Who

A major player in the world of beauty, Demsey is group president of Estée Lauder.

Backstory

Ohio native Demsey had a good deal of exposure to the beauty biz as a kid: One of his cousins created the musky '70s sensation Jovan and his family was friendly with Charles Revson, the founder of Revlon. It was his family connections that helped Demsey land a spot in the Macy's executive training program after he graduated from Stanford. But when a customer told him he seemed more the Bloomingdale's type, he took the advice to heart and left Macy's for Bloomie's.

Following stints at Saks and Benetton, in the early 1990s Demsey arrived at Estée Lauder's LA office as head of sales; eight years later, Leonard Lauder tapped him to run MAC Cosmetics. He managed to turn the brand into a powerhouse in short order by marketing MAC to fashion industry pros and recruiting campy celebrity spokesmodels (RuPaul, Pamela Anderson) to generate buzz. His efforts were rewarded in 2005 when he was named global brand president of Estée Lauder, and a year later William Lauder bumped him up to group president. These days Demsey is hard at work trying to reinvigorate the brand by reaching out to a younger, more fashion-savvy audience. With Aerin Lauder Zinterhofer he helped launch a fragrance line with P. Diddy, and was instrumental in recruiting Tom Ford to develop his own line of cosmetics and fragrances.

Pet causes

Under Demsey's leadership as chairman, the MAC AIDS Fund became one of the largest charities of its kind—a total of $86 million has been raised to date. Demsey received the amFAR's Award of Courage in 2007.

Personal

A longtime bachelor and notorious ladies' man (among his many ex-girlfriends: Alex Kuczynski), Dempsey recently settled down. In July 2007, he married gemologist Anoushka Izmirlian. They live in a two-bedroom apartment in the Museum Tower, the 52-story high rise above the Museum of Modern Art.