FOUNDER, CHIEF EXECUTIVE SENEGENCE INTERNATIONAL
DAY JOB: Started beauty and skincare company that counts a network of more than 500,000 sellers based out of nearly 20 countries. Company is Orange County’s largest woman-owned business with an estimated $1 billion in annual revenue. Ranked No. 22 last year on OC’s list of the largest private companies locally.
MAKING A DIFFERENCE: Saw the need for hand sanitizer and stepped up to the plate to produce thousands of bottles in partnership with its manufacturers. Some of those bottles were gifted to consumers with their purchases, while a good chunk also went to organizations it’s worked with in the past: Ronald McDonald House and CHOC Children’s Hospital in Orange, in addition to organizations and facilities in Oklahoma, where RogersKante is from.
NOTABLE: The organization moved quickly to adapt to working from home, continuing to rely on the BlueJeans conferencing system for management meetings. Facebook Live was a good way to stay in touch daily with the seller network, with communication across these channels ramped up during the shelter-in-place orders.
QUOTABLE: “Hand sanitizer was not one of our original products, but we saw the need and we stopped doing what we [were] doing, of course, and tried to find a way to pull it all together. So many people had bits and pieces of [the ingredients] but couldn’t do it all because of how difficult it is now to get the raw materials,” Rogers-Kante told the Business Journal in April.
FAST FACTS: Moved to California at 15. Worked at Mary Kay. Rogers-Kante started SeneGence in 1999, linking with chemist to create LipSense liquid lipstick. Company has gone from start in a Newport Beach mobile home to 200,000-square-foot Foothill Ranch campus. Company also has a 255,000-square-foot Corona plant and 744,448-square-foot corporate camps in Sapulpa, Okla.
