Women In Wellness: Ana Kertesz of Amyris Studios On The Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Help Support People’s Journey Towards Better Wellbeing
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Think less, do more. Don’t ask for permission. Knowledge is potential power. Action is real power.
As a part of my series about women in wellness, I had the pleasure of interviewing Ana Kertesz.
Ana Kertesz is Amyris’ Chief Growth Officer and President of Amyris Studios. Ana leverages her experience as an entrepreneur, investor, finance executive and content creator to build Amyris Studios as a content, education, experiential, and community platform to support Amyris’ mission to accelerate the world to sustainable consumption and healthy living and redefine clean beauty and wellness through high growth, purpose driven brands including Biossance, JVN, Rose Inc., Costa Brazil, MenoLabs and Pipette. Since joining Amyris, Ana has built a high performance, diverse team focused on a shared vision and high impact. By driving awareness of their pure, high efficacy ingredients, products and brands through storytelling, education, entertainment and experiences, Ana has helped accelerate the growth of Amyris as a leader in sustainable biotechnology and the trajectory of clean beauty and wellness for humanity.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Our readers would love to “get to know you” better. Can you share your “backstory” with us?
I was born in Brazil to a family of creatives from grandparents who had immigrated from Europe. My mother is an incredible artist, my father was an architect. Since I was a child, I was inspired by how my family always embraced change and saw life as a process of creation. I have always had a passion for math, reading, learning, and finding ways to make things happen, of making a real difference in the world. I see a problem; a solution comes to mind. I used to pretend I owned a business when I played, pretend to sell things, do deals — a mini entrepreneur. I started working when I was very young as a tutor for middle school kids while I was in high school, and I saved enough money to help pay for my experience as an exchange student in the U.S. and then in France.
A few months before my college graduation, I got a job at Goldman Sachs, where I spent 13 years in total, three before my MBA from Harvard Business School and 10 afterwards, between Sao Paulo and New York. Goldman Sachs was a very entrepreneurial and transformative experience for me, allowing me to work amidst very smart and driven people, while leading deals with visionary founders, CEO’s, and Board members across industries in Latin America. Goldman has been a big part of my life: I met my husband Ari in my first year there and had each of my three kids while working there. At the time, I was one of the first women to have a flexible work arrangement at Goldman, which was really wonderful. I was the co-head of the Women’s Network for Latin America, working with other women especially on work-life balance and self-advocacy.
It was during that time that I had the vision for a technology education business, and after a few rounds with founders and investors in California, I ended up joining a large family office in Brazil called Peninsula, where I helped lead the creation of the private equity, venture capital and fundraising business. I’ve always been passionate about inspiring and educating people and helping turn their visions into reality. That’s my real passion. I moved back to the U.S. six years ago after I left my job at Peninsula because I wanted to create a different life for our family. That’s when I started my own business, HOWto.LIVEit, a digital platform to help entrepreneurs validate a business idea and ultimately fund and launch it. Doing my own thing was a great experience, but I started to feel very isolated, I missed working with larger teams.
That’s when I reconnected with John Melo, the CEO of Amyris, whom I had met years before while at Goldman Sachs. After a few rounds of interaction on his vision, I realized that at Amyris I could combine my entrepreneurial drive with a bigger mission and higher purpose and have a key role leading the next phase of growth of Amyris and our purpose driven brands.
2. Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career? What were the main lessons or takeaways from that story?
So many stories and learnings I can think of. I’ll share the story that provided me with the biggest lesson that I think has also been inspiring others along the way. After all these years of studying and working, when I moved back to the U.S. six years ago, I could not work for two years while I waited for my green card.
During that time I did a lot of soul searching to find meaning in the second half of my life. And it honestly took me a while, a lot longer than I thought it would. I was surprised when I realized how much of my identity was tied to my professional life. For a while, I was looking for a sign from the universe on what I should do next. I felt lost and I was seeking permission for any new idea I had. I thought I would find my purpose one day as if a lightning bolt would strike and I would know it.
I then realized that so many people feel the same way, especially people who had a career and took a break for parenting, or any other reason, often feel a lost sense of identity and feel really stuck, forgetting about all the incredible talent they have and all that they have accomplished.
After a lot of studying, and going deep into self-awareness, purpose, meaning, confidence, change, and entrepreneurship, it became clear to me that purpose is not something you find, it is something you create. Knowledge is only potential power, action is real power. We only absolutely know when we try, when we put ourselves out there.
My family is my life. My work is my passion. I have so much energy, and for me, life is about the people you meet and what you create with them. I feel best when I’m creating, building, learning, teaching, and inspiring people. I have been mentoring people and sharing my experience, resources, and ideas. That was the original intent behind HOWto.LIVEit. I want more people to try, to change, to imagine, to believe, to see the beauty in the struggle and know that the universe wants us to come alive.
