Clean Beauty Marketplace: Amplifying Black Women-Owned Brands ft. Dr. Kristian Edwards (BLK + GRN)

I absolutely loved recording this next episode. For returning listeners to The Resilience Report, you know that I have been navigating my own personal health journey over the past few years, which has included diving into what products I am putting in but also on my body. A shift in everything from my laundry detergent to my mascara has had me combing through different websites to find the best non-toxic products.

But this research can feel like a lot for most (myself included!) which is where I came across our next guest’s work: a beautifully curated online marketplace for clean beauty. No more digging around and cross referencing different sources: BLK + GRN has done the work for us. Better still, the social mission behind the brand specifically amplifies the incredible work of the black-owned brands lining their online shelves.

Dr. Kristian Edwards is the mastermind behind this marketplace — a Yale and Johns Hopkins alum, public health expert, yogi, and the visionary founder of BLK + GRN. Since launching in 2018, her marketplace has elevated over 100 Black-owned, non-toxic wellness brands and shipped tens of thousands of orders to conscious consumers across the country.

BLK + GRN isn’t just a business—it’s a movement. A vibrant intersection of sustainability, health equity, and #BlackGirlMagic, all rooted in Dr. Kristian’s mission to help us live greener, cleaner, and more joyfully.

In this conversation, we’re diving into her inspiring journey from public health to entrepreneurship, the realities of building a values-based brand, and the wisdom she’s gained supporting Black women founders every step of the way.

You’re going to walk away with insight, inspiration, and probably a few new favorite clean beauty rituals. Let’s get into it!

*

[Host: Lauren Scott] Welcome back to The Resilience Report. This is going to be a really fantastic episode and one that I'm really curious about because when I think about the term greenwashing, I think the first industry I saw it in, because now we're seeing it everywhere. We're seeing it in the aviation space and tourism and energy. But I remember one of the first industries I saw this being an issue was in the beauty space. And I remember I absolutely used to be guilty if it had a light and airy bottle and it said natural on it, I was definitely the one buying it. Since learned there's a lot more research we can do and there we're starting to see some marketplaces dedicated to this. And our next guest is not only offering this kind of clean beauty marketplace with due diligence and research behind it, but also highlighting incredible entrepreneurs of the space with a much bigger broader message. So with that, welcome to the show, Dr. Kristian.

[Guest: Dr. Kristian Edwards] Hi, thank you so much for having me. This will be a lot of fun. 

You have a really unique background and I would love to start there. Would you mind sharing a little bit about how you did this beautiful journey from public health to then founding a company and now leading the way and really disrupting the beauty space overall?

Absolutely. So I'll tell you a kind of my story, my journey. And so I read an article in about 2016, 2015 that the products marketed to black people are more toxic than the products marketed to everyone else. And so I didn't like that, like I kind of like this is insane. And so I am a bit of a nerd. And so I kind of geeked out and started looking up all the studies, looking up all the ingredients, understanding what regulations are in place in other countries and like trying to make sure I was using the most non-toxic products that I could. And so on that journey, a bit of my personality is that when I know something better, I want all those, all my friends and family to know the same thing. And so I'm telling them what they should and shouldn't use and I'm like I'm trying to encourage them to pull stuff off their shelves and say you should use this instead and here are the reasons why I'm a bit over the top. So I was like being very proactive and trying to get that done. And then my family and friends said Kristian this is too hard. Can you please make this easier for us? Like we get what you're doing like your background public health like but make it easier for us. So my brain is turning trying to figure out how can I make this easier? How can I make this easier?

And then I read the book Our Black Year by Maggie Anderson and she talked about her family's commitment to buying all black products for a year and I was moved by her book and there was something in her book that kind of hit me is that you vote with your money and so intentional about what you're consuming. It's another way of voting that you're indicating to the market. You're indicating what you think is important. There's value behind where your dollar is spent. And so once I kind of was moved by that, the value behind where my dollarss are spent, then I had like a Eureka moment. I said, "Okay, I can start a marketplace. I can start a company where we have all natural products that are non-toxic. I do all the work looking at their ingredients that are also black women owned to allow people to kind of put their money where their heart is." And so that's how BLK + GRN was born. Me trying to meet my own needs and make it easier for my friends and family to do it with me.

