Well, hello, hello, guys. You're listening to Beauty Bites with Dr. Kay, Secrets of a Plastic Surgeon, and today on the podcast, very exciting. We're interviewing a skin scientist. It's Dr. Barbara Paldas. She's a Canadian-born scientist, entrepreneur, investor. She's renowned for her contributions to spectroscopy and biotechnology and sustainable skin care.

She actually got a Bachelor's of Science and Math and Electrical Engineering from University

of Waterloo, followed by a PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford.

And by the time she was 34, she founded two Silicon Valley companies, including Piccaro,

which specialized in greenhouse gas detection

for climate change monitoring and finesse solutions. This developed biotech equipment for cancer

and vaccine therapy monitoring. And then recently in 2018, she founded Codex Labs, which is also a

silicon-based company that creates sustainable plant-based skin care solutions

with clinically proven results. She has a new product coming out for eczema, and she just

drives the innovation of science and sustainability for skin. So I'm excited to welcome you. Thank you for

coming on, Barbara. Thank you so much for having me, Dr. Kay. Well, so you started in electrical engineering and math and all things, hard science,

and then how did you transition to interest in skin?

So what happened was when I was running Finesce solutions, we were making bioprocessing

automation solutions.

So we were working with the vaccine manufacturers like J&J, Pfizer,

et cetera. We were working with monoclonal antibody and cancer therapeutic companies. And my son was

actually diagnosed with ADHD when he was nine. And that was in 27, well, actually eight when he was in

2017. And so I had to make a life choice. And I could either

keep traveling and growing the company. We were roughly 65 million at that point in revenue.

And I was traveling three weeks out of the month and had two nannies. Or I could sell the

company and actually be present for my child. And my child actually had eczema. So I chose the latter. I sold the company

in basically 2017 and left because the company that bought it was still making me travel a lot.

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