ESSENCE PRIVACY STATEMENT

Effective Date: November 6, 2025

At Essence (“Essence,” “Us,” “We,” or “Our”), we value your privacy.  We have put together this Privacy Statement (or “Statement”) so that you can better understand our privacy practices and how they relate to the information, including Personal Data (i.e. any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person), that we collect from and about you and other individuals that interact with us through our websites, mobile applications, and other product and service offerings such as our publications and newsletters (collectively, our “Services”).  This Statement does not apply to Essence employees for whom we maintain a separate Privacy Notice.

We invite you to read this Statement to learn more about our privacy practices.  Below, we include a general summary of the types of information we collect, how we use that information, and with whom we share it.  We may update this Statement from time to time and when that happens, we will notify you of any changes by posting our revised Privacy Statement on our websites, including an effective date, and in some cases, we may contact you directly to let you know of the changes.  The most current version of our Privacy Statement is always available by clicking the “Privacy” link at the bottom of our websites.  Should you have any questions about our privacy practices, please contact us at privacy@essence.com or at the Contact Information listed below.

If you are visiting our website from the European Union (“EU”) or where EU data protection laws apply, please see Section 9 on your EU Privacy Rights for additional information.

If you are a resident of the State of California and are visiting our website from a location where California data protection laws apply, please see Section 11 on your California Privacy Rights for additional information.

Privacy Statement Contents

1. Personal Data Collected
2. How We Process Your Personal Data
3. With Whom We Share Personal Data
4. Cookies and Tracking Technologies
5. Retention of Data
6. Security of Data
7. Links to Privacy Statements of Third Party Sites
8. Children’s Privacy
9. Individuals in the EU, EEA, Switzerland, and UK
10. Your EU Privacy Rights
11. Your California Privacy Rights
12. Contact Information

1. Personal Data Collected

How we collect your Personal Data depends on how you interact with Essence, such as through its website, mobile applications and the other Services it offers.

Categories of Personal Data

The Personal Data that we collect includes:

• Contact information (such as your name, address, email address, phone number, facsimile number, and postal code),
• Purchase, use, and subscription history for all of our Services, including our publications, newsletters, product and service offerings, website and mobile applications,
• Demographic information (such as age and gender),
• Personal or professional interests (such as your job and industry),
• Use and opinions about our Services,
• Payment information (such as credit or debit card account numbers),
• For jobs within Essence, job applicant data (such as name, email, resume, social media profiles (e.g., LinkedIn), cover letter, and any other information you upload as part of your application), 
• For job recommendations through Esuite Jobs, career-related data (such as name, email, phone, location, career level, industry interest and any other information you provide related to your career or job interests), and
• Usage information from the use of our Services, such as Internet Protocol address (IP Address), geolocation (including, on some occasions, precise geolocation), browser type, referring URLs (e.g., the website you visited before coming to our Services), domain names associated with your internet service provider, and any other information regarding your interaction with our Services.

How We Collect Personal Data

Directly From You – We collect Personal Data that you provide to us directly, for example, if you choose to contact us, request information from us, sign up to receive updates or newsletters, or otherwise utilize our Services.

From Third Parties – We may collect Personal Data from third parties, including but not limited to business partners, advertising networks, social networks, data analytics providers, mobile device providers, Internet or mobile service providers, recruiters and job application portals, and background check providers.

Through Online Tracking Technologies – We use cookies and similar technologies to collect Personal Data automatically as you navigate our Services. For additional information regarding our use of these technologies, see the Cookies and Tracking Technologies section below.

When we Collect Your Personal Data

We collect Personal Data directly from you when you:

• Subscribe to receive, or submit content for us to use in, one of our publications or newsletters,
• Register to use one of our mobile applications and related services;
• Engage with us by registering to participate in online games, quizzes, voting polls, forums or communities,
• Purchase or otherwise register to receive a product or service from us,
• Participate in our promotional efforts, such as our contests and sweepstakes,
• Send any information to us, including by email, social media, and through our website or mobile application,
• Respond to our inquiries about your personal or professional interests, or your use of or opinions about certain products and services,
• Contact us about our Services, sales, customer support, feedback, or to inquire about other information, or
• Apply for a job with us.

