Nov 12, 2020
Dr. Isfahan Chambers-Harris earned her B.S. in Biology from the City University of New York- Medgar Evers College and Ph.D. in Bio-Medical Sciences from Morehouse School of Medicine, Cardiovascular Research Institute. She officially began her medical career as a postdoctoral fellow at Vanderbilt School of Medicine. She conducted genetic research on an autoimmune disease, Sarcoidosis and Lupus. While at Vanderbilt, Dr. Isfahan also earned her Master’s in Public Health, which allowed her to focus on diseases that affect disadvantage populations. After earning her Masters, she went on to become a Presidential STEM Fellow at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda Maryland.
Alodia Hair Care was birthed out of Dr. Isfahan’s’ personal experiences with unnatural, toxic hair care products. Facing excessive hair damage, she turned to her expertise in biology and chemistry. Over a 3-year period filled with countless research and experimentation, she developed transformative products made with organic and natural ingredients.
In 2017, Dr. Isfahan officially launched Alodia. Alodia is a science based organic hair care product company that's focused on personalizing product choices based on scalp health, unique hair type and styling preferences. Alodia provides customizable kits, virtual consultations (with hair trichologists including our founder Dr. Isfahan) and use A.I technology to curate your product choices taking the guesswork out of having a healthy hair and scalp.
All 3 areas connect to Alodia Hair Care’s mission to help women Learn Love and Grow their hair.
Dr. Isfahan resides in the DC metropolitan area with her husband, Dr. Rashad Dupree-Harris, MD and their beautiful 7-year old twin boys and 11month old son.
Dr. Chambers-Harris joins me today to discuss her background research at the National Institute for Health and how that helped to position her to use those same set of skills in understanding her customer base better. She discusses how she bootstrapped the company and how she manages supply lines and products. We discuss how important hair care is to people with textured hair and how some beauty regimens are handed down through the generations. Listen to this episode and be inspired by this extraordinary woman.
“Being a scientist, my skill set was transferrable because I was able to utilize and lean in on the skill sets as a researcher and apply it to creating an understanding to my consumer market:” - Dr. Isfahan Chambers-Harris
Today on When She Founded:
- Dr. Chambers-Harris beginnings and what brought her to create her scalp oil
- We learn about her time at the National Institute for Health
- She shares with us how she balanced her time at the NIH, a new company and motherhood
- Dr Chambers-Harris enlightens the audience about the stress she used to feel about “taming” her hair and the damaging results to her hair and her being
- Her early test subjects and how she utilized her early customers to get an unbiased customer representation feedback ( FIX)
- How her skill set of being a scientist and researcher helped her to understand the consumer
- She shares with us the challenges of getting the message of her product out and standing apart from the rest of the hair products available
- Her decision and strategy of being B to C or B to B
- The challenges of scaling, staffing, and COVID-19
Connect with Dr. Isfahan Chamber-Harris on her website: www.alodiahaircare.com
Email her at: info@alodiahaircare.com
To find Alodia on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube search for Alodia Hair Care
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