Ayla 

Dara is the founder of Ayla. She has worked in beauty marketing, product development, and retail for 15 years, and she selects all of the items on our shelves.

Melissa is a professional makeup artist. She has worked with a variety of makeup and skincare brands including YSL, NARS, and Benefit — where she was chosen as a national brand ambassador due to her artistry, warm personality, and product expertise.

Jodie is one of the magical Ayla Guides — educated by top dermatologists, hair experts, and facialist Julia March to provide advice you can trust and spot-on product recommendations.

Beth Robert is a wonderful combination of esthetician, yoga teacher, and perpetual student — of Ayurveda, skincare techniques, and anything clean beauty related. With stints at the Cinta Aveda Institute in San Francisco and Indian Springs in Calistoga under her belt, Beth comes to Ayla with excellent skincare training, to which she has added her methodical and meticulous study of every product on our shelves — making her a master at putting together results-oriented skincare regimens.

Paola LaMorticella, has been the go-to makeup artist and stylist for top athletes for the past 25 years. She's also the founder of Olio E Osso, a Portland-based company that makes beautifully simple and versatile skincare and makeup products. Their Balm is their hero product, and we can see why: everyone, from celebrities to pro athletes to beauty junkies, wants to collect them all.

Sarah is a natural and non-toxic beauty pioneer. She first became fascinated with holistic approaches to skincare when she trained in depth with highly regarded European health and beauty brands in the early 2000s — long before natural beauty was the broader force that it is now. Sarah became a licensed esthetician in 2007 and soon became known for her soothing facial treatments and relaxing facial massage techniques at a celebrity makeup artist studio in San Francisco. Her glow-inducing oxygen facials are reason enough to book repeat visits, but she’s also such fun to hang out with that it’s hard to leave our cozy facial room when your treatment is over.

As a professional astrologer for thirty years, Frank has a worldwide clientele. Among his clients are entertainment personalities (including Academy Award, Tony Award and Emmy Award winners), sports figures, corporate executives (including COO’s of multinational corporations), professionals and government officials (including leaders in the United States, France, Greece, Israel, South Korea and the United Kingdom). His education includes graduation from The Choate School, a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, and a M.B.A. from New York University.

Anne is a Paris based pharmacist, skincare researcher, and product formulator with over 20 years of experience developing products for global beauty brands. Her grown children happened to be fashion models, and she observed that their peers in the profession were often heavy cigarette smokers. Consequently, their skin exhibited all possible skin problems combined: it was dull, red, thick, sensitive, dehydrated, and acne-prone. This discovery, along with the French obsession with eradicating “grise mine” (which is, basically, that tired, gray look that far too many of us are all too familiar with), compelled her to create a high-performing yet non-toxic product range that addressed all of these conditions.