We may also combine the information that we collect directly from you with information that we receive from third parties, including those that are acting on our behalf or who may be providing services to us, such as web analytics.

2. How We Process Your Personal Data 

We process your Personal Data in order to:

• Provide our products or services to you, process your orders or service requests, and communicate with you on related issues such as customer service, product and service fulfillment, and refunds and exchanges – all of which may be necessary for the performance of our contract with you,
• Customize your experience with our Services, including (1) by way of personalized marketing and promotional offerings that inform you about our current and future product and service lineups, as well as our upcoming events, publications and newsletters, or (2) by providing you recommended jobs that fit your profile based on Personal Data you have provided to us or our third party service provider,
• Statistically analyze your use of our website and mobile applications, improve our product and service offerings, and enhance the content and layout of the product and services we offer through our website and mobile applications,
• Diagnose, repair and track product, service and quality issues,
• Install and configure changes and updates to our products and services,
• Send you administrative notices to inform you about important changes in our contractual relationship,
• Expand our prospective customer database with marketing data that we receive from third parties,
• Resolve disputes and enforce our agreements with you, including our Site Terms of Use, and
• Consider your employment application.

3. With Whom We Share Personal Data

We may share your Personal Data with our corporate affiliates, subsidiaries, business units and other companies with which we share common ownership, for the purposes described above.  We may also share your Personal Data:

• With third-party service providers who process Personal Data on our behalf pursuant to contractual arrangements in order to help us market and deliver our Services to you (for instance, when you request a magazine or any other product or service offering from us, we will forward your Personal Data to the publisher or provider to the extent necessary to fulfill your request; when you utilize our Esuite Jobs services, we may provide your Personal Data to the third party that provides this service on our behalf; we may also employ third-party marketing companies to enhance our outreach to you),

• If you choose to submit content on our websites or mobile application (e.g., a “letter to our editors,” online reviews), we may publicly display your name, screen name and other information you have provided to us that personally identifies you in relation to your submission,

• Where we believe in good faith that sharing Personal Data is necessary to conform to legal requirements or comply with a legal process, such as a search warrant, subpoena, or court order; to protect and defend Essence rights or property; or to enforce our licenses or services agreement(s).

• In connection with or during negotiation of any merger, financing, acquisition or dissolution transaction or proceeding involving the sale, transfer, divestiture, or dissolution of all or a portion of our business or assets, including situations of insolvency, bankruptcy or receivership.  Please note that if another company acquires Essence or its assets, that company will possess the Personal Data collected by us and will assume the rights and obligations regarding your Personal Data as described in this Privacy Statement.

• With third parties for their own marketing purposes (for instance, we may disclose Personal Data to the publisher or provider of a magazine or other product or service we offer or to other third parties that provide online behavioral advertisements, cookies and other tracking technology included in our Services and emails) who may use your Personal Data to market additional products or services to you, in which case this Privacy Statement would not apply to the privacy practices of such third parties (we will request your consent if you are visiting our websites from the EU or where applicable EU data protection laws so provide and you may have additional rights, see Sections 9 and 10 below).

We may also enable our websites or mobile applications to include social media features that allow you to share information within your social networks and interact with Essence on various social media platforms. Use of these features may result in additional collection or sharing of information about you, depending on the feature and the particular social media platform. We encourage you to review the privacy policies and settings on all social media platforms with which you interact to make sure you understand the information that may be collected, used and shared by those sites.  This Privacy Statement does not apply to the privacy practices of any third-party social media platforms that may be accessible through links on the Essence websites or mobile applications.

4. Cookies and Tracking Technologies

We and our service providers may use cookies and similar technologies to collect usage and browser information about how you use our Services. The technologies we use for this automatic data collection may include cookies and web beacons that permit us to verify system and server integrity and generate statistics around the popularity of certain content. We process the information collected through such technologies, which may include or be combined with Personal Information, to help operate certain features of our Services, to enhance your experience through personalization, and to help us better understand the features of our Services that you and other users are most interested in. 

