Hugh & Grace
Sara and Ben Jensen, Co-CEOs, Co-Founders
Headquarters: Los Angeles, CA
Founded: 2020
Hero Product: Protecting Body Oil 

After a difficult 14 years struggling with infertility, Sara and Ben Jensen are at the very start of their journey with Hugh & Grace, a DTC skin care brand that launched in October 2020.

What were your day jobs before starting Hugh & Grace, and is this your full-time gig? 
Our business is named after our little miracles: our 3-year old son, Hugh, and our 1-year old daughter, Grace—between the business and our little ones it’s a 24/7 endeavor. Prior to starting Hugh & Grace, I worked in private equity, investing in real estate and operating businesses, and Sara spent her career working as a social entrepreneur. Sara’s spent her previous six years working at USC where she helped raise transformative gifts to help advance higher education.

Launching any company is nerve wracking—but what is it like to launch a brand during a pandemic?
While our vision for Hugh & Grace was incepted well before the pandemic, debuting our brand and concept during this time has been a great opportunity for us to present not only a high-performing, natural line of skin care products, but also provide awareness and shared education around why it’s important to reduce chemical exposure—and how the products we use can help in this effort. During COVID, we’ve seen people care more about what they touch and put on their bodies, and we found this to serve as an ideal backdrop for us to further drive the conversation forward in a way that is both timely and meaningful. Additionally, we launched Hugh & Grace with a peer-to-peer and direct-to-consumer format, which we found presented a new level of accessibility to those in search of high-performing, natural skin care products which helps promote skin immunity, resiliency and beauty.

What is the role of your advisory board in your development process?
Creating the first skin care brand formulated to help reduce chemical exposure it was of great importance that our products are expertly formulated and backed by credible authorities. Our medical advisory board consists of thought-leaders and world-renowned doctors—we have two of the world’s most respected fertility doctors, a top OB/GYN and hormone expert, as well as the founder of the first personalized chemical exposure test. These professionals are best-in-class in their respective fields, lending counsel and medical oversight to us and our business. Additionally, our advisory board provides a collective resource for medical insights, trends and developments surrounding the importance of removing hormone disruptors from our lives to ensure Hugh & Grace remains in close step with the latest and greatest as we aim to provide the highest-quality, natural products for our customers.

What has you most hopeful and excited about Hugh & Grace in 2021?
Research has shown that simple changes can have a big impact in our overall health. With 2020 proving to be a year of large- and small-scale evolution, iteration and exploration of change for so many people, we’re most excited to continue our commitment to empowerment of living cleaner, healthier lives. We feel change is the most sustainable through simple steps with support, awareness and education, and as such we are honored and excited to share our knowledge, our products and our community. This is just the beginning for us! 

INDIE TO INDIE  The founders of Elizabeth Grant Skincare ask: If you could go back to when you were first starting out, what do you wish you knew then and would you change anything? “As we’re still navigating our launch phase, we’d like to share our personal experience and learnings about hormone disruptors…We learned about hormone disruptors through our 14-year struggle with unexplained infertility, which led us down a path toward understanding the importance of avoiding hormone disruptors, especially while trying to conceive and during pregnancy. Incredibly, two of our family members volunteered to be our surrogates so we could have our family, and we felt it was our responsibility to share what we learned and help others. When we realized hormone disruptors are found in most personal care products, including clean products, we set out to create a line of high-performing, natural products formulated to help reduce chemical exposure. Hormone disruptors are linked to infertility, as well as cancers, obesity, autism, Parkinson’s and many other diseases. There are many benefits of reducing chemical exposure by avoiding hormone disruptors in general for all ages, which is ultimately what we hope to share with the world. One of the ways in which we perpetuate this platform of knowledge is with our peer-to-peer sales model of Advocates, some of whom have been personally impacted from hormone disruptors with issues that range from breast cancer to thyroid issues to autism. We also have advocates who are going through menopause or pregnancy who are cautious about limiting their chemical exposure, and wanting to help educate others on the matter. There’s so much to learn when it comes to this topic, and we love that we can be a source of knowledge for many.” —Sara & Ben