Mary Lisa Gavenas

Mary Lisa Gavenas, author of Color Stories: Behind the Scenes in America’s Billion-Dollar Beauty Industry, has worked as both a beauty editor and scholar of the beauty industry—especially as it relates to cultural history—and was recently named a Fellow at the Leon Levy Center for Biography. A former editor at Glamour, In Style, Mirabella, and a columnist at Elle, she was a member of the advisory board for The Dove Report: Challenging Beauty and has been cited as an expert source in media ranging from The New York Times to BBC-4. Visit her at the Gotham Center for New York City History: www.GothamCenter.org.