Website Delivery and Appearance – We may use third party providers to enable certain customer interaction opportunities, content delivery (like audio or video), or other service capabilities. Examples include, but are not limited to, the following functionality:

• Content Delivery: We partner with service providers to host our Services and deliver specific content in support of our Services. For example, we use Adobe Typekit to serve fonts on our Services, which is governed by Adobe Typekit’s Privacy Policy. 

Website Analytics– We use analytics services, that use cookies and other technologies that collect your Personal Data, to assist us with analyzing traffic and usage to optimize, maintain, and secure our Services and inform subsequent business decisions (including, e.g., advertising). These include, but are not limited to, the following third-party services: 

• Google Analytics: To learn more about how Google uses data, visit Google’s Privacy Policy and Google’s page on “How Google uses data from sites or apps that use our services.” You may download the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on for each web browser you use, but this does not prevent the use of other analytics tools. To learn more about Google Analytics cookies, visit Google Analytics Cookie Usage on Websites. 
• Meta Pixels: We use Meta pixels to track user activity on our Services and improve downstream offerings, including interest-based advertising for our services and those of our partners and service providers.
• LinkedIn Pixels: We use LinkedIn pixels to track user activity on our Services and improve downstream offerings, including interest-based advertising for our services and those of our partners and service providers.

Interest-Based Advertising – We may also allow or enable third parties to collect Personal Data to provide their interest-based advertising on behalf of our products and services, or their own. Interest-based advertising occurs when advertisements are shown to you based on information collected from your online interactions over time and across multiple websites, devices, or online services that you visit or use. Some companies may engage in cross-context behavioral advertising to predict your preferences and show you advertisements that are most likely to be of interest or relevant to you. We do not control these third parties’ collection or use of your information for these purposes, or the opt-out options they may individually offer you via their terms, conditions, and privacy policies. If you have any questions about an advertisement or other targeted content, you should contact the responsible provider directly. Examples of the third-party service providers we engage to serve interest-based advertisements include Google Ads (including Google Marketing Platform, Google Tag, Google Analytics, and Google AdServices), Meta Ads (including Meta Pixels and Facebook advertising services, including Facebook Customer Audience), and LinkedIn marketing solutions.  

Selling or Sharing Personal Information (as defined under the CCPA) – While we do not sell Personal Information in exchange for monetary consideration, we do share Personal Information for other benefits that could be deemed a “sale” or “sharing” under various data protection laws, because they are sometimes broadly defined to include activities such as the delivery of interest-based advertising on websites or allowing third parties to receive certain information, such as cookies, IP address, and/or browsing behavior. We similarly engage in interest-based advertising when we use data about your activities on our Services to serve you ads on websites owned or controlled by third parties. It is in this context that we have provided advertising networks, data analytics providers, social networks, and video sharing platforms with Personal Information such as your IP address, device information, Internet and other electronic network activity information, and geolocation information in the last twelve months.

Cookie Choices – To manage your preferences with respect to these technologies, you can: 

• Visit our preferences page, or customize your browser settings to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable certain cookies, please note that some parts of our Services may not function properly. These settings may be lost and require reconfiguration if you delete your cookies.

• Block the collection and use of your information by online platforms and ad tech companies for the purpose of serving interest-based advertising by visiting the opt out pages of the self-regulatory programs of which those companies are members: National Advertising Initiative and Digital Advertising Alliance (or the European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance, if you are located in the European Economic Area). Please note that even if you opt out of interest-based advertising, you may still see “contextual” ads which are based on the context of what you are looking at on the websites and pages you visit. 
• Review and execute any provider-specific instructions to customize your preferences or opt-out of certain processing, including interest-based advertising, by third party service providers. For example, to opt-out of this type of advertising by Google, customize your ad preferences, or limit Google’s collection or use of your data, visit Google’s Safety Center and Google’s Ad Settings and follow Google’s personalized ad opt-out instructions. Meta also offers an Ad Preferences center to customize your settings, as well as a Privacy Policy with additional information on how you can exercise your rights. 

