Emma Grede Explains Why She Turned Down Investing In Ami Colé At The Start, But Decided To Hire Its Founder Diarrha N’Diaye At SKIMS – AfroTech
Emma Grede has weighed in on the criticism surrounding Diarrha N’Diaye’s role at SKIMS.
Ami Colé
N’Diaye is the founder of beloved clean beauty brand Ami Colé, created for melanin-rich skin. On July 17, 2025, four years after its inception, she announced in an Instagram post that she was winding down the company. She shared some challenges the company had faced, including appeasing investors, especially as some backers appeared to shift away from the inclusivity-focused mindset they embraced in 2020.
“We were a brand rooted in purpose, storytelling, and the bold celebration of who we are. Let’s not forget bomb ass products … This moment is bittersweet. You’ve witnessed me start from a sketch in my Brooklyn apartment to the shelves of every Sephora in North America in 4 years,” she wrote. “Thank you for everything you’ve taught me about living your dreams out loud. Thank you to the investors who genuinely believed in me. @sephora for making a home for us. My team for the amazing work you’ve poured into this. And my community,” she said at the time.
SKIMS Executive Appointment
In November, N’Diaye was appointed executive vice president of beauty and fragrance at SKIMS, according to Marie Claire. The announcement prompted mixed reactions from consumers. Some questioned why SKIMS co-founder Grede didn’t invest in N’Diaye as a founder rather than as an executive, while others viewed the move as part of a broader issue of keeping people building for companies rather than for themselves.
On the “She’s So Lucky” podcast hosted by Les Alfred, Grede explained why she never invested in the brand, an opportunity that was presented to her from the start. Grede turned it down, because she typically does not invest in first-time founders unless she believes “there’s something extraordinary about that founder and about that proposition.”
“To me, I didn’t see that. I was like, ‘It’s okay.’ But I was like, ‘It’s gonna come and go.’ That’s how I felt. So that wasn’t an opportunity that I wanted to invest in at the time, but I kept my eye on it,” Grede admitted. “We would talk time to time. And so there was a relationship. And to her credit, she always called me. She didn’t say, ‘You didn’t invest in my company. That’s the end of our relationship.’ She was like, ‘What do you see that I don’t see? What is it that I can learn?’ And I’m having this situation, and do you know these people?’ And when she took investments, she would call me. So there was lots to speak about.”
Grede also reflected on hiring N’Diaye at SKIMS, calling it a “perfect opportunity” for the beauty executive who she described “incredibly talented” with amazing ideas and concepts that would benefit from the learning opportunities of working within a company such as SKIMS, which is currently valued at $5 billion, as AFROTECH™ previously reported.
“What she will say herself is that she perhaps lacked the business acumen to start a business. Now, if you have an opportunity to go inside a company where you have infrastructure and investment and executives and a bunch of people that can show you how it’s done and make something successful, and you can extrapolate all of the value from that for three years and go, ‘Thank you guys,’ and go off and try it again. Why would you not … I hope the community understands it. If they don’t, then, sorry. Not even, sorry … The point of being in business is to make money. It isn’t to service the community,” Grede added.
In her role at SKIMS, N’Diaye is responsible for leading product development, innovation, and brand strategy, as previously reported by AFROTECH™.
