Unveiling the Brilliant Co-Host: Rebecca Gadberry - Let's Get Acquainted! Part 1

Trina Renea  0:07  

Hey everyone, welcome to Facially Conscious. I'm Trina Renea – a Medically Trained Master Esthetician here in Los Angeles, and I'm sitting with my rockstar co-host, Dr. Vicki Rapaport - a Board-Certified Dermatologist with practices in Beverly Hills and Culver City, Rebecca Gadberry - Our Resident Skincare Scientists and Regulatory and Marketing Expert, and Julie Falls - Our Educated Consumer who is here to represent you. We are here to help you navigate the sometimes confusing and competitive world of skincare. Our mission is to provide you with insider knowledge on everything from product ingredients to medical procedures, lasers, fillers, and ever-changing trends. With our expert interviews with chemists, doctors, laser reps and estheticians, you'll be equipped to make informative decisions before investing in potentially expensive treatments. It's the wild-west out there so let's make it easier for you, one episode at a time. Are you ready to discover the latest and greatest skincare secrets? Tune in and let us be your go to girls for all things facially conscious. Let's dive in.

Dr. Vicki Rapaport  1:26  

Welcome back everybody to Facially Conscious. Hello! Do you guys know that we're going to talk about our one and only Rebecca Gadberry today? 

Rebecca Gadberry  1:36  

Oh, my God. At least you are not talking behind my back.

Dr. Vicki Rapaport  1:40  

We do that too. Brace yourselves people. I have an incredible bio about to take off. Are we ready? It's impressive. Very impressive. So, I want to tell you guys a little bit about Rebecca. She is a skincare industry legend and she's valued as one of the preeminent ingredient authorities. And she's at the forefront of many of our most popular skincare trends including AHA's and barrier repair and antioxidants and multi antioxidants, protection from pollution, free from lists, blue light protection, peptides, micro biomes, epigenetics, bespoke, and on and on and on and on and on. And she is also one of the original cosmetic communicators at Myth Busters. And she's received numerous awards for her work as an educator, a journalist, a researcher and a product developer. And she is extremely proud to say that she's the 13th licensed esthetician in California, which I think is pretty cool. She's actually had a 55-year career, and she has been the leader in the growth of the skincare industry from luxury to musts, for anybody with skin and get this everybody. She has developed over 1500 cosmetic products. 1500 cosmetic products. She has published over 600 articles and taught the groundbreaking cosmetic science program at UCLA to 1000s of industry professionals since 1986. Which I think is where Trina met her.

Rebecca Gadberry  3:15  

Not in 1986. Trina is licensed to take class over.

Trina Renea  3:25  

But yes, at that class. I'm like; until I learned something in full and know it all. I just keep taking it. 

Rebecca Gadberry  3:31  

She sits out in a front row. 

Dr. Vicki Rapaport  3:33  

So, almost finished everybody, but this is still about Rebecca. She's a passionate truth teller, who addresses the exorbitant amount of misinformation plaguing the cosmetics sector today, on and offline. And in 2023, which is basically this year, she's returning to teach the cosmetic science program at UCLA, and is now the Director of Product Development at YG laboratories, which we're going to hear about more. And right now, we're going to say welcome, Rebecca.

Trina Renea  4:01  

My mentor.

Rebecca Gadberry  4:05  

I always get red when somebody reads.

Dr. Vicki Rapaport  4:09  

Well, it's impressive and you know, you're humble, but you shouldn't be because this is all very impressive and somebody would be very proud to have the knowledge that you have in your head.

Trina Renea  4:19  

And she's always been behind the scenes and she only, you know, certain select people get to actually hear her education and hear her speak so it's so nice to have you on this podcast so that people out there, the general public can actually hear from you. It's really a great thing, I think.

Rebecca Gadberry  4:37  

I think that's one of the reasons why I came back was because I get to talk directly to people instead of having talking to people and having them interpret what I say. It's kind of like playing telephone. – Okay, you went a different direction…but.

Julie Falls  4:56  

You know what Trina and I first, and we will talk about this but when Trina and I first came up with this idea first for a reality show and then a podcast. And then, you know, I thought it was just going to be fun and banter and then, you know, we got Dr. Vicki Rapaport I mean, talk about legitimacy. I was like, ‘Oh, wait, now I really have to sound like I know what we are talking about.’ And then Rebecca, and I started reading about Rebecca. I’m like, wait, this is a real deal here, I mean.