Do Not Track

At this time, our websites do not respond to Do Not Track beacons sent by browser plugins as there is not yet a common agreement about how to interpret these signals.

5. Retention of Data

We will keep your Personal Data as reasonably necessary to fulfill the purposes for which Personal Data is collected as stated herein; for as long as is necessary for the performance of the contract between you and us, if any; and to comply with legal and statutory obligations, such as in tax, trade and corporate laws. When we no longer need your Personal Data for our purposes, we will destroy, delete or erase that Personal Data or convert it into an anonymous form.

6. Security of Data

While we will take reasonable steps to protect your Personal Data in our possession from loss, misuse, unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, and destruction, no system is completely secure and therefore, we cannot assure you that the Personal Data we collect will never be used or disclosed in a manner that is inconsistent with this Privacy Statement.

7. Links to and Privacy Statements of Third Party Sites

Our Services may contain links to third party websites and other services whose privacy practices may be different than ours. We facilitate these connections in order to enhance your online experience with us; however, once you click on a link to another website (a “Third Party Site”), you are no longer using our Services, including our websites or mobile applications.  This Statement applies only to Essence’s data processing activities as they relate to the Personal Data Essence collects through its Services, but does not apply to or describe the privacy practices associated with any Third Party Site.  We encourage you to read the privacy statements of all Third Party Sites that you chose to visit and contact the operators and anyone else associated with the Third Party Sites if you have questions or concerns about their data processing activities.

In some cases, we offer links to social media platforms (like LinkedIn, YouTube, and X (formerly known as Twitter) that enable you to easily connect with us or share information on social media. Any content you post via these social media pages is subject to the terms of use and privacy notices for those platforms.

8. Children’s Privacy

Unless we have specifically indicated otherwise on a particular website or mobile application, we do not knowingly collect Personal Data from children under the age of sixteen (16), nor have we designed our Services for or directed our Services at children under the age of sixteen (16).  By using our Services, you represent that you are age sixteen (16) or over. If you are a child under sixteen (16) years of age, you are not permitted to use our Services and should not send any Personal Data about yourself to us through our websites or mobile applications.

If you believe that a child may have provided his or her Personal Data to us or if you have any questions about which websites or mobile applications we have designed for use by children under the age of sixteen (16), please contact us at privacy@essence.com or at the Contact Information below. In the event that we become aware that we have collected Personal Data from a child under the age of sixteen (16) through Services that are not designed for or directed at children under the age of sixteen (16), we will dispose of that Personal Data immediately as required by applicable law.

9. Individuals in the EU, EEA, Switzerland, and UK

This section provides additional information regarding Essence’s processing of personal data of people located in the European Union (EU), European Economic Area (EEA), Switzerland, and the United Kingdom (UK) in accordance with the EU Data Protection Regulation, UK Data Protection Regulation, and the Swiss Federal Data Protection Act. 

Legal Bases for Processing

Our legal basis for processing Personal Data depends on the Personal Data involved and the context in which we process it.  Where Essence acts as a controller, we process your Personal Data: with your consent; where necessary to perform a contract; to comply with our legal obligations; and where doing so is in our legitimate interests (including the purposes described in this Statement) and such interests are not outweighed by your rights and freedoms.

Special Category Data

Essence does not intend to collect any Special Category Data, which is any data that reveals your racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious, moral or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, political views, the processing of genetic data, biometric data for the purpose of identifying a person, and data concerning health or a person’s sex life and/or sexual orientation.  Please refrain from sending us any Special Category Data.

