a skincare, haircare, and paper factory in Thailand.

“Seeing day-to-day operations, going in the morning, looking at the shop floor, machines, engineers, warehousing, logistics—it gives you a real sense of what these great brands and products that we see on the shelves come from and who are the people behind them,” he noted.

After that, it was another move, this time to Singapore, where he did FP&A for P&G’s Oceania, Australia, and India regions. And it was in this role that he was tasked with “trying to solve the ultimate test at the bottom of the pyramid:” Could P&G launch Tide laundry detergent at one rupee a wash?

“That kind of opportunity really teaches you end-to-end business. First you have to go to people’s homes, [see] how they wash, how much water they have, what kind of clothes they have, the environment they have,” Shrivastava explained. Then you have to work with R&D, and think about distribution and marketing, he continued.

Ultimately, the efforts led to a significant increase in market share in India, he said. “Of course, it was a long journey, but that was a great introduction for me to learn business end to end, from R&D to marketing, insights, purchasing, sales, operations, people.”

A role at P&G’s Cincinnati headquarters followed, where he worked in the office of the global COO and sales officer before moving to the company’s beauty business. He later served as finance director for Gillette North America, which P&G had acquired.

By the time he got to Estée Lauder in 2015, “the spirit of constant learning” he’d developed in his early years across Asia inspired him to go into treasury, “because I felt that was necessary for me to learn the total skill set to maybe one day have that opportunity to be in these shoes [as CFO],” he said. Clearly, it worked out.

Simplicity is also key. To be a great finance leader, he thinks “sometimes you have to simplify.” He recommends always diving deeper to understand the “essence” of what a company is solving, stressing that “if you can’t explain it like a lemonade stand, that means you do not understand it yourself.”