黑料正能量

Every morning before school, Nisha Phatak鈥檚 4-year-old daughter comes to her with a special request: to put on sunscreen.

It鈥檚 a mineral sunscreen made by Lion Pose, a skincare brand co-founded by Nisha. The brand offers clinically-tested products that are safe and effective for all skin tones. Each one is designed to tackle real skin issues like acne, eczema, scarring, spots or discoloration.

鈥淭he sunscreen has a little bit of cucumber extract in it so it smells kind of like a spa,鈥� Nisha says. 鈥淪he comes running in my room in the morning and she'll be like, 鈥業 want cucumber sunscreen, Mama.鈥欌��

Left brain, right brain

Nisha wasn鈥檛 planning to become an entrepreneur when she enrolled at 黑料正能量. Initially a math major, she switched to statistics and picked up a second major in professional writing along the way.

鈥淚 loved being able to take the data from statistics and communicate it in a way that anyone could understand,鈥� Nisha, who earned bachelor鈥檚 degrees in statistics and professional writing in 2010, says.

After graduating, she worked as a data analyst at a financial research company where she covered major tech stocks before they went public. The experience prompted her to apply to business school.

鈥淚'm a very left-brain-plus-right-brain kind of girl and I wanted something that was going to bring more creative energy to my work as well,鈥� she says.

Nisha received a master鈥檚 degree in business administration from Harvard Business School in 2015. She then tapped into her creative side at Box, where she worked in the tech space, and IndieGogo, where she led teams in business development and strategic partnerships.

Doing something meaningful

Nisha was attending a Harvard alumni event when she reconnected with her classmate, Madhu Punjabi. Madhu had just had her first child and quit her job at Meta. Curious, Nisha asked Madhu why she left such a stable career.

鈥淪he said, 鈥楲ook, I want to do something that's more meaningful. I want to do something that I can tell my daughter about five, 10 years from now, something I built myself,鈥欌�� Nisha says. 鈥淭hat really resonated with me. I was like, 鈥業 can get behind this. I feel the same way. And I want to do something that matters.鈥� And that's really kind of where the two of us hit it off.鈥�

Madhu founded Huggable, a baby formula company, and hired Nisha as her first employee. Although there was interest in their product, they struggled to navigate the FDA鈥檚 strict regulations. So they turned to their customers 鈥� mostly millennial moms like themselves 鈥� to see what other challenges they were facing and how they could help.

鈥淲e fully expected to end up in something else parent or baby-related,鈥� Nisha says about starting a new business. 鈥淲hat ended up happening is that so many conversations we were having with people were about challenges with their skin.鈥�

Lion Pose was founded to address those challenges for new moms, but also for women facing similar hormonal changes in all stages of life.

Skincare science

While developing their products, Nisha and Madhu learned two surprising facts: The skincare industry requires minimal testing before a product is brought to market, and most of those products aren鈥檛 tested on multiple skin tones. As women of color, they decided Lion Pose had to be different.

鈥淭he United States is an extremely diverse pool of individuals,鈥� Nisha says. 鈥淧eople need to be able to know that the products being sold on the shelf have been tested on people who look like them. And that was something that was just hands-down non-negotiable for us.鈥�

The brand鈥檚 clinical standards require that every product be tested on the full range of skin tones. The products are also developed with Harvard-trained dermatologists who have studied and treated all skin tones. The result? Quality skincare that doesn鈥檛 require a doctor visit.

鈥淭here's just no way that everybody can go see a dermatologist for all their skin issues,鈥� Nisha says. 鈥淚t's not affordable and accessible for everybody. So at the end of the day, that's really what we wanted to build in this brand, that you could have that level of education and knowledge broken down into bite-sized pieces for anyone to understand. And then you could also get the same quality of products that you might get from a derm office right on your Sephora shelf.鈥�

Since its founding, Lion Pose has earned numerous awards including an Allure Best of Beauty award and one of Oprah Magazine鈥檚 inaugural Sun O-wards.

Nisha credits part of the company鈥檚 success to the amazing partnership she has with Madhu.

鈥淪he's always kind of been more of the dreamer, the creative type of mind, whereas I'm definitely more of the executor, the analytic type of brain,鈥� Nisha says. 鈥淚 think the combination of those two things is really what's made us so successful to date, which is incredible.鈥�

And that analytical, left-brain thinking combined with right-brain creativity has Nisha right where she wants to be 鈥� making a difference by helping people with their needs.

鈥淚 think I always knew I wanted to do something that directly impacted people,鈥� Nisha says. 鈥淒ealing with consumer products, especially something that you put on your body, is something that's really personal. I think the ability to connect with our customers and understand their pain points, being able to solve very specific issues for them when they're feeling a bit lost or not confident in themselves, is something that brings me a lot of joy.鈥