Every year, Colgate-Palmolive celebrates the very best of our Company and our people through our premier recognition event, the Chairman’s You Can Make A Difference (YCMAD) Global Program. This year, out of nearly 2,000 nominated project teams involving approximately 10,000 CP People across all divisions and functions, just six teams and 42 individual colleagues were selected as our 2025 Global Winners. To honor this elite group, the winners and their special guests were welcomed to New York City for the time-honored tradition of YCMAD Global Celebration Week.

What is the Chairman's You Can Make a Difference Program?

Since 1986, YCMAD has been Colgate-Palmolive's highest recognition of individual and team excellence: recognizing projects that advance our purpose and business objectives, and giving us all something to aspire to and smile about.

The program is made even more meaningful because Colgate-Palmolive People nominate their own peers for this honor. It recognizes achievements that contribute to the success of our business, enhance our work processes and help the communities we serve. Many of the process improvements, product innovations and creative solutions recognized by YCMAD awards have scaled across borders to become global best practices still in place today.

A Look Inside YCMAD Global Celebration Week

Kicking Off: The Traditional Bracelet Ceremony

The celebration kicked off with an intimate welcome dinner, where Shane Grant (Chief Operating Officer, Americas) presented commemorative YCMAD bracelets to each global winner—a symbol of CP's values meant to be worn daily as a reminder of what it means to make a difference.

Ringing the NYSE Opening Bell

CP holds a remarkable distinction: it is one of the oldest continuously traded public companies in U.S. history— a legacy of resilience, reinvention and sustained growth spanning 220 years. Our winners made that history their own as the exterior of the NYSE was transformed with our logo and "Make More Smiles" tagline. Alongside Chairman, President and CEO Noel Wallace as well as our two previous chairmen and senior leadership, the winners took the podium to ring the Opening Bell before networking with executives on the storied trading floor.

Science, Heritage, Innovation at the Global Technology Center

The teams crossed the river to Piscataway, New Jersey, where Ann Tracy (Chief Sustainability Officer) welcomed them to the Global Technology Center (GTC). Winners viewed skin cells under advanced microscopes, stepped into the shoes of a CP scientist to formulate their own custom washes, toured the historic Toothbrush Museum and explored our rigorous packaging testing and quality assurance facilities to understand how we ensure our products safely reach billions of homes worldwide.

Smiles in Action: Giving Back with Clean the World

Our winners lived that purpose directly. Partnering with Clean the World, the group assembled over 3,000 essential health and hygiene kits featuring Colgate-Palmolive products including toothpaste, soap, hair care and more — a reminder that recognition and responsibility go hand in hand.

Making More Smiles Across New York City

Celebration Week was just as much about team bonding and fun as it was about commercial milestones. Winners kicked off the week in Brooklyn's historic DUMBO neighborhood under the Brooklyn Bridge. They also enjoyed the Broadway musical Wicked, followed by an exclusive, private talkback session with the cast and crew. To close out the week, the group took to the water for a spectacular New York City Harbor Cruise with dinner, dancing and the Manhattan skyline lit up in every direction.

Chairman's Global Awards Dinner at the Rainbow Room

The week culminated with a breathtaking gala high above Manhattan at the iconic Rainbow Room. Surrounded by the Board of Directors, the senior leadership team and former CEOs Ruben Mark and Ian Cook, Noel Wallace delivered the keynote address and personally presented each winner with their global medal, honoring their resilience, creativity and commitment to moving Colgate-Palmolive forward.

Meet the 2025 YCMAD Global Winners

Our six winning teams represent the pinnacle of cross-functional excellence — spanning categories, disciplines and continents to truly make a difference.

Africa/Eurasia Division | Protex Brand: Historic Turnaround in South Africa

Faced with a highly competitive bar soap market in South Africa, this team launched the “Skin Resilience from Within” campaign in just months. Featuring a superior technology story, improved packaging, a 24-hour germ protection claim and competitive pricing across seven key modern trade customers, Protex reclaimed its position as South Africa's #1 bar soap brand—achieving significant value/volume share gains and expanded household penetration in less than a year.

