Jamie Kern Lima

This entrepreneur wiped off her makeup on live TV to show her rosacea. Her products sold out in minutes.

Jamie Kern Lima started as a waitress at Denny’s and bagged groceries at Safeway.

She became the first in her family to go to college, graduated valedictorian from Washington State, then got her MBA at Columbia.

She also won Miss Washington USA.

Appeared on Baywatch.

And competed on the first season of Big Brother.

Then she became a local news anchor, first in Washington, then in Portland.

But her hereditary rosacea and hyperpigmentation made it nearly impossible to find makeup that worked on-air.

So she created her own cosmetics brand in 2008: IT Cosmetics.

With her husband Paulo.

Every major beauty retailer turned them down.

Investors passed.

But one day, she landed 10 minutes on QVC.

She simply wiped off her makeup on national television.

Revealing her bare skin. The redness. The blotches.

And she sold out every product.

She went on to appear in more than 1,000 live QVC shows.

By 2015, IT Cosmetics was doing $182M in net sales.

In 2016, L’Oréal bought the company for $1.2B in cash.

Kern Lima became the first female CEO of a L’Oréal brand in the company’s 100+ year history.

She personally took home around $410M.

She stayed on until 2019.

Then she built the next chapter.

She invested in over a dozen companies, including Dutch Bros Coffee and Duckhorn Portfolio.

She launched a self-improvement podcast, The Jamie Kern Lima Show, where Oprah was her first guest.

She became a two-time New York Times bestselling author.

Her second book, WORTHY, stayed on the list for 14 weeks.

She donated 100% of her author proceeds.

She funded leadership training in over 100 prisons and shelters.

She gave over $40M in product and funding to help women facing cancer.

And in 2025, she returned to Columbia to give the commencement address.

She didn’t talk about power through titles or resumes.

She talked about the risk of ignoring your instincts.

About rejection as redirection.

And the cost of living out of alignment with your purpose.