And you mentioned that you have this rigorous approach to anything that you're interested in. Do you feel like that is part of that transition? You have the most incredible academic background, working in the public health space. Do you feel like you bring that chapter of your life into the work that you do now and running a business?

Absolutely. Absolutely. I believe because prior to me working at doing what my business I was a professor. Before I was a professor I was in hospital administration and that's kind of like the business beside behind hospitals and so I think I got a lot of firsthand view of what that looked like, what do these numbers look like, what does that mean. I worked at Hopkins for about five, six years and so I kind of really got that piece of my knowledge base through to kind of understand the way that businesses operate and the way that businesses work because I don't have an MBA but I think I kind of learned on the ground what that would look like. And I wrote my dissertation on health disparities and how when you can control for everything else black people still have worse health outcomes compared to anyone else. And so I understand that correlation doesn't always mean causation but I was moved to try to see if I could help tackle pieces of that if we know where products are marketed to us that are more toxic. We know foods are marketed to us that are more toxic. Well, how can I start helping us change our relationship or these different inputs into our body to have better health outcomes? And so I kind of was able to take all this knowledge from all these different areas and kind of push them all into one place and try to make it user friendly and have a customer centered experience for my tribe that I'm building with BLK + GRN to kind of live happy, healthy, and free.

It's really this beautiful dual mission that you're bringing and that you're delivering on. So, would love if we could look at each of those pieces, and certainly they overlap, which is where you're seeing that in the marketplace. But there's that first piece then of elevating the incredible work of Black women entrepreneurs, and then there's the second piece of digging into the non-toxic products, making sure that you're shining a light on that work.

So I think from a bit of a background for, because you know I think this might be new for a lot of our listeners to just discover and dig in onto both of those two elements. So maybe if we could first look at the work you mentioned at the top — that you read the article about some of that disparity in the beauty industry. Could you help us understand what that looks like in 2025?

Absolutely. Absolutely. So oftentimes, when we're looking at the beauty industry and I'm looking for Black-owned brands in the beauty industry, I have all the conversations with a lot of beauty owners who are making products all the time. I'm trying to understand what is their big vision, what's their big mission, and kind of what's stopping them from getting there. I often hear that retail is a piece of the chapter to try to start a successful business — that you have to get some access to retail to be able to sell your products en masse.

Understanding how to operate in the retail space is important for smaller Black brands. But also, retail is very expensive. I don't think that the average person who made this amazing new soap understands the expenses that are going to be calculated — what it takes to kind of be in your Targets of the world, to be in these larger retail spaces. Oftentimes, a lot of smaller brands just simply can't afford it. It's just too expensive to get in these larger retail spaces, and then it's a team to do that.

So it's this interesting challenge. You made this creative, amazing product. You were looking for something on the shelves, you couldn't find it. Nine times out of 10, these aren't chemists. Their backgrounds aren't in cosmetics. They're someone who created a product because they couldn't find something they needed, and they shared it with their family. Their friends and family told them to start a business.

"Ah, I don't know anything about starting a business." So that's kind of the goal”. And because of that, they're like, "I don't know. I just — I have this amazing thing. It creates this amazing laundry detergent, but I don't know what else to do with it after that." So it's kind of helping hold their hands and guiding them to say, "Okay, just because you don't have access to a lot of capital doesn't mean you have to be left behind."

So kind of BLK + GRN holds the brand's hand and walks them down the path, makes connections when they need connections, and tries to help them grow in their brand and be whatever they wanted to be.

And so, it's interesting because when I started BLK + GRN, I did not — that was not — I did not foresee that being a big piece where I was spending a lot of my time. I think I was looking at it more from the health perspective because I understood that Black folks were spending billions of dollars on personal care products. And I was like, "I want us to spend that money on all-natural, non-toxic products." So I had more of that lens of trying to connect my customers with better products, not so much the lens of, "My — the creators of the products, they also need some support to make sure they could actually supply them with those products in the first place."