Trina Renea  5:27  

I mean, it's such a missing link to the podcast, like it made it full circle ways, which we didn't know is a missing link. But then we were like – Oh, my God, this is like… when I told my husband when you came on, after we had been doing it for a year, and it was COVID. And when you came on Rebecca, I was like, oh, my God, Patrick, like I literally can die now and go to heaven. I'm like, I have my two mentors. The two people in life, I look up to Dr. Vicki and Rebecca on the show, and like, I don't need anything else. My career is fulfilled.

Rebecca Gadberry  6:00  

And your detective pal Julie, and all things skin.

Trina Renea  6:03  

Julie is my life partner in crime.

Dr. Vicki Rapaport  6:06  

Well, I am most interested in the ingredient knowledge and I just want to put her hard drive into my head. So, we're going to give you guys a little bit of that hard drive right now. But Rebecca, can you, you know, you are our skincare scientists and our regulatory and marketing expert. And your family owns an amazing lab called YG Labs and you guys create products from any skincare lines across the world. Can you tell us how you got into the industry?

Rebecca Gadberry  6:32  

I got into the industry. First, I say I've been in this industry for 58 years. And that's because I got into the industry when I was 10 years old. My mother was one of the first five Mary Kay ladies in California in 1964. When Mary Kay originally came from Texas to California, and by the time when I was 10. We were doing, let me see, we were doing parties to Thursdays, Friday nights, Thursday and Friday nights, Saturday afternoons and Sunday afternoons.

Dr. Vicki Rapaport  7:08  

Can you explain to people with that party is, the Mary Kay party?

Rebecca Gadberry  7:12  

Mary Kay party was one of the very original parties that you would have to talk to women about their skin, and how to apply makeup. My mother taught me how to apply makeup the Mary Kay way and how to do a Mary Kay facial. So. when I was 10, I learned how to do a basic Mary Kay facial, I learned all about the products and why they worked. I learned how to talk about a product so people would understand it. And I learned how to ask for the order what we call ‘Closing’. So, by the time I was 14, I was paying half the rent half the utilities. I had my own phone and was saving for college. So, people say – well, how could you have been in this industry for 58 years? I'm 68 years old. 10 minus, or minus 10. That's 58 years. I did that until I went away to college. And when I went to college, I said I will never be in this industry. Get out of college, I had anthropology, archaeology and linguistics was not going to get me hired at any place, but Bank of America as a teller. My mother had just started the Forerunner company to YG laboratories, so she brought me back in and I started in shipping. And then I worked in the warehouse. And then I worked as the receptionist. And one day her national sales representative for salons across the country. She was in the professional industry. He asked for a product and I had just been researching it. So, my mother asked me to bring it up. And he said - What is this do? And instead of letting my mother answer the question, as you've all noticed, I will answer it for you. So, I answered the question. And the guy said, ‘That is the best most thorough answer I've ever had to a question about a product.’ Jean, my mother's name was Jean. ‘Jean, would you be okay if your daughter went around the country with me and trained all of the accounts, and she can also be a tradeshow.’ So, I was 19-years-old, 20-years-old, and I was on the road with his sky for two years. And wherever we would go. If I was not working because most of the work was done at night, I would go to the local university library and look up every skin text I could find and read everything I could and this was back in the days when you had to fill out a slip. Give it to the librarian. They would go get articles, bring it to you then you'd pay 10 cents per page. I spent $100 in one day on Research at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu. They had the best, best stuff on skin because I learned skin before I learnt ingredients. There wasn't a lot on ingredients in 1974-73. Dr. Bedfordshire, when the first cosmetic ingredient dictionary was published by the association, Cosmetic Toiletry and Fragrance Association in Washington, DC, they're now called PCPC, The Professional Personal Care Products Council, they publish the first dictionary that the FDA recognized for ingredient names or nomenclature. There were 3500 ingredients in it. There are now over 30,000. I think there's 30,000. I haven't checked recently. 

Trina Renea  10:44  

And that was in how many years? 

Rebecca Gadberry  10:45  

That's been since 1978 to the present day. Yeah. And we have Dr. Mindy Goldstein on earlier this year, who is in charge of the biggest committee for that dictionary to give new ingredients names. And that's one of the ways that I met Mindy. 

Trina Renea  11:04  

There's so much depth behind the industry. But you know, Rebecca is a constant learner and she's always in college. She is probably, I don't know, are you the oldest college student in your classes, usually?

