On Tuesday, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine’s Women’s Division hosted its annual Spirit of Achievement luncheon honoring makeup artist and Jones Road Beauty founder Bobbi Brown (trailblazer award honoree); founder and chief executive officer of lifestyle brand committed to solving world hunger Feed Lauren Bush Lauren (visionary award honoree), chair and professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine Teresa Bowman Ph.D. (Ruth L. Gottesman award for scientific advancement honoree) and philanthropist and member of board of trustees at Albert Einstein College of Medicine Linda Altman (leadership award honoree).
The event, held at the Rainbow Room in New York, is the longest running benefit luncheon in the city. Prior to the lunch, honorees and attendees mingled over mimosas and posed for the step-and-repeat.
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Both Brown and Bush Lauren were humbled to be honored with an award from an institution centered around science for their work in beauty and world hunger, respectively.
“I’m honored to share this award with some of my role models, from Eleanor Roosevelt to Gloria Steinem to Meryl Streep,” Brown said during her speech. “I’m just a nice Jewish girl from Chicago who decided to become a makeup artist. How? Why am I in this room? I’m not sure.”
Brown also joked that she hopes “to tell all the other creative kids that don’t get good grades in math and science, there is hope….I’m very honored, especially for someone that got Ds in science to get this science award. It’s pretty amazing, but it’s really about all the amazing doctors and women that make a big difference.”
Ahead of the event, Bush Lauren said: “I’m very honored to be honored with Bobbi, who’s an old friend of mine, and just from an amazing organization doing really important research and clinical care. It’s a little surreal, to be honest.”
Like Brown, Bush Lauren was humbled by the array of past honorees, which also include Donna Karan, Diane von Furstenberg, Evelyn Lauder and Iris Apfel.
Bush Lauren added: “[It’s] an honor in itself to be considered amongst those women. For me, I’ve just been held up and lifted up by so many women, obviously my mom, my family, my sister, my girlfriends and fellow female entrepreneurs have like been my little tribe during the last 20 years of building Feed. Without them and that support Feed certainly would not be here.”
While Brown and Bush Lauren were honored for their successes, the focus throughout the event was on the scientific advancements coming out of the college, including Bowman’s research on blood stem cells via zebrafish, which respond similarly to humans.