10. Your Privacy Rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the following rights with respect to your Personal Data under applicable data protection laws:

• Access – The right to request access to and obtain a copy of any Personal Data we may have about you.
• Deletion – The right to delete your Personal Data that we have collected or obtained, subject to certain exceptions.
• Correction – The right to request that we correct any inaccuracies in your Personal Data, subject to certain exceptions.
• Opt Out of Certain Processing – The right to: (a) opt out of the processing of your Personal Data for purposes of targeted advertising, (b) opt out of the sale or sharing of your Personal Data; (c) limit the use of your sensitive Personal Data (if applicable), and (c) opt out of profiling in furtherance of decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects.
• Objection/Restriction of Processing – The right to object or restrict us from processing your Personal Data in certain circumstances.
• Withdraw Consent – The right to withdraw your consent where we are relying on your consent to process your Personal Data.
• Automated Decision-Making – The right to know when you are subject to automated decision-making, the Personal Data used to render the decision, the principal factors and parameters involved in the decision, and human review or correction of the decision (or its underlying data, where appropriate). You may also have the right to consent or opt out of this automated decision-making, depending on your location.
• Lodge a Complaint – The right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority or other regulatory agency if you believe we have violated any of the rights afforded to you under applicable data protection laws. We encourage you to first reach out to us so we have an opportunity to address your concerns directly before you do so.

To exercise any of the privacy rights afforded to you under applicable data protection laws, e-mail us at privacy@essence.com, call us at 888-263-2033, or submit a request through our web form. You may also exercise your opt out rights by broadcasting an Opt-Out Preference Signal, such as the Global Privacy Control (GPC). We honor Opt-Out Preference Signals, including GPC. If you choose to use an Opt-Out Preference Signal, you will need to turn it on for each supported browser or browser extension you use.

To opt out of marketing emails, please email us at privacy@essence.com or by following the instructions included in the email or text correspondence. Please note that, even if you unsubscribe from certain correspondence, we may still need to contact you with important transactional or administrative information, as permitted by law.  

You will not be discriminated against in any way by virtue of your exercise of the rights listed in this Statement. However, should you withdraw your consent or object to processing of your Personal Data, or if you choose not to provide certain Personal Data, we may be unable to provide some, or all, of our Services to you. 

Only you, or an authorized agent that you authorize to act on your behalf, may make a request related to your Personal Data. We must verify your identity before fulfilling your requests, and if we cannot verify your identity, we may request additional information from you. If you are an authorized agent making a request on behalf of another person, we will also need to verify your identity, which may require proof of your written authorization or evidence of a power of attorney. We endeavor to respond to requests within the time period required by applicable law. If we require more time, we will inform you of the reason and extension period in writing.

We do not charge a fee to process or respond to your requests unless they are excessive or repetitive. If we determine that a request warrants a fee, we will tell you why we made that decision and provide you with a cost estimate before completing your request. We may deny certain requests, or only fulfill some in part, as permitted or required by law. If you are not satisfied with the resolution of your request and you are afforded a right to appeal such decision, you will be notified of our appeal process in our response to your request.

11. Your California Privacy Rights

This section provides additional information regarding Essence’s practices pursuant to the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 and its implementing regulations, as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act (“CCPA”), where “Personal Information” has the definition set forth in the CCPA.

Please see the below chart for detailed information about the categories of Personal Information we have collected from California residents during the twelve months preceding the date on which this Statement was last updated and the categories of third parties to whom we sell or share Personal Information. For each category of Personal Information set forth in the chart below, the categories of third parties to whom we disclose it for a business or commercial purpose are set forth in the With Whom We Share Personal Data section above. 

California Shine the Light – Under California Civil Code Section 1798.83, individual customers who reside in California and who have an existing business relationship with us may request information about our disclosure of certain categories of Personal Information to third parties for the third parties’ direct marketing purposes, if any. To make such a request, please contact us at privacy@essence.com. Please be aware that not all information sharing is covered by these California privacy rights requirements and only information on covered sharing will be included in our response. This request may be made no more than once per calendar year.

12. Contact Information

Unless otherwise stated, Essence is a data controller for purpose of the information it collects and processes in accordance with this Statement. If you have any questions about this Statement or if you believe that your Personal Data has been processed or disclosed in violation of this Statement, please contact us by sending an email to privacy@essence.com, or a letter to:

Essence Communications,LLC
Attention: Senior Corporate Counsel
34 35th Street
Suite 5A
Brooklyn, NY 11232