On the Line with Sonsie Skin

Welcome to On the Line! A series from Hotline Skin, bringing you exclusive interviews with founders, formulators, strategists and other key players in beauty. I’ll ask the first round of questions and then turn it over to you. Missed one? Read them all here.

The first things I learned about Kailey Bradt were that she’s 32, a chemical engineer, and the CEO of Sonsie, a skincare brand she leads alongside…Pamela Anderson. Well, ok, Kailey! Her resume on paper is impressive, but getting to chat with her convinced me she’s truly walking the walk. And that walk is towards a new understanding of sustainability in beauty. Since joining Sonsie, she’s reformulated a few of their hero SKUs and even launched a cream housed in a jar you can rinse out and drop in your compost.

Through her experience with other beauty brands, Kailey learned the unfortunate truth that sustainability just really isn’t a #1 priority for consumers—“it’s not what makes people transact.” So in order to change that with Sonsie, she told me, “you need to build a world people want to be part of.” By this she means actually inviting people into the process, not just showing off the finished product.

I spoke with Kailey shortly before she left for Alaska on a trip to visit a kelp farm, where she met with regenerative ocean farmers to learn about kelp-derived ingredients straight from the source and get working on Sonsie’s next product.

In today’s interview, we talk about her kelp trip, what real ingredient transparency looks like, and the steps she’s taking to build a world you want to be part of.

Today’s post is sponsored by Sonsie! I’m forever grateful to the brands that sponsor the newsletter and make it possible.

As part of this series, you also get the opportunity to ask your own questions! Ask Kailey anything in the comments and she’ll pop in over the next few days to answer.

Shop Sonsie

Use our exclusive code HOTLINE15 for 15% off sitewide through August 20th

• I’m Kailey, CEO of Sonsie. I’m a chemical engineer by education. I’ve spent my career cleaning up the beauty industry. I’m super passionate about moving the industry forward when it comes to sustainability, which has put me on a path of founding my own brand, launching an early stage advisory firm for mission-driven brands and to my CEO role at Sonsie.

  My first company, Susteau, was focused on reducing waste via a waterless innovation format for haircare. I took the first product I ever formulated from my bedroom floor to Sephora and it also won multiple beauty awards including an Allure Best of Beauty Award. I was 1 of 13 women globally to be selected for the 2020 Sephora Accelerate Program. From there I began advising mission-driven brands and material innovators independently, leading me to found

  Syndeo.

  Syndeo was built to accelerate the adoption of sustainable material innovations in beauty and house my advisory work. On the advisory side, that meant bringing in consultants, working across brands and innovators, to assist in the adoption alongside the strategy work my cofounder and I were leading. There was a huge gap in the market for fractional product development and operations support for early stage brands.

  I started working with Sonsie during my time doing advisory work and really loved how they wanted to build differently, use the most sustainable ingredients available and push forward innovation like our home-compostable biobased jar that replaces plastic for the

  Adapt Cream. Over three years I went from a “call me as you need me” advisor, to leading product strategy to CEO. It happened internationally and organically. It was the right timing.

  I spend time between New York City, Upstate NY (where I grew up in Corning, NY) and Europe, mainly Greece. My partner is Greek and I’ve completely fallen in love with the culture and the country is geographically stunning. I do a lot of my creative thinking there.

  

• Fractional advising is essentially working with a founding team in a part-time, embedded capacity—you’re not a full-time hire, but you’re much more than a consultant. You get deep into the business. I love doing it because I get to work directly with founders at a really pivotal stage.

  With Sonsie, it started with product development. Then product strategy. Then I was looking at the broader business plan, and before I knew it I was sitting with the team dreaming up what the next several years could look like. What made me go all in was simple: the people and the mission were genuinely aligned with how I believe beauty should be built. When Pamela said that my “love and commitment to clean, sustainable beauty” made me the perfect partner to grow this brand, that meant everything—because it’s true. I couldn’t imagine anything more exciting than building the next generation of clean beauty alongside this team.

• Pamela is deeply involved and genuinely curious. She asks real questions—about ingredients, about our sustainability choices, about how we can do better. She keeps us grounded in what Sonsie was always meant to be: a brand rooted in self-acceptance, confidence, and grace. What I bring is the science and operational rigor. What she brings is the soul. Together I think we make something both credible and beautiful.

• The biggest thing chemical engineering gave me wasn’t formulation knowledge—it was a love of problem-solving. Brand building is a wild ride. There are constantly things breaking, pivoting, surprising you. If you can’t find genuine joy in the challenges, you won’t last. Engineering trained me to approach every obstacle as a system to understand and improve, not a wall to hit.

  In formulation specifically, I think differently about ingredient interactions, about process, about scale. I’m not just asking “does this ingredient have a good story?”—I’m asking “how does it behave at manufacturing scale, what’s the environmental footprint of its sourcing, and is the clinical data actually rigorous?” That lens shapes everything from the Adapt Cream to our kelp work.

• Susteau was a powder-to-lather shampoo—genuinely innovative, low-waste, clinically validated. The awards were incredible validation of the product. But here’s what I learned: a great product is necessary, not sufficient. Consumers don’t just buy formulas—they buy into brands. They need a story they can see themselves in, a community, a reason to choose you over the familiar thing on the shelf next to you. We had the innovation. We were early on the sustainability angle. But we hadn’t fully cracked the brand identity and the emotional connection that makes people evangelical.

  That lesson is foundational to how I’m building Sonsie. The products are exceptional—but we’re building a brand people believe in, not just one they reach for once.

• Cleansing Mousse — A gentle, foaming cleanser that effectively cleans while calming and soothing skin. Made with Aloe Vera Juice, 1% Ginger Root Extract and 0.3% Bisabolol.

