Katina Mountanos is the Founder & CEO of Kosterina, a modern wellness company centered around early harvest, extra virgin olive oil with high polyphenol content from her native home in Southern Greece. She saw a huge gap in the American market for authentic, high-quality extra virgin olive oil, and recognized that most mass-produced olive oils here are late harvest and poor quality, which negates most of the health benefits. Prior to starting Kosterina, Katina led Walmart’s Brand Incubation team, which focused on incubating and operating brands in the fashion, beauty and home categories. T ..read more

Brianne Nemiroff started her career in entertainment journalism in 2012, reviewing concerts and interviewing artists all over the U.S. In 2013, she started contributing to VIVA GLAM Magazine, a vegan lifestyle publication in Los Angeles, where she climbed the ladder to Managing Editor over the next 5 years. During her time at VIVA GLAM, she wrote articles for every category on the site earning her experience in beauty, fashion, food, entertainment, and travel, which led to her starting her own vegan travel column, "Visiting as a Vegan" in 2016.  In 2017, Brianne and her husband Benjamin l ..read more

Grace Ventura was born with a passion for wellness, a desire to help others heal and live healthy lives, and has decades of experience as a licensed massage therapist, yoga instructor, and wellness coach (and is a mom of six!). Grace launched her broth brand, Beyond Broth (now re-branded as Grace's Goodness Organics) after being under the weather and craving a simple and nourishing vegetable broth that she didn't have to cook. In this episode we chat about practicing wellness and putting health first, creating alignment with your brand, managing your energy, Grace's quarterly business check-in ..read more

Welcome back to the Back Label Branding podcast! In the first *official* episode of Season 2 I'm interviewing Renee Dunn, founder of Amazi Foods. Renee started her company after leaving her job and boarding a plane to Uganda. After working on her thesis in this African country, she realized she wanted to connect the abundant resources of the region to the global market. Amazi was founded in 2016, but 2020 was a huge year of growth for the brand. Launching in Sprouts, their first national account, created headway for many changes in marketing, distribution, production, and more. In the past yea ..read more

After season 1, I've decided to do it again. But before we dive into the next round of amazing female founders, I wanted to share some things that I learned while making my first podcast in the hopes that it will be inspiring for those of you who are also considering starting your own. I've immensely enjoyed the platform for storytelling, but there are definitely some tips for editing, producing, and launching that you will need to know! Listen to my solo mini-episode to learn about a few things that might help you too. ? Interested in learning more about brand building and organic market ..read more

World Spice Merchants has been a hub of flavor exploration since 1995 (!). In this episode, I’m speaking with Amanda Bevill, who took over the business and brand 15 years ago accredits turning left instead of right one day for how she got into the spice business. An herbalist by training, Amanda literally walked into the World Spice Merchants store by accident. Within a week, Amanda was working at the shop. And within the year, she was signing papers to take over the business. While Amanda moved back to Montana a few years ago, she still maintains the original Seattle location today! In this e ..read more

Barrett Prendergast is the founder of the luxury gifting and floral design company, Valleybrink Road. After getting her foot in the door of the food world by working in a restaurant kitchen, Barrett started her own catering business named after the street she lived on, Valleybrink Road, and in a way, fell into the gifting business by accident. Barrett started helping friends in the film industry put together thoughtful gift boxes for their clients and soon found herself driving all over Los Angeles making gift box deliveries for her own clients and responding to dozens of daily Instagram DMs t ..read more

Starr Edwards is the Founder and CEO of Bitchin' Sauce, a plant-based almond dip that has started as a teenager's kitchen experiment. Starr began making Bitchin’ Sauce in 2004, prompted by a newly acquired vegan diet as a sparky sixteen-year-old. At the time, there was a growing raw foods movement, but the vegan-friendly options were either highly-processed or high priced. So she created something herself! Starr's sauce quickly became
 a family staple and flagship recipe that she used in her budding personal chef business. She did spend a few years working as a home chef but realized that what ..read more

Elisa Marshall is the founder and creative genius behind NYC’s stylish Maman café. With locations throughout the city, and now in her hometown of Montreal, Elisa explains how designing a space that could be multi-functional as both a daily destination for your breakfast AND a place to host events. In this episode, we talk about how local PR and brand partnerships were key to growing the brand in the beginning, how Maman’s cookie made one of “Oprah’s Favorite Things”, her new-found tool for managing Instagram, and how moving away from the business for a year to write a cookbook (!) helped treme ..read more

In this episode, I’m speaking with the very bright and creative co-founder of GoNanas, Morgan Lerner. GoNanas is not your Nana's banana bread. Their product is vegan, gluten-free, top allergen-free, and downright delicious. Morgan started GoNanas in college, with her best friend Annie Slabotsky, and the two have just gone full-time, working on the company and growing GoNanas as a digital brand. I felt like our conversation was really capturing a moment in time for the brand. The COVID-19 pandemic was a big kick in the pants for them... in a good way. After realizing all of their retail partner ..read more