Who is Jamie Kern Lima? The IT Cosmetics CEO’s path from beauty queen to cosmetics company founder – and friend of Meghan Markle | Explainer

When Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, surprised fans this week by agreeing to be interviewed on a podcast for the very first time, many were left wondering about the host.

Jamie Kern Lima is a friend of the duchess, and appeared as a guest on her Confessions of a Female Founder podcast the very next day, but her name was unfamiliar to many, especially here in Australia.

Kern Lima was a beauty queen who rose to fame in the US as a reality TV star and news anchor before starting her own cosmetics company, which she went on to sell to L’Oréal for $1.9 billion.

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From beauty queen to TV screens

Kern Lima was born Jamie Marie Kern on July 16, 1977, in California. After finishing school, she became the first member of her family to go to college, attending Washington State University, where she graduated valedictorian (top of her class).

While at college, she worked as a waitress at fast-food restaurant Denny’s and bagged groceries at a supermarket.

In 1999, she won the Baywatch College Search and appeared in one episode of the popular TV series.

She then entered the Miss Washington USA beauty pageant, winning the state title and paving the way for her to compete in the Miss USA pageant.

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In 2000, Kern Lima appeared on the first US series of Big Brother. According to a bio on the Big Brother Fandom website, her nickname was ‘Hollywood’ and she was described as a “well-liked and lighthearted presence throughout the house”.

She was the last female house guest to be eliminated and finished in fourth place, just missing a spot in the finals.

After Big Brother, Kern Lima moved to the US east coast to study a Master of Business Administration (MBA) at Columbia Business School, before graduating in 2004.

While at Columbia, she met Paulo Lima in a statistics class. They married in 2007.

After completing her MBA, Lima considered a career in finance but instead decided to try her hand as a TV news presenter and started work as a morning news anchor on a Washington news channel.

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The birth of IT Cosmetics

In 2006, she moved states to take up a position at another TV station but by then it was increasingly difficult to find makeup that covered her skin conditions, including rosacea and hyperpigmentation.

She began fearing for her job when a producer spoke through her earpiece to tell her there was something on her face.

It was while on a flight on their way home from their honeymoon that she and Lima reportedly hatched a business plan for a new cosmetics company.

They sought out plastic surgeons and dermatologists to develop IT Cosmetics, which launched in 2008.

However, the business struggled to find retailers to sell her products, and for the first two years they only sold a handful of products via their own website.

She told Foundr Magazine in 2022 that when she finally secured a 10-minute segment on US TV shopping channel QVC, they took out a make-or-break loan to manufacture 6000 units – the minimum needed to appear on the show.

Prior to going on air, she had asked if she could wipe her makeup off on air to show the audience her skin but QVC said no. But with the clock ticking and only minutes to make an impression, she did it anyway.

By the end of the segment, all 6000 units had sold out.

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A 2011 article in Bloomberg featured Kern Lima as one of a dozen former beauty queens who had successfully made the jump to business careers after completing MBAs.

At the time of the Blomberg interview, the company was still selling its products on QVC and was heading towards $19 million in retail sales that year, according to Kern Lima.

She said at the time, her beauty pageant past had helped her in business.

“Sitting down at a Miss USA interview is not that much different than sitting down with a buyer at QVC and explaining why our products are phenomenal,” she told Bloomberg.

“It is that same kind of skill set.”

Kern Lima went on to make more than 1000 live QVC appearances and helped IT Cosmetics become the largest beauty brand on the network.

As the company’s profile grew, Kern Lima began to think about the beauty industry and standards as a whole.

She told Foundr Magazine she thought back to her own childhood and the actresses and models she saw on TV and magazines.

“I aspired to look like that. But [on] a real deep level, they always made me feel like I wasn’t enough,” she said.

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She said she decided to use “real people… all different ages and sizes and shapes and skin tones and skin challenges” to sell her products.

By 2015, the company’s net sales had hit $284 million. Then in 2016, L’Oréal acquired the brand for $1.9 billion.

The next year, Forbes included Kern Lima on a list of America’s Richest Self-Made Women.

Leaving the beauty world behind

Kern Lima stayed with the company until 2019 when she stepped down after helping to double sales in just three years.

She said at the time she had fulfilled her “three-year, post-acquisition commitment to continue my role as CEO” but would remain the “biggest brand champion ever” of the company she founded.

Since leaving the company, Kern Lima has become a self-help guru.

Her inspiration was being told “no one will buy makeup from someone who looks like you” – a reference to her struggles with her skin and weight.

She is the author of two New York Times Best Sellers – Believe IT: How to Go from Underestimated to Unstoppable (2021) and Worthy: How to Believe You Are Enough and Transform Your Life (2024). She is set to appear on the next US series of Shark Tank.

Podcast queen

She launched The Jamie Kern Lima Show podcast in 2014 with Oprah Winfrey as her first guest.

It is now the number one self-improvement podcast in the country, according to her website.

Earlier this week, Kern Lima won new fans when she invited Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, her friend and neighbour in the swanky Montecito suburb of southern California, onto her show for a wide-ranging chat.

She then returned the favour the following day when she appeared on Meghan’s Confessions of a Female Founder podcast.

When she is not swapping stories and receiving gift baskets of ice-cream and jars of strawberry preserve from Meghan, Kern Lima is a sought-after speaker, philanthropist and investor.

Now 47, she and her husband live in California with their two children, a daughter and son who were born in 2018 and 2020, both with the help of a surrogate.

According to Forbes, her net worth in 2024 was just over $1 billion.

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