About L'Oreal — L'Oreal Thompson Payton

ABOUT

Meet L’Oreal

Through journalism, books, and community-building, I explore how expectations around strength, survival, and success shape not only our careers, but our identities.

As an author, journalist, speaker, and founder, I spark conversations and create spaces that challenge inherited definitions of success and make room for something more sustainable, more honest, and more expansive.

My work sits at the intersection of ambition, identity, mental health, and leadership. I don’t just tell stories — I use them to question norms, shift narratives, and craft culture.

I’ve spent my career examining how ambitious women — particularly Black women — move through systems that were not designed with us in mind.

ON THE PAGE

I write to

As an award-winning journalist, my work has appeared in Business Traveler, The Cut, Essence, New York Magazine, and SELF. My reporting and essays examine the cultural forces that shape how ambitious women are seen — and how we see ourselves.

As an author, I write for both adults and young readers, including Stop Waiting for Perfect, Amanda Gorman: Poet and Activist, and Violet Goes Voting. My forthcoming memoir, Infertile Black Girl (Beacon Press, Spring 2027), continues this exploration — centering mental health, identity, and collective care.

ON THE STAGE

As a keynote speaker and workshop facilitator, I bring journalistic rigor and lived clarity into the room. I challenge audiences to reconsider how success is defined, how strength is often mistaken for endless capacity, and how care can be embedded into leadership cultures.

I believe ambition should not require self-abandonment. And I help organizations and leaders build environments where that belief becomes practice.

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IN COMMUNITY

In September 2025, I founded Zora’s Place, a Black feminist bookstore and community hub in Evanston, Illinois devoted to storytelling, rest, and collective care. It is a physical extension of my belief that Black women deserve spaces where they are not performing, proving, or shrinking — but building, becoming and simply being.

The bookstore, my weekly newsletter, and every curated gathering I host exist for one purpose:

To cultivate a culture where women feel seen, supported, and bold enough to shape what’s next.

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For generations, Black women have carried institutions, families, movements, and economies on our backs—often to our own detriment.

My work does not romanticize resilience.

It interrogates it.
It reframes it.
And it helps craft a new definition of success — one that makes room for ambition and well-being to coexist.

Let’s Work Together

If you’re looking for a speaker, writer, or strategic partner who brings cultural fluency, editorial depth, and leadership perspective to conversations about ambition and sustainability, I’d love to connect.

Work with me