The online MLS program is for you if you want to further your career through a better understanding of the U.S. legal system and the legal challenges facing you in your industry. This program is for non-lawyer professionals and consists of general law core courses and courses in specific concentrations to provide you with greater specialization and expertise. Choose from the online MLS with a Concentration in Compliance and Risk Management or the online MLS with a Concentration in Finance.
These competencies collectively contribute to shape you as a well-rounded and effective professional in legal and law-adjacent fields and positions. The ability to navigate complex laws, make informed decisions, communicate effectively and maintain ethical standards is essential for success in an increasingly complex legal landscape. Visit our careers page to learn more about what these competencies and the legal knowledge gained through our leading curriculum can do for you.
The online MLS with a Concentration in Compliance and Risk Management gives you the expertise to excel in roles across various sectors, from corporate offices to government agencies, healthcare organizations to non-profit organizations and beyond. Whether your goal is to lead compliance initiatives, assess and manage risks or shape ethical business or human resources practices, courses in this concentration provide the knowledge and skills you need to get ahead.
The online MLS with a Concentration in Finance is designed to provide you with a robust foundation in both law and finance, opening doors to new opportunities or furthering your career in corporate finance, banking, investment management or regulatory compliance. Coursework on topics including mergers and acquisitions, lending, entrepreneurship, contracts, regulations and much more will equip you with the knowledge and skills you need to thrive in a rapidly evolving financial landscape.
This course concerns financial instrument markets and their regulation and focuses on the secondary market for public company stock. The class begins with a consideration of major domestic capital market institutions. It will then address the economic theory that explains how these markets operate and the incentives that motivate their various players. This part of the course focuses on market-microstructure and finance theory. These beginning segments lay the groundwork for a more informed discussion of the substantive law that governs the markets.
Course content is effective and engaging. You will practice legal skills through applied projects, problem-solving activities, document analysis and case studies. You will graduate with a portfolio of work demonstrating your ability to synthesize complex problems and apply legal knowledge to real-world challenges.
Participating in an online program will not deter you from networking. You will connect with your classmates and professors through the online learning platform. For coursework, you will conduct interviews with industry experts, giving you prime access to professionals working in your current or future industry.
"Ulta has enjoyed tremendous success for the past several years, executing a well-defined strategy. And that includes accelerating store growth, introducing new products, services and brands, enhancing our loyalty program, broadening our marketing reach and increasing our digital focus, including ulta.com," Dillon said on her first earnings call as CEO. "I don't plan to make any radical changes to this strategy, but rather I plan to expand and build upon this solid foundation."
Dillon did just that. Under her leadership, net sales growth would continue, maintaining a 20% or higher growth rate from 2013 to 2017. In 2018, growth slowed to 14%, and in 2019, it was 10%. But Dillon was also at the front of a larger shift at the retailer, from a regional mass beauty player to a company that offered premium beauty brands as well.
"With consumers shopping high and low cosmetics, Ulta is actually even better positioned I believe than Sephora. Ulta is the number one destination for teens right now," Erin Schmidt, senior analyst at Coresight Research, said in an interview, citing Piper Sandler's annual teen survey. Coresight Research estimates that Ulta makes more in revenue now than Sephora, though it's hard to ultimately tell since Sephora doesn't divulge its financials.
Dillon made Ulta an experiential destination, multiple experts said, and brought more professionalism to not only the lineup of brands but also the salon services business. Stephanie Wissink, a managing director at Jefferies, still remembers a moment about two years after Dillon took over that foretold that shift at the retailer.
By almost any measure, Dillon has been a solid leader for the beauty retailer and was one of only a few female CEOs, even in the female-focused beauty space. The company will undoubtedly miss a lot about Dillon, but the possibilities are still beautiful for Ulta.
"I think to Mary's credit she has figured out a way to establish and reinforce those relationships to reassure Este Lauder and L'Oral Luxe and these premium brands in beauty that it's okay to coexist in an environment with Morphe and Makeup Revolution and Elf and CoverGirl and Revlon," Wissink said. "It doesn't degrade the value of Este Lauder to be in the same space as those value price brands. The same reason that H&M can fit in a shopping mall next to a Burberry or next to a Gucci store or a Louis Vuitton. Why? Because the same woman that's carrying a Louis Vuitton handbag is wearing a pair of jeans from H&M."
Dillon also introduced a space for up-and-coming brands to live, resulting in an assortment that features traditional brands in addition to indie ones, mass brands in addition to prestige. Ulta's strategy became establishing itself as the "partner of choice" for hot new DTC brands to sell through brick-and-mortar for the first time and finding innovative ways to highlight those brands in stores and online.
She was a "high-growth CEO," as Wissink calls it, raising Ulta to be a national retailer, partnering with major brands, and leading the company through a digital transformation. The store count more than doubled while Dillon was there, net sales and operating income more than tripled, and net income more than quadrupled (excluding the year of the pandemic).
The pandemic also helped fuel that e-commerce adoption. According to a report from 1010data, Ulta's e-commerce sales grew 67% year over year, compared to 25% at Sephora, driven by cheaper prices at Ulta and Ulta's mostly off-mall store base. Prices at Sephora were almost 54% higher than Ulta, which made the latter more appealing to customers trying to rein in their finances during the pandemic.
Ulta invested in personalization and other data tools to grow loyalty, Schmidt said, leading to a 20 million-member gain over Dillon's tenure. During Dillon's first earnings call at the company, members had just surpassed 12 million, while in the retailer's latest earnings, members grew to 32.3 million.
"She took it from a regional operator to: It's kind of a national destination," Wissink said. "And that includes everything from assortment to visual merchandising to marketing to in-store experience and services. She was really around for the engendering of those attributes."
"Mary always had the ability to command a room," Wissink said. "She was incredibly approachable. I think you could see Mary on the sidewalk and she would greet you with a hug and have a warm smile and a welcoming conversation. You would never know that she's the CEO of a multi-billion-dollar company. She's incredibly humble. And it was through her humility that she had tremendous influence."
"Her legacy as the CEO of Ulta will go beyond Ulta. You see it a little bit with the CEO of Kohl's, Michelle Gass: These are ceiling busters," Wissink said. "And they're making it possible for women across retail organizations to rise up into positions of prominence."
Even now, many women in executive positions in retail are relegated to HR roles, and while the representation of women in spaces like beauty is arguably higher than others, that final leap to the C-suite or to the top CEO spot can still be elusive. Almost as soon as Dillon joined Ulta, the representation of women on the board jumped to 50%, while the executive team also improved.
Kimbell is one of four men on Ulta's executive team, and several high-ranking positions at the company are filled by women. According to Wissink, the head of e-commerce, head of stores, head of services, and the two heads of merchandising are all women. Patricia Hong, partner and managing director in Alvarez & Marsal's Consumer and Retail Group, praised the leadership team as one of Dillon's "biggest achievements."
Just this month, Ulta signed on to the Fifteen Percent Pledge, promising to have 15% Black-owned brands on its shelves, which comes on the back of wide-ranging diversity commitments made early in the year.
The shift to more online spending means more competitors from the brands Ulta sells as companies try and build out their own DTC operations. Ulta's shift into prestige brands has made it a formidable competitor to Sephora, and some of the two companies' recent decisions have pinned them even more directly against each other.
Sephora, both through its Kohl's partnership and its stand-alone locations, is moving more forcefully into the same types of off-mall locations Ulta has been known to thrive in. While Ulta stole some of Sephora's thunder by announcing a shop-in-shop deal with Target a month earlier, a May 2021 Coresight Research report cited Sephora as the winner of the two, noting that 90% of U.S. consumers would be within 10 miles of a Sephora store by 2023.
In addition to expanding its off-mall presence, there's "minimal" overlap with the retailer's Kohl's shop-in-shops, meaning less chance of cannibalization. The stores are also twice as big as Ulta's Target stores, according to Coresight Research, but both retailers will likely benefit from their respective deals.
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