Throughout our conversation, which covers everything from mental health, marriage, maternity rights, mistakes, mentors (Arianna Huffington is one of her own), Hollywood, discrimination, political lobbying, parenthood, sustainability and running a hugely successful brand, Jessica is always eager to return to her innate desire to be truthful. “If you’re basically a good, decent person, it’s hard not to be good,” she says. “I don’t struggle to do the right thing. It’s not something I really struggled with.
But that doesn’t mean his journey has been smooth. It was Jessica’s own battles with ill health as a child and then again while pregnant with her first child Honor that inspired her to found The Honest Company. Initially selling baby care and household products, it has now ballooned to incorporate beauty, wellness and clothing ranges. Suffering from chronic allergies, asthma, regular bouts of pneumonia and even partially collapsed lungs as a child, Jessica was “in the hospital a lot”. His mother also had cancer when she was only 22 years old. Then, when Jessica was pregnant in 2008, she had a severe allergic reaction to laundry detergent made for babies, which scared her.
“I was like, ‘There’s a kid inside here, what if she’s allergic to everything like I was?’ she remembers today. “What could cause a reaction?” Because I was fine before using this laundry detergent. And I learned that there [seemed to be] many untested and potentially harmful chemicals found in detergents and beauty products, personal care products, and bath and body products. And we are inundated with thousands of chemicals, in fact every day, that we choose to put on ourselves.
Wanting to protect her family, Jessica began to do her own research.
“I really couldn’t circle it, because I didn’t think there was really a single brand that made things with honesty, integrity, with ethics, with values that care about human health.” she declares. “[I asked] can we have natural, clean and safe products, including makeup? Makeup was a big deal for me because I was an actress.
“I mean, you had to go to a university that studied chemicals to even understand the link to certain chemicals in human health! And I thought, ‘It’s just too hard for people and it has to be easier.’ That’s where the idea came from. »
So she spent the next few years studying and talking to experts. She has also taken it upon herself to lobby the US Congress, using her profile to speak out on chemical safety and transparency in consumer products, campaigning for the Safe Chemicals Act of 2011 to be passed. . “Politicians understand that there are certain people who influence their constituents,” she says, telling me how she was received by Congress. “They have an understanding and respect for people who can galvanize an audience and bring attention to what they’re talking about.”
All of this led her to team up with three associates Brian Lee, Christopher Gavigan and Sean Kane, all experts in their respective fields of e-commerce, child health and digital entrepreneurship – in 2012 to create The Honest Company.