And to double click into that green side, I think for the longest time, I'd always just assumed, well, if it passed whatever standards board to get onto the shelves, it must be fine for my health. There must be no issues. I've gone through my own health journey over the years, and that actually is how I landed on your website about a year ago, and I was just so curious as to maybe clarifying some of that space.

So maybe, first of all, let's start with the idea of what are you trying to offer? Like, what is your evaluation criteria for the products that you carry on the BLK + GRN retail website?

So with BLK + GRN, we have a long onboarding process, and there's a couple — about 10 things — that we're measuring. The first thing that we're measuring is ingredient, and so we are looking at the ingredients and we use the Environmental Working Group Skin Deep database to kind of roll in all the ingredients through that to get toxicity scores of every single product that we create.

And the beauty of why we like working with that database is that the research doesn't stop. And so it's not like a list of products that we have and then, as things change, the ingredients of it can change. And so we like the Environmental Working Group partnership because, as more data comes out, their database is changing, so it's not a static piece of information.

We do have our Toxic 20 — so there's 20 ingredients that we ban wholesale, that we believe that not even a small percentage of something — we don't want it at all. And so we do understand that in other countries, they do allow certain ingredients, but they have more regulation about the amount of that ingredient, whereas here, we don't have any. We don't have that regulation at all.

So I have a couple of colleagues who are chemists, and they explain that when they make products that are going to be more international, there's more requirements for the international brand about how much of a certain ingredient can be used. That doesn’t exist here. She says — but her — the way that she operates, she said, “I always try to meet that standard even though we don’t have it here.” She said that helps in a couple of ways — that gives that brand the ability to grow outside of the U.S. if they need to, and also, from a more ethical, sustainability standpoint, she knows that she’s making a better product because they have made formulation requirements that are a little bit more driven by the data than we have done here.

And when you're working in that space, do you feel like there are any misconceptions that our listeners should be keeping in mind when they're thinking about green beauty products or more natural beauty products? Is there any misunderstanding or kind of false claims out there that they should be aware of as they're working through maybe cleaning up their own — they say bathrooms — but their own makeup bags, that sort of thing?

Oh man, that's a really interesting question, because marketing is so powerful, and marketing is on both sides. So, there's marketing that says, “This product is amazing,” and, “This product is green, it's all natural.” And there's also been a lot of marketing around certain ingredients that are bad, that people are like, “Well, I don't want an ingredient with any parabens in it.” I know that's a definite no for that.

The complicated piece about it is that it's a science, and a little bit of an ingredient in a certain percent may be okay, but it's not a lot of it. But we — the marketing — can scare people wholesale off. “I don't want that ingredient at all.” And so it's very complicated and challenging for the consumer to understand because the way that marketing works, you just never know what's truthful.

And what really hurts my heart in a lot of ways is that what we're being told and what we're being marketed to is very often not the truth — but it's often what can make the most money. And so I think that once we understand that a lot of marketing is through that lens of money-making, then it makes you as the consumer have to be more critical.

But the issue with the consumer being more critical is — you're having so many things you're touching all the time. You don't have the mental space to be that critical about everything, which is why finding amazing marketplaces who are doing that work for you — because you don't have time to do all the research on every single product, on every single ingredient, and figure out what they do — look behind the mask of marketing. It's a lot of labor.

So I think it's important why organizations like BLK + GRN, like Mom's Organic — places that you know have standards — when I shop from them, I know their standard, I trust their standard, and I don't have to take such a heavy lift when I want to pick that up. So I would encourage consumers to find amazing marketplaces that you know have high standards, so that way you don't have to do all that labor and work on every single product.

And from — that's the product side — and when you go back to the entrepreneur space: one of the stories that I often hear is that when we're building more sustainable solutions — so we have a lot of entrepreneurs who listen to the podcast — and it feels like this one perception is that you can start a company that's more sustainable, but it's often the real challenge is found when it comes to scalability.

How have you seen that within those entrepreneurs that you're talking to? And do you have any common threads that you see across those that are successful in scaling up? I actually love the example that you gave, that someone actually started creating the products based on what would allow them to go internationally. So maybe that kind of theme is something that you would have seen.

