Our Story
My name is Joanne Reilly & Im the owner-founder of Kinvara skincare
I’m an idealist and with Kinvara that means I want to give my customers the best - I want our products to make a difference in their lives
My background is in science, I’ve a degree in natural sciences from Trinity College Dublin and a PhD from Manchester Metropolitan University, as well as a post graduate diploma from the National University of Ireland in Community Development.
I set up Kinvara nearly 10 years ago because I was frustrated with the products available to me. They either didn’t work or made things worse, were very expensive or didn’t reflect my values – sometimes all of those things!
Up to that point I was lucky, in that my skin had been always been relatively trouble free but lifestyle changes, stress and physical changes after I came back from fieldwork in Sumatra and again after the birth of my first child left my skin reactive and tricky to manage.
I was lucky in that I knew what to do to help myself. I’ve a doctorate in tropical ecology, working on endangered species, like elephants and rhinos. Fieldwork to Sumatra and earlier expeditions to Mauritius showed me how local people turned to plants as a natural resource, a natural apothecary. So I was very confident that plants held the solution to my skin problems and with that belief in mind I set about making products for myself.
5 years on I’m making products for myself & 1000’s of happy customers all over the world.