Founder Letter — September 2026 Edition
Dearest,
Twenty-five years ago, in September 2001, I was an undergraduate student at Columbia on the Upper West Side of NYC.
The morning of September 11th was a deceptively beautiful day. A clear, wide-open bluebird sky. The first crispness of fall. The kind of day when you can feel the exact spot sunlight kisses your skin.
I had just arrived - probably late - to my early morning math class in a heavy stone building along Broadway. I slid into my usual spot with the other few women in the class. We tended to sit together.
We heard a fire truck with its sirens blaring on the other side of the wall and made girlish jokes about the handsome, muscly firemen.
But then, more sirens... And more sirens….. And more sirens….. Something was going on. The joking stopped, and class ended.
It still wasn't yet obvious that something was very wrong.
In fact, when I walked across the street toward my dorm, I ran into my economics professor - who I absolutely despised. He'd flaked on office hours (yet again!) right before our first exam. And when I confronted him, he curtly spat, "NOT NOW," and walked away. I was stunned. Enraged and stunned.
The head of security, David, who saw the interaction, calmly walked over to me and said - Something is going on. Go back to your room and turn on the news. So I did.
Our phones weren't working. Mercifully, we had AOL Instant Messenger and could reach our families and concerned friends by chat.
A friend on my floor, Lauren, both of her parents worked at the Pentagon. A former boyfriend, Tyler, who worked at Fred Alger, was somewhere in the first tower that had been hit. Another friend, Stephanie, her older brother worked in finance in one of the towers. I can't think of anyone on the floor or in my extended group of friends or acquaintances who wasn’t touched by this moment in some way.
In the days that followed, we'd learn many of the people riding on those fire trucks didn’t return. Whole companies were lost. Some firehouses lost every member on duty that morning. So many of the best of us. Gone. And of those who did return, many would spend the rest of their lives dealing with illnesses caused by breathing the dust of Ground Zero and a political apparatus resistant to care for them.
In the weeks that followed, New York showed its best self. I will never forget the lines several blocks long to donate blood at St. Luke's. Anxious productivity in the face of grief, fear, and anthrax scares.
In many ways, September 11 was the straw that broke my proverbial camel's back. I was already anxious. Now, I kept my room stocked with Balance Bars touting 40-30-30 macros, dried fruit, and a flat of bottled water. I never thought of myself as a prepper, but in my small way, perhaps I was.
Three weeks later, my father drove up from West Virginia. We went to see Zoolander and went shoe shopping. Time with dad, laughter, and retail therapy were complicated, but good medicine. We were standing in the Barney's shoe salon when news erupted that the US had begun bombing Afghanistan… on October 7th.
Twenty-five years later, I run a company whose ingredients grow in a region where al-Qaeda’s presence remains a threat.
Beauty and its supply chains are geopolitical, whether we like it or not. Everything comes from somewhere and someone.
When I started KYPRIS, I knew we needed a supply chain as transparent and ethical as we could muster. Buying botanical ingredients well can put money into the hands of people making lives and caring for the land while limiting exploitation.
Our shea ingredients are exclusively sourced through Kolo Nafaso, a FairWild-certified, traceable program involving more than 230,000 women across West Africa. It offers direct trade, interest-free microcredit, training, and support for the regeneration of naturally occurring shea parklands. FairWild Foundation
It is cuddly capitalism at its finest: commerce structured to create greater agency, opportunity, and environmental stewardship.
The focus on women is opportunism, not charity. Women’s economic empowerment strengthens economies and can help build the social cohesion that makes communities more resilient to extremism and climate events. UN Women
That matters because the threat that changed so many lives twenty-five years ago did not disappear.
Today, terrorist group JNIM operates as an al-Qaeda affiliate in the Sahel. Alongside Islamic State–Sahel, it has devastated communities throughout Burkina Faso and neighboring countries. United Nations Security Council U.S. State Department
Ghana has so far been spared comparable attacks, but its northern regions share a porous border with Burkina Faso and face a growing threat of violent spillover. UNDP
It's delusional to think ethically sourced shea butter can untie the knot of global terrorism, but perhaps it can be part of a broader, more holistic equation. First of all, terrorism is not solely an economic problem. It is political, cultural, ideological, and spiritual too.
But commerce still takes sides.
Traceable sourcing helps us understand whom our purchases support.
Moreover, I promise you this effort is imperfect in ways we cannot yet see. But it remains our most transparent and thoroughly considered option to date.
Leading up to this 25th Anniversary of 9/11… Here is what I do know......
Tell the people you love that you love them.
You do not know when you will have your last opportunity to thank, admire, or celebrate them. Let it be weird if it must. Expect nothing in return.
This is actually my annual September 11 ritual: a day-long love fest of handwritten notes, voice notes, and texts. You’ll like it so much you’ll do it all year. You’ll see.
Be ultra-cognizant of where your money goes.
Money moves through supply chains, communities, businesses, organizations, and families. Our choices can reinforce—or undermine—the systems we want to see more or less of.
Beware the useful idiot.
We have all been one. Question what you think you know, often. Bad actors can exploit legitimate nonprofits or create sham charities to move money and promote their ideologies. Financial Action Task Force. Our empathy is often the first part of our goodness to be exploited.
Most of all:
Live as an expression of your beauty, your truest, heart-centered essence and soul. Encourage those you love to do the same.
People filled with love, dignity, self-respect, and a profound sense of their own beauty are harder to exploit and less likely to exploit others.
The world we seek begins with each of us and with one another.