Yeah, it's such a hard question because when we think about scalability, we often think about how can I get my cost as low and tight as possible so I can multiply this by a thousand. And oftentimes, the things that are more natural and non-toxic are more expensive. And so when you're on the line of trying to cut things off, it's hard. It's easy to want to leave that there.

When, at the end of the day, from a marketing perspective, if you want to say, “Hey, I can say this thing is all-natural,” and use that — because there's no legal requirements for what all-natural means — there's requirements for the word organic, but not natural — I can say “this is all-natural” and use a cheaper ingredient that I know is more toxic, but it costs less to allow me to scale.

So I think there is a challenge with scaling when it's an intentional non-toxic choice that you're making. My answer to that always is that: scale for your right audience. It might be — it's hard to scale for everybody, but everybody's not your audience. And so, if you try to make it so cheap where you can touch everybody, you're losing your quality.

So understand what's the size of your market and scale for your market. So you don't need to push your prices down too much just to scale, because they might assume the quality is dropping in that. So I try to encourage entrepreneurs to stay true to your heart, stay true to your mission, stay true to what you're trying to create, and you can scale in that when you're true to it.

You touched on the topic of marketing. Certainly when you're trying to build your brand, it is a kind of crazy moment in time, I think, from an algorithm standpoint. So I'm very curious if you have some tips when you are talking to those entrepreneurs as to maybe what you've seen work or things that haven't worked from a marketing lens when you have maybe more of a restrained budget.

Yeah, and that is such a good question. I started BLK + GRN in 2017, and I have seen a lot change in the marketplace now, and what worked when I first started isn't working anymore. And so it requires a nimbleness, and like to listen, and to understand — and to recognize that you don't know. It's the ability to recognize that I don't always know.

So I have to always keep my ear to the ground to understand what's happening so I can be flexible and nimble enough to pivot when you need to. So when I first started BLK + GRN, Instagram was newer. And so when we were posting, we were — at one point — we were posting at four or five times a day, trying to just get out there and get in front of people.

And I was so successful — or we were growing so quickly. Our engagement was really high, like under that strategy, that was working. Now, with the way social — Instagram — has changed, if you aren't paying for content, people very rarely are going to see it.

And so we had to make an internal choice from a business perspective. Do we want to invest money in marketing with the social media, running the ads, where our ad spend is going to go to a big company? Or would we prefer to have our marketing money go to influencers and have them talk about our products?

And so we just made a different move, a different spend with our marketing money because that was more consistent with who we are, our ethos, and our belief system. And it makes us less a victim of how they're constantly changing their algorithms, constantly changing what they see. It's all over the place.

Versus with these influencers — we create relationships with them, and they love and talk about us with their friends and family all the time. Yes, that’s social, but they'll also talk about it outside of social. So that community aspect and that people-connection aspect was a really important part of BLK + GRN. And so that's what we're leaning into from a marketing perspective.

That's brilliant too, because at the same time, you're investing in these content creators who are in their own right entrepreneurs. I think you're hitting those entrepreneur communities in two different spaces — both the creators, content creators, and then the product creators.

Exactly. Exactly.

And are you working on any special projects at the moment or anything that gets you really excited when it comes to BLK + GRN?

Oo, I love that question. We started doing — right before the pandemic — we were doing these tours where we were doing different events in different kind of different states and traveling to do these tours. And we — after corona, we kind of — we put a pause and a halt on the tours. We just came back last year and did our first big one, and we really enjoy it — kind of this community feel.

I think that BLK + GRN is growing beyond the product piece and how products was a part of where — kind of where we started. But now we are kind of growing into this — there’s a complete chapter of what it means to live a non-toxic life and understanding that your thoughts are a piece of that, the products that you use are a piece of that, the food that you eat is a piece of that, what you're reading, what you're watching — all that is in a part of the formula of kind of creating whole complete wellness and holistic wellness.

And so, BLK + GRN is the one to be a partner and kind of handhold, hug people on that journey as they're trying to think about the complete holistic wellness. I often say if you're using a deodorant with no aluminum in it but you have toxic thoughts all the time, I don't see that as a win.

I said, "So, I want you to — I want you to use aluminum-free deodorant, but I also want you to be conscious about what you're thinking, conscious about what you're doing, and conscious about the things that — how you're showing up in the world."

And so, I'm very excited for this next phase of BLK + GRN as we grow beyond just the products.

So inspiring and a constant reminder, I think, to myself too, and for all of our listeners — that it's not just what we put on our skin but skin-deep when it comes to removing this kind of toxic approach.

What is your hope and vision for the future — for sure of BLK + GRN — but of the wellness space overall?

I think my big hope for the future is that we begin to raise children who are emotionally mature and conscientious about their thoughts and their actions and the things that they're doing and that they're eating and that they're putting on their body. They're thoughtful.

I think my big hope for the world — for the future — is that we are raising thoughtful kids who are thinking about the products that they're using, the food that they're eating, the thoughts that they have — that when they feel frustrated, they don't go act out on that frustration and roll on the floor. They say, "I'm frustrated, and I want to talk through why I'm frustrated."

So my hope is in that wellness space — that we are teaching emotional maturity. I think with emotional maturity, the sky's the limit on what we can do with that emotional maturity.

That is beautiful, and I think that will just feed generation after generation if we can put that in place.

And as an entrepreneur yourself — so yes, you are fostering this community of entrepreneurs, but then obviously launching BLK + GRN — I'm sure there are days that are easier than others. How do you continue to nourish yourself so that you can keep on coming back and recommitting to the important work that you're doing, even on those crazy days or moments in time?

I think I've had to learn — I had to learn I can't pour from an empty cup. And if I'm empty, I can't serve anyone else. And so I had to reposition my self-care in my brain to understand that my self-care is a requirement to ensure I can do everything else.

So that's one — understand that my self-care is paramount. Then the next step is, okay, but what do you need to be your best self? I think that's the next step — kind of the self-reflection, the self-understanding. What do I need to be my best?

And so after understanding, I need to work out to feel my best. So every morning I go on a run or I go to yoga to make sure I'm doing some kind of physical movement. I need to eat well. I feel my best when I eat well. When I don't eat good food, I behave like I didn't eat good food. And so I need very amazing food for me to perform my best.

So I had to understand — what do I need? I need green plants everywhere. When we first joined this call, I was like, I used to have a plant right there, but I moved it and I was — I was sad at first. Where’s my plant? I need green and breathe everywhere because there are all the studies around the beauty of that and the health impact of that. And so I know that's something I need to feel my best self, to feel like I grow.

I listen to a meditation every morning now. So I just try to always make sure I'm thinking right and I'm operating right so I can show up in the world the way I want to.

And as part of that self-reflection, when you look back, do you feel like there was always this common thread of you ultimately becoming an entrepreneur? Or was that really because you saw such a big problem that you wanted to fix, that it just sparked that entrepreneur side of you? And then certainly, is there an element as well in the sustainability side? Was that also a common thread?

Yeah, that's a great question. I've been an entrepreneur my entire life. I started my first business in the third grade where I made little bracelets that I used to — like the, I think with Lisa Frank — with those little, you have little tie little bracelets. So I made those and I wore them to class, and the girl said, "Oh my gosh, I love your bracelet. Will you make me one?" I said, "Sure, I'll make you one." She said, "I'll pay you for it." I said, "Okay, wonderful." So I made her one. Then she's like, "Oh my gosh, my friends love it." So I had my whole thriving little Lisa Frank. In the third grade.

In high school, I convinced my principal to let me sell pizza after school. So I didn’t ride the bus — my parents picked me up — but I would hear my other classmates complaining how they were so hungry on the buses. I said, "Oh, would you guys like food at the end of the day?" So it hit me. I would buy — it had 10 slices in it — it cost me $5. I sold them for $1 a slice. I would make $5. So I had that business in high school.

