Zenan He

For Zenan He, it has been a (relatively) long and winding road from law student and K-beauty fan to digital project manager at an iconic French cosmetics brand. The Beijing native took her first trip out of the country while studying at China University of Political Science and Law, opting for a semester abroad in Seoul largely because of her passion for South Korean beauty brands.

Rather than sate her cultural curiosity, the trip only intensified it, so He decided to pursue graduate studies in business management at the ESCP Business School. The two-year program meant plenty of opportunities to travel as well as internships at two of the most high-profile French beauty brands: L’Oréal (where she helped manage the company’s Instagram account and developed community guidelines that were rolled out globally) and Dior.

Most of the other interns were fluent in French, but linguistic limitations didn’t stop He from forging connections and flexing her creativity and analytic problem-solving to unlock even more opportunities. Shortly after graduation, she landed a permanent position at Parfums Christian Dior, joining the digital communications team in October 2021. The projects she has worked on since have touched on all corners of emerging tech—the metaverse, gamification, Web3, non-fungible tokens—and she has also taken on deploying data analytics dashboards and visualization tools across diverse stakeholder groups.

Though He has yet to shed the rocket boosters that launched her own career, she’s not shy about sharing advice with those who will follow. “Network with different people, because you’ll not only make friends but also get really useful contacts for your career,” she shared in an ESCP alumni spotlight. “So just do it.”