Rebecca Gadberry  11:15  

Usually, I am. But you know, that keeps me young, because when I retired from UCLA in 2015, and retired from the industry, I now say it was a seven-year sabbatical, that I didn't really retire. Everybody said, you're going to come back. So, when I “Retired” or went on sabbatical, I found out that UCLA for people 50 years and older, have this thing called the Scholar Program, Master Scholar Program. And back then I could take four classes a semester, for $156 a semester. Now, it's more money than that now, but they still have it. So, I took four classes in Neuroscience, I took two classes in Geology, I took Buddhism, I took, that's where I got my certification and mindfulness and meditation to teach, which is what I did before I came back to the industry.

Dr. Vicki Rapaport  12:06  

Amazing. I mean, quickly back to the Mary Kay part of it. Did you have a pink Cadillac?

Rebecca Gadberry  12:13  

No, but my mother almost got one and then she decided she didn't want it. But interestingly enough, after my mother's business took off, she became a manufacturer and I used to call in Mary Kay in Dallas. And the building was they were going to do it all in pink, but the employee said, absolutely not. So, it was done in this beautiful coppery color. It was still very lovely.

Dr. Vicki Rapaport  12:38  

Do you have a niche in the skincare industry?

Rebecca Gadberry  12:41  

I think my brand is ingredients. I mean, that's you say ‘Rebecca Gadberry’ and people say, oh, yeah, that's the ‘ingredient lady’ or whatever. But yeah, I was one of the very first science communicators like you said, I specialize in ingredients. And over the years, there's so many myths about ingredients. I've been a Myth Buster for well, since 1974. And I've had columns that have run in professional magazines, exposing myths or myths busting, they're usually called. I've written hundreds of articles, as you said, about cosmetic ingredients and the skin and skin is my specialty because I'm an esthetician, and I became an Esthetician before I became a Cosmetic Scientist. So, it's always been my groundwork and I always look at skincare products through a clinician’s eyes, rather than somebody working without knowing what the ingredients are going to do standing at a bench formulating.

Trina Renea  13:44  

And you have award-winning skincare products?

Rebecca Gadberry  13:48  

Yeah, I've won a lot of awards for my skincare products. 

Trina Renea  13:51  

And how do you become an award-winning skincare developer? 

Rebecca Gadberry  13:55  

Well, you have to continually be learning and building on your knowledge and biology and physiology and cell biology, dermatology, ingredients, trends, packaging laws, regulations, and all sorts of discoveries in our industry that might cross over to cosmetics so I became a what I call a Cosmetic Bio-Evangelists because I look at other industries, and then I translate what they're doing into the cosmetic industry. So, I actually was one of the people who brought fermentation technology to the industry. Epigenetics, which is the study of the molecules that run our genes to produce proteins and other components in the skin. Also, antioxidants, using multiples instead of single antioxidants. Used to drive me crazy, people would say – Oh yes, I'm using antioxidants in my product. I have vitamin E. Well, Vitamin E is an antioxidant. There are hundreds, if not 1000s of different antioxidants. And they address different free radicals or molecules that become free radicals, so you want to calm them down and what's called Quenching. So, I helped to bring that awareness to the industry.

Dr. Vicki Rapaport  15:16  

You love that multi-antioxidant.

Rebecca Gadberry  15:20  

Yeah, that's an award-winning product, that multi anti-oxidant. Yeah.

Trina Renea  15:26  

But like, what I was going to say is people think of antioxidants as vitamin C, because vitamin C was the first like, kind of one to come on the market, and people really saw a difference with it. But now there's like so many that you can choose from and when you blend them together, they do so much more than just like one. 

Dr. Vicki Rapaport  15:45  

And it’s less sticky. I think, too. I think a lot of the vitamin C, plain vitamin C's are kind of sticky. They're very hard to work with, because they oxidize.

Rebecca Gadberry  15:53  

Well, it's a hygroscopic, or water loving molecule. And when it's in its pure form vitamin C. So, it can be very sticky. It can also be very irritating, so we like to stabilize it and put it in a time release. But to finish up on, what do you need to do to be an award winning? I think the most important thing is you need to think outside the box. And you need to ask yourself, what isn't being done that I would want done or that consumers would want done, and then figure out how to do it within your budget and your timeline. 