3. Can you share a story about the biggest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
When I started working, I used to think that if I did a good job, people would see it and I’d be rewarded and compensated accordingly. After some time, I realized that’s not the way it works at all. Of course, we need to do a great job and create real impact, but it’s actually up to us to constantly remind the people around us the impact we’re making and what we’re doing. It may feel unnatural in the beginning, but then it becomes part of the job. When I mentor young people, I remind them that they have to be their best self-advocates and that is as important as doing a great job.
4. Let’s jump to our main focus. When it comes to health and wellness, how is the work you are doing helping to make a bigger impact in the world?
We are in a very unique moment in which wellness is becoming more mainstream: people’s expectations of a healthy routine have changed. Wellness is bound for great disruption and growth. This younger generation is so different, they are more aware about the healthy choices they make. I have three kids who are now 16, 13 and 10. They study, investigate, they’re curious, they know about mental health, they care about their well-being, exercise, nutrition, sleep, and living well. I wish I knew what they know now when I was a teenager. From them, I started to feel a responsibility to think about ways I could contribute to health and wellness on a bigger scale.
At Amyris, we’ve been able to create the technology that turns science into wellness with the highest performance, clean and safe ingredients — what we call “hero ingredients.” We’ve found a way to put them into real products with simple formulations that people can use every day. When you think about it, your skin is the largest organ on your body, so shouldn’t what goes on your body mean as much to your health as what goes in your body?
My main mission and the work we’re doing at Amyris Studios is to change the way people think about and understand the science behind clean, healthy living. We want to inspire people to imagine a healthier way of life and actually provide them with the tools to make it possible.
I’m building Amyris Studios to be an awareness and education engine, leveraging content, experiences, and community. I am lucky to have been creating an amazing team with Joe Zee, Chief Content Officer, Joan Cheng, Head of Creative Operations and Rachel Marlowe, Senior Content Writer, already on board with a few other very talented members on our team. We are working closely with our incredible science & ingredients teams as well as our brand teams, who have mastered building successful brands with a purpose and who are changing the clean beauty game, including: JVN in partnership with Jonathan Van Ness, Rose Inc with Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Biossance with brand ambassador Reese Witherspoon, Costa Brazil, Pipette, MenoLabs and our new brands to be launched soon, including Stripes with Naomi Watts, our make-up brand EcoFab for Gen Z, a hair brand called 4U by Tia in partnership with Tia Mowry, and a men’s brand in partnership with David Beckham.
5. Can you share your top five “lifestyle tweaks” that you believe will help support people’s journey towards better wellbeing? Please give an example or story for each.
We tend to know what is good for us — exercise frequently, eat well, sleep, meditate, disconnect from our phones, etc. — but the question is how can we keep doing that in our super busy, increasingly overwhelming routines? Is a balanced life actually achievable? I used to think there is a formula for balance, but I have realized that balance is unachievable and the belief that we can achieve balance causes us more frustration and stress. I have studied and experimented with many lifestyle hacks, and this is what has been working for me. Does it always work? No, it doesn’t. But I have learned to seek progression, not perfection, and it feels so liberating.
Focus
People always ask me — how do you do it? Work, family, house, travel, sports, friends (oh, and a puppy!). I don’t have a formula and it is never as easy as it seems, but I do think that focus is a superpower. What has worked for me is to protect my energy, so I have energy to pursue the things that matter the most. Eliminate distractions. I like to do my deep thinking and work early in the morning, before anyone is up, so I can focus. We all have bursts of productivity that last about 2–3 hours. I take advantage of that to get things done. I am trying to live more the life of an essentialist and really prioritize where I can make my biggest level of contribution. I am trying to say no with more of a peace of mind and to want less, not more. As philosopher Seneca said, “Being poor is not having too little, it is wanting more.”
Sleep
Those who know me well know that I have fallen asleep at the table of most restaurants in NYC. With three kids and a work schedule that was always demanding and involved a lot of travel, I have had many periods of sleep deprivation. But I have always taken sleep very seriously, for me, for my kids. There is so much science about sleep and still most people have trouble with it. I have created a few hacks that work for me to protect my sleep — especially disconnecting from emails and phone for about two hours before I go to bed, reading with no light on my Kindle, eating a light dinner. I have also learned that having consistent sleep times is very important for quality of sleep. I need 7–8 hours of sleep every night — I think everyone does. Sleep is what allows us to think more clearly and operate at our highest level of contribution so that we can achieve more in less time. Are there days I wake up in the middle of the night and my brain doesn’t stop thinking? Of course there are. But I do the best I can to mitigate those.
Habit
I know it sounds cliche, but the power of habit is what has kept me going over the years, especially when we’re so busy and pulled into so many different directions. Many of us often feel that if we can’t do something perfectly, we shouldn’t do it all. If we can’t exercise for an hour, we shouldn’t exercise. But I have learned that sometimes just showing up is good enough and is what keeps us going. I now know that when I exercise early, eat well, sleep well, manage stress — my day is very different from when I don’t. There are chemical changes that happen in our brain that impact our mood and overall well-being. The small improvements we make in our day-to-day life actually give us a sense of control and help us feel like we’re fulfilling our potential. Habit is a means for self-improvement and allows me to feel a sense of ownership over my health and life.