• Super Serum — A lightweight, hydrating serum that visibly calms skin while evening tone and texture over time. Made with 4% Niacinamide and 2% Mountain Pepper Extract.

• Adapt Cream — A midweight barrier repair cream that immediately hydrates, reduces redness and firms skin with added benefits of evened skin tone and increased collagen over time, supporting skin regeneration. Made with 2.5% Adaptive Tripeptide Complex and 1.0% Bacillus Ferment Blend. Certified skin microbiome-friendly. Housed in home-compostable packaging that replaces plastic, a true packaging innovation.

• Multi Moisture Cream — A rich cream that gives skin a long-lasting hydration boost smoothing the appearance of fine lines and eliminating dry skin upon application- it also doubles as a mask. Made with 12% Glycerin and 0.5% Hyaluronic Acid.

• Basic Balm — A squeezable, moisturizing lip balm that instantly softens and smooths lips, locking in hydration all day long and adds volume over time. Made with 25% Bio-Based Squalane and 1% Hydrating Peptide Complex.

• Kelp CoLab is an initiative from GreenWave (a global network of regenerative ocean farmers) and Macro Oceans (a kelp-derived ingredient supplier). The goal is to increase adoption of kelp-derived ingredients. More specifically, this program is focused on the Big Kelp Hydration ingredient from Macro Oceans. Adoption has been the pain point for innovation as it relates to beauty. I’ve spent a lot of time behind the scenes and even set up my second business, Syndeo, to focus on this—working with mission-driven brands and ingredient suppliers to increase the successful adoption of new innovation into the consumer space—and yet still I see a slow down as of late with sustainability goals being deprioritized.

  Sonsie was a natural fit for this initiative, because this is exactly what Clean Beauty 2.0 looks like in practice—traceability, regenerative sourcing, ingredient transparency, entertaining science-backed content opportunities. That’s exactly what needs to happen to move this industry forward and Sonsie will be the brand to lead this.

• Kelp is one of the fastest-growing organisms on earth, it’s a macroalgae! It sequesters carbon, requires zero fresh water, no fertilizer and no arable land. From a sustainability standpoint, it’s quite amazing. From a formulation standpoint, it has a compelling functional profile that supports hydration, skin barrier, and anti-inflammatory properties.

  I find the industry is pulling back from sustainability commitments, and that makes me work harder to push it forward now. Momentum has slowed behind the scenes in beauty. The brands that stay the course and establish supply chain traceability will build and maintain trust. Now it’s my job to make science fun and entertaining. Kelp gives us an easy story to tell and I’m excited to share all the behind the scenes from the trip to Alaska!

• This trip to Alaska to meet the farmers, see the ocean plots where kelp was grown and understand why Alaska was incredibly informative. Most of the algae ingredients I have seen on the market are single ingredient. For example, a fucoidan.* That’s all fine and good, but I always wonder, what happens to the rest of the actives? What happens to the rest of the kelp? Is it composted? Is it upcycled into something else? These are the questions I ask, because I want to pick the best possible material and I want to tell our community why we picked it.

  Looking at the Macro Oceans Big Kelp Hydration and learning about where it’s grown, how it’s seeded, grown and harvested and seeing the processing of the ingredient to the waste.. I was impressed and excited. The kelp is grown in nutrient-dense waters that are uniquely so due to the patterns of the ocean currents. The kelp itself is cleaning the ocean as it grows, making a positive impact on the ocean itself, helping offset the acidification we see happening on a global scale. It’s providing stable, good paying jobs to people in the area. It’s a farming process that has now been studied in the area by local universities and funded by nonprofits, like Greenwave, for 10 years. The kelp extract is processed similar to how you would make a coffee, just simply hot water and pressed. The solid waste is dried and upcycled into products like plant pots (oceanmade.co).The kelp extract of course has the fucoidan, but it also has a combination of actives balanced as nature intended. It’s not just a single ingredient, but an ingredient system that works together and is simple labeled as kelp extract.

  *Fucoidan is an antioxidant/anti-inflammatory compound pulled from seaweed.

• Transparency. It’s been talked about so much. There are very few brands that have acted on it. I am building what I call Clean Beauty 2.0—where the next generation of great brands will show, not just tell. Ingredient sourcing, formulation across the routine, not just a single SKU, sustainability decisions, even economics! Consumers are curious, they’re asking better questions and not getting ahead of that on the brand side is a mistake. That’s what I’m starting to build out with my own personal content and what we’ve been working on at Sonsie.

• Favorite socks: Can I say no sock? I really haven’t met a sock I’ve loved. Also it’s just more to pack in a suitcase. Maybe someone recommend me a good sock who is reading this? Thank you!

• Favorite sandwich: I am not a big sandwich person, I think because the sandwiches in the US are just TOO big. If I had to pick, I would say the prosciutto panini at Bar Pisellino. In Milan though, I had this amazing sandwich at Bar Quadronno that had eggplant and salami. Which while I was there, I learned they have a New York location! I can’t vouch for that one, but the Milan location was incredible.

• Favorite tv show: I don’t watch TV really. Right now, if we want to turn something on, my boyfriend and I watch Clarkson’s Farm. I love the idea of having a big garden or farm or winery or something like that in Greece some day.

• Favorite toothpaste: Marvis Whitening Mint. A short answer finally haha!

Thank you for stopping by, Kailey! Have any questions of your own? A sock rec? Ask anything in the comments and Kailey will be answering directly over the next few days.

Shop Sonsie

Use our exclusive code HOTLINE15 for 15% off sitewide through August 20th.

Not sure what to get? My personal favorites are the Cleansing Mousse and Adapt Cream!

xx,

Jolie