Selling Opportunity: The Story of Mary Kay, published by Viking in April 2026, is this author’s latest book. Gavenas authored Color Stories: Behind the Scenes in America’s Billion-Dollar Beauty Industry, and she has worked as both a beauty editor and scholar of the beauty industry, especially as it relates to cultural history. She was recently named a Fellow at the Leon Levy Center for Biography. And this former Glamour, In Style, Mirabella editor, and columnist at Elle, has served as an advisory board member for The Dove Report: Challenging Beauty, and is cited as an expert source in media ranging from The New York Times to BBC-4. Fellow biographer and BIO member Lisa Napoli interviewed Mary Lisa Gavenas.