Mildred Giron, 31

Growing up in Honduras, Mildred Giron played so much with the 3D models that her uncle, an architect, kept at home that her dad installed a design program called 3D Home Architect on the family computer for Giron to tinker with. That curiosity led her to the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), where she earned her undergraduate degree in interior design in 2015 and her master’s in architecture four years later.

It was through an NJIT career fair that she first got connected with beauty product company L’Oréal.

“I actually didn’t think they were ever going to call me, and they called me immediately,” Giron said. 

In eight years, she has climbed the ranks from intern to becoming one of L’Oréal’s directors of real estate. In her early days with the company, she assisted with the design of L’Oréal’s  new operations hub in Clark, N.J., before being offered a position as a consultant. Her first big full-time gig was project managing the buildout of the headquarters of L’Oréal-owned Kiehl’s in New York City.

“I did everything you could possibly think of,” she said. “I would be there at 4 a.m. ensuring the work was done, the construction was right, the quality was there.”

That attention to detail opened up a position for her in facility management, taking care of the Clark operations hub while she finished her master’s degree. Once her schooling was behind her, she transitioned back to the real estate team, where she recently oversaw the buildout of L’Oréal’s 100,000-square-foot Los Angeles-area operations hub before its 2022 debut. It was a significant project for her.

“When I started that project, my father had died of COVID,” she said. “It was hard for me to focus at the very beginning … but it fulfilled me, and I think it gave me back something of a reward.”