How a Hunk of Cocoa Butter Inspired This Former Pastry Chef to Start a New Kind of Beauty Business

This content was created by Girlboss, in collaboration with Kate McLeod.

Success means different things to different people, but for Kate McLeod, it’s not even a word in her vocabulary. “It’s a word that society has defined (in my opinion) in a pretty toxic way,” she says. “It’s not a metric I'm interested in using in my life.”

Kate considers herself a work in progress instead—because she’s had not one, not two but three career pivots. She started out in finance at Goldman Sachs, then went to culinary school and became a pastry chef then she started her own bakery in London. Kate eventually started her own eco-friendly skincare brand, where she uses her pastry skills to formulate moisturizing Body Stones that melt into the skin on contact. Oh, and she also happens to be married to the founder and CEO of Hinge, Justin McLeod.

I chatted with her about her first job (working at a Texas weiner stand), the radical power of self-care and what’s next for Kate the brand and Kate the person.