So I've always had a business spirit in me. And I think the step back from it is like, whenever there's a problem, I've been a social entrepreneur my entire life. How can I come up with a business to help me solve this problem? It's like I always love to solve problems. And so that has always been a piece of me.

The sustainability piece — I have never liked waste. And for me, sustainability was linked to waste the most. I've never liked waste. As I have grown and learned and read more books, I understand sustainability on a different level. But as a child, it just was about waste. When my parents — when we were done eating and they would throw their extra food away — it just never felt right with me.

Like, there are people who are starving and we're throwing our food away like that? It just — it seemed delightful. I've never liked waste.

And so as I have grown, I introduced Johns Hopkins to the sustainability program. I saved them millions of dollars because they had so much waste in their system. Like, oh, why are you guys doing this? Nope. Why are you guys doing this? Nope. Why are you doing this? And I was helping them get more sustainable.

And that's the beauty about sustainability. It's often better for Mother Earth. It's better for the environment. And it's also better for your pockets. Because you're — wait, why are you putting out this paper that we could put in a digital system? Like, why? And why are we killing the trees? Like, we don't need to do that.

So I think that my desire to kind of pull in waste and understand — why are we creating waste? And then the psychology of it, like, why are we doing this in the first place? Like, why?

Well, I would love our listeners to learn more about all of your incredible work at BLK + GRN. Where would be the best place for them to go and check out?

Absolutely. So my website is www.blkgrn.com. On Instagram, on all the social medias, we’re @blkandgrn. And so you can find us everywhere: TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest — you name it, we have an account.

And on those sites, I would get into a lot of trouble from some of our listeners if I didn’t ask you what some of your favorite beauty products or trends are right now that you are loving and that you recommend for our listeners.

Yes. Yes. Oh, I love that.

Okay, I think my favorite trend I'm loving right now is the double cleanse. That I just started double cleansing my face, but it's like I just see such a huge improvement by the double cleanse. Stuff like that is an easy killer — double cleanse. Always double cleanse your face. Like, I love that. I was like, why haven’t we been teaching this earlier? Like, it's logical. Makes logical sense. I'm loving the double cleanse.

Another thing I'm loving too is that we have a deodorant we’re selling that's in a tin. And at first it was like, I'm used to deodorant being like a stick I rub on. I don't really touch myself. And I was talking with the artisan. I said, "Will you ever convert it to being a stick?" and she said, "No, I always want to keep my deodorant like this for people to actually rub their underarms, because people aren't used to that. And they aren't used to rubbing their underarms, and there's like value in that."

And so I am loving this now that I feel like there's a connection that I had lost because of the way that we used to do it — that now I'm really appreciating this moment of like, every part of my body I can touch. It's not like my underarms I don't touch — I can't touch those anymore. I really love her product — that I can rub my deodorant in and make sure it gets in all the places and I'm fresh the entire day. So, I'm loving that. I don't know if that's a trend or just a thing I like.

That's really interesting, too. And just a side note — I mean, the fact that your lymph nodes are there — it feels like it's an important place for us to not completely lose our connection to.

Exactly. Exactly.

So it's just like, I kind of like understanding what boundaries has society put on our bodies — so now we don't even know our own selves that good because of what we thought was right and normal. It's just trying to like break free of that. Like, no, this is my body. I can touch all of it and understand the whole thing. And like now I have a different connection — “Oh, wait a minute. What is that happening?” If you never touch your underarms, you might not ever know that.

Absolutely. Well, it's been such a pleasure talking to you. I know our listeners are going to go straight to YouTube or all your different social media channels to learn and hear more about — about and from you. I think you are a natural orator, which is why I would love to ask you the last question, which is what we ask all of our guests:

What do you think it will take for businesses and leaders to be resilient going forward?

I think to be resilient, it requires authenticity. Because I think that resilience means that you can't be impacted by what they tell you that you should do or what you think is right. You have to be authentic and true to what you know — because you always know. So you have to trust that inner voice inside you and be authentic and stay there and don’t try to change for anyone.

I think with that commitment to our authentic, real selves, resilience is inevitable.

Well, thank you so much, Dr. Kristian. It has been such an honor talking to you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.