According to Sophie Bai, Pavise, her biotech-meets-skincare company, is to suncare as Loro Piana and Hermès are to fashion. “They pride themselves on the highest quality of raw materials – the leather, the cashmere, the wool – and the highest level of craftsmanship and attention to detail,” she says. “Skincare and cosmetics [are] the same way.” It may seem far-fetched to compare a sunscreen to a $10,000 wool coat or a $20,000+ leather handbag, but Bai’s analogy begins to make sense the more she tells me about Pavise.
Bai’s background differs from that of the typical beauty founder. “I was born in one of the poorest provinces in China… not a single good school and not a single good hospital,” she recounts. “I knew that if I wanted to get a better education, better opportunities, I needed to get out of my province. The best way to do that at the time was to participate in science competitions.” So at seven-years-old, Bai did just that — ten years later, at 17, she’d won the International Science and Engineering Fair, the world’s largest international pre-college science competition.
Bai was a science geek and mathlete, but she was also invested in the world of beauty, and the currency of aesthetics, at a young age. At age 11, she was kicked out of a public speaking contest for her appearance. “The judges said, ‘You look ugly. We don’t want to listen to what you have to say.’ That day I had a really bad acne and eczema flare-up.” After the incident, Bai skipped lunch for a week and bought a Maybelline foundation to cover her perceived imperfections.
It was a formative experience for Bai, but the joke was on the judges. She went on to study at MIT and Harvard, where she helped develop new cancer and diabetes drugs, innovations that helped improve, and even save, patients’ lives. The medicines that Bai worked on went through rigorous testing, safeguards that led her to question why skincare products aren’t held to the same…
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