Action
I have always been an action driven person, and I feel that over the past few years of working with visionary founders that just take action without seeking permission, while seeing so many people feeling stuck, it has become very clear to me that we gain confidence through action. We evolve when we get out of our shells, put ourselves out there and experiment. I call it “giving life a chance to give you an opportunity.” You can’t win the lottery if you don’t buy a ticket. Connecting to people is an essential part. Life is about the people we meet and what we create with them. The real connections we make and the ideas that come out of it, bring real meaning to our lives. Making time to have real conversations and explore ideas.
Gratitude
We tend to think that we need to be happy to be grateful, but it is actually the other way around. Gratitude brings joy. Living in the moment, being grateful, we want that, but how can we do it? We have to remind ourselves every minute of the day that life is a gift. When we are grateful, we fear less, we love more, life is simpler. Gratitude is the simple act of seeing good revealed in multiple ways. When we feel that we are enough, our life is enough, we feel gratitude.
If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of wellness to the most amount of people, what would that be?
I’ve always wanted to start a movement around pro-aging and healthy aging, and that’s what we’re doing at Amyris. We’re living longer, but not necessarily better, especially in our later years. If people spend their time trying to deny the aging process, they deny themselves the opportunity to learn and get the tools to age well. Understanding what aging means can help us make better choices. I know it sounds harsh, but we start aging from the day we are born. Accepting aging as part of life and understanding the habits we can adopt from an early age to achieve healthy aging for our physical, mental and cognitive health is very important.
A big part of healthy aging means embracing menopause and changing the way we look at it as a society. In this age of youth obsession, women in their primes are a forgotten demographic, often left feeling invisible. By 2025 an estimated 1.1 billion women are expected to be postmenopausal in the world, yet women are still suffering from the lack of information and shame related to menopause. Women aged 40 to 59 have the highest rate of depression of any group based on age and gender in the U.S., and women have a 1 in 5 chance of developing cognitive diseases after their 50s. Only 20% of OB-GYN residency programs in the U.S. offer training in menopause. This lack of information on identifying symptoms related to menopause as well potential risks that are higher for women after menopause such as heart diseases, stroke, osteoporosis- has to be seriously addressed. Despite this reality, innovation for women’s health in later life has been practically non-existent. Women are suffering it alone, without the support of their partners, their kids, their families, their friends, their workplace.
The work we’re doing at Amyris is helping change this reality. We recently acquired a company called MenoLabs, focused on probiotics for women in menopause as we realized that menopause has a huge impact on your gut microbiome and without a healthy gut microbiome, everything else in your body suffers. We are launching a new brand in partnership with Naomi Watts’ in October called Stripes, which will have a line of science backed products for women in menopause leveraging our hero ingredient ectoine to address extreme dryness, as well as centered around helping foster these difficult but important conversations and bringing community together. We are also launching a podcast on pro-aging, addressing all the taboos and questions related to healthy aging, relationships, sex, menopause.
The time is now to accept menopause as a part of life. The more we leverage science to address and challenge the stigma and inequality in women’s health, the more we can help women age in a healthier way. Women should feel confident sharing their experiences, because when we share our experiences, we start to fundamentally change society’s views and attitudes towards menopause and aging in general.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why?
Think less, do more. Don’t ask for permission. Knowledge is potential power. Action is real power.
Learn, experiment, connect, repeat.
Say yes before you know how to do it.
Fail fast, early, often. When you fail, bounce back with passion.
Focus is a superpower. Saying no is much harder than saying yes.
Sustainability, veganism, mental health, and environmental changes are big topics at the moment. Which one of these causes is dearest to you, and why?
I believe that everything and everyone is interconnected, interdependent, inter-related, we are part of a bigger web that connects us all and with nature. And we all have a responsibility to change our relationship with nature.
We are currently living in a world of exponential climate transformation that is leading our planet and all of us to real catastrophe, yet we lack the understanding, global consensus, investment, and policy to make any real change. John Doerr, one of Amyris’ biggest investors and supporters, has written a book called Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now that offers details on an action plan to address this urgent state we are in. It is not someone else’s problem; it is our collective problem.
At Amyris, we’re doing our part. We have been able to develop the technology for clean chemistry that creates pure ingredients that are safe for people without depleting our planet, and to use that in products people can use. Our dream is that we all transition to sustainable consumption of products that are safe for people and the planet.
Climate change, sustainability, environmental impact — seem complicated and distant for most people. But the threat is real and is happening now. It is the biggest threat to our existence, and we need to each take one small step every day, use our own voice, demand change, so that collectively we will have a positive impact. Hope is the only thing stronger than fear. I need to have hope that we will do our job to leave our planet better for our kids.
What is the best way for our readers to further follow your work online?
You can read more about the work we’re doing on the Amyris website, and follow me and my work with HOWto.LIVEit on Instagram.
Thank you for these fantastic insights! We wish you continued success and good health.
Women In Wellness: Ana Kertesz of Amyris Studios On The Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Help… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.