Trina Renea  16:27  

I do love that about you and your lab is that you find a way to gather all lot of working ingredients together in one formulation, where a lot of things out in the market is like they're promoting one ingredient, and it's coming in a serum and then you need this other serum, you need 500 serums to get, you know, and I think what Rebecca does well is she does a lot of testing to see how many can we combine together that work? Because I remember in class one time I was like – there's so many of these great ingredients, why can't we just put them all in one bottle and just have one product, that's amazing. And so, she was like, you can do a lot of them in one, but you have to see which ones contradict each other and which ones work together, which ones cancel each other out. And it's a lot of work behind the scenes to create things like that. So, that’s where antioxidants started getting developed in multiples.

Dr. Vicki Rapaport  17:25  

Well, and then the way you described it, Rebecca, you are also a businesswoman. Like you're not just the creative person who wants to formulate for months and months and months and months. You are realistic, you have a budget, you have a timeline like that is very important if you're going to run a business. And I was not expecting that answer from you. Sorry. I just was like, oh, yeah, you got to think about that, too. 

Rebecca Gadberry  17:47  

Yeah, you got to think about that. I have a girlfriend who started a great product line. And this was years ago, and if you're listening, sweetie, I'm not mentioning your name, because I know you're still embarrassed by this. She went out, she developed this beautiful product line. She didn't think about how much money she needed to when she sold the bottle, how much money came out of the profit to run her company. And so, she just marked it up twice. And you can't mark it up twice. And all of these people that are saying, ‘Well, I'll sell it to you cheaper?’ Well, they may sell it to you cheaper, but do they have insurance? Have they done studies? Do they pay their people a good living wage? I mean, these are all things that need to be thought about. And do you have enough money to continue to buy replacement inventory, as well as help the company grow. And if you aren't, including all of that, not to mention advertising. Because if the word doesn't get out about your fabulous product, it's not going to go anywhere, and it's not going to help anybody. 

Trina Renea  18:50  

It's daunting. I mean, basically, you know, you have to sell it for like four times as much.

Rebecca Gadberry  18:55  

Well, in some companies like your multilevel companies, sell it for 10 times.

Trina Renea  19:00  

Right. I mean, you can go as high as you possibly can. If you can buy more in the beginning, your buy value is lower. And so, if you can buy 10,000 - 40,000, then you're going to buy it for, let's say, $5, where if you can only buy 1000, it might cost you $10. So, you have to see where you can mark it up where somebody's going to actually buy it in the industry. 

Rebecca Gadberry  19:25  

I also want to go a little bit further about ingredient focus, because I love ingredients. I was one of the very first people to focus on ingredients when talking about a product. I even had CEOs of big companies, several of them, tell me ‘Knock it off, we want to focus on the product, not on the ingredient, because everybody can have that ingredient not everybody can have our product, so stop doing that.’ Well, I continue to do it because I think it's a value. But when I'm formulating a product, I don't say okay, let's use Niacinamide or Vitamin E or Retinol as our predominant ingredient, because it's only going to do so much. If you're trying to work on the skin and make an improvement, there's different components of that skin being the way it is. So, when you select your ingredients, you need to look at all the different elements of that skin condition or skin type that you're trying to correct or work with. And just focusing on a few ingredients isn't going to get you anywhere. So, it's one big thing.

Dr. Vicki Rapaport  20:32  

Yeah. What was the craziest request anybody asked you to make for them in the lab?

Rebecca Gadberry  20:41  

I'm not going to say because I am in mixed company on the air. It had to do with a certain private part of the body. And with the back, not the front end, and I turned the assignment down. We didn't do that project. 

Dr. Vicki Rapaport  20:59  

I know what that was probably. I can imagine. I think there was an episode on that in Californication probably.

Rebecca Gadberry  21:05  

Probably, it had to do with brightening. 

Dr. Vicki Rapaport  21:09  

California Keishon episode three, season one, probably. That was a very popular thing for a little while. The bleaching, peels. In my office people want peels. Peels in that area. 

Trina Renea  21:25  

So, what ingredients do you think deliver the best results?

Rebecca Gadberry  21:31  

I have a handful. First of all, my favorite ingredient because of a hurricane is no longer available. I think it's Hurricane Ian. My favorite ingredient is Sea Whip, which is a Gorgonian coral that grows around the islands in the Bermudas, and that Bermuda government licensed it because it has the most complete anti-inflammatory effects on the human body or other animals to the point where if you take just a small like .001%, you put it, you swallow it, it will undo your inflammatory systems and your body will fall apart. So, it's very, very potent. It was discovