liquidation
If Bodnar has been tight-lipped about specifics, it’s because she’s facing controversy.There is a plaintiff who has filed a lawsuit. Prosperity in 2018, claimed the company did not donate to charity in the way it claimed. (The lawsuit resulted in a “stipulated” termination; Ms. Bodnar signed a non-disparagement agreement barring her from speaking about the matter.) In 2019, Forbes magazine added her to the “stipulated” list. Some trolls harassed her on social media. Richest Women’ list.
“When that list came out, I was actually pretty scared,” said Bodnar, who splits his time between Seattle and Los Angeles, where Thrive is headquartered.
Bodnar grew up in rural Washington state. “We went to church every Sunday, and ‘Allure’ was my bible,” she said. She worked at Sephora to pay for community college, which led her to work in the Seattle office of Clarisonic, a maker of mechanical face brushes that L’Oréal acquired in 2011.
“Out of all the men on the team, she was very impressive,” said Carol Hamilton, president of acquisitions for L’Oréal USA. “She wanted to understand the ‘why’ of her job, how large companies operate.”
In 2013, Bodnar’s close friend Kristi Lemond, who worked in the nonprofit sector, died from soft tissue sarcoma, a rare cancer. Mr. Bodnar had a calculation. She quit L’Oréal. She bought a lot of cosmetics. She wrote her plan for business on her iPhone Notes app. It’s Vegan Her Makeup with a business model that mimics Tom’s and Warby’s hoodies, pioneers of the “buy one, give one” model.
Bodnar said she took a day job at supplement company Bulletproof and funded innovations in her off hours, such as false eyelashes that “work with or without eyelashes.” “Most of what I heard at first was, ‘When women get cancer, we tell them not to wear makeup.’ I thought, ‘That’s not an acceptable response.’ .”