Winners (shown with guests): Cecile Auger, Nishal Juggernath, Kabelo Manyelo, Meagan Mushungwa, Alon Ruso, Natalia Soares Rodrigues, Kogilan Viraragavan, Kyle Young

Asia Pacific Division | Colgate Optic White Purple Toothpaste: Blockbuster Launch

This team disrupted a crowded whitening category by launching a purple toothpaste built on optical color-correction technology. Designed with social-first aesthetics, they deployed a bespoke content ecosystem linking one brand story to thousands of influencer posts. The launch landed in the top 1% of all new FMCG launches globally, setting a new company benchmark for social commerce.

Winners (shown with guests): Janejira Champaiboon, Supriya Chavan, Callista Fernandez, Pau Ling Ng, Akash Parekh, Arisa Ruchirawat, Yoga Wang, Harry Weng, Luna Xu, Angela Yang

Team Corporate Division | The CP Brand: Future-Proofing with a New Narrative, Logo & Tagline

To position the Company as a modern, innovative growth company and purpose-driven enterprise, the Digital & Design team led a collaborative, two-and-a-half-year effort to refresh the corporate brand. They developed a unified narrative, a digital-first design system and a new tagline — "Make More Smiles" — that captures both our health focused-purpose to reimagine a healthier future for all as well as deliver on this promise by uniting our health and hygiene portfolio with a single rallying cry and iconic smile, representing a healthier future and a happier life. The rebrand earned a 98% internal pride rating from surveyed CP People and record-breaking external social engagement.

Winners (shown with guests): Kevin Bender, Malik Yusuf

Europe Division | elmex Growth in Europe, Powered by Demand Generation

Operating in a mature market, this team accelerated growth for the elmex brand, building a disciplined, omnichannel demand generation engine anchored by a new meta-analysis proving the clinical superiority of Pro-Argin technology. Winning over dental professionals, pharmacies and consumers simultaneously, elmex is now the #1 recommended brand for sensitivity in Germany and #1 for caries prevention and kids oral care in France.

Winners (shown with guests): Lilia Fusa, Thibault Gauduchon, Irina Gheorghiu, Carlos Pereira, Gaetano Russo, Nicole Schinazi, Liz Suspanic, Valentina Tarchinskaya

Hill's Pet Nutrition | Pioneering Omni Demand Generation to Drive Growth

Overcoming fragmented retailer data silos, the Hill's U.S. team spent four years developing a privacy-first Data Clean Room. This innovation directly links media advertising data with actual purchase data from key retail partners like Petco, Chewy and PetSmart, driving a 2.3x higher purchase frequency among high-value consumers.

Winners (shown with guests): Tom Belot, Kristen Hatton, Tarang Jain, Joe Keating, Nicole Manzanilla, Natalie Naughton, Kaylee Oberzan, Alex West

Northern Europe Hub | Advancing Children's Oral Health Through Public-Private Partnership

To combat a critical UK health crisis where tooth decay is the leading cause of child hospital admissions, this team established a groundbreaking five-year partnership with the UK Government. This national supervised brushing program delivers oral health education, toothbrushes and fluoride toothpaste to children aged three to five. The initiative has reached 600,000 children annually, generated 1.4 billion media impressions and earned the team an invitation to 10 Downing Street by the Prime Minister.

Winners (shown with guests): Rukiya Ibrahim, Nagore Mieres Redondo, Ankita Patel, Sharmine Pochkhanawala, Rachel Smith, Emma van Eyssen

Congratulations to all of our 2025 YCMAD Global Winners. Thank you for your passion, your dedication and for showing us all how we can make a difference — and Make More Smiles — every single day.

Who can win a YCMAD award?
Any Colgate-Palmolive employee or team across all divisions, functions and geographies is eligible. What makes the honor distinctive is that winners are nominated by their peers, making it a genuine reflection of the impact colleagues have on the people around them.

How are global winners selected?
Each year, nearly 2,000 teams are nominated across the Company. From that pool, a small number are elevated to global winner status based on measurable business impact, cross-functional collaboration and alignment with CP's values and leadership principles. 

How long has the YCMAD program been running?
The program was established in 1986 — making it one of the longest-running peer recognition programs in the consumer goods industry and a forty-year tradition at Colgate-Palmolive.

What happens during YCMAD Global Celebration Week?
Global winners and their guests are invited to New York City for a weeklong celebration that includes a Chairman's breakfast, a visit to the iconic Colgate Clock, a tour of CP's Global Technology Center and a gala awards dinner at the Rainbow Room hosted by CEO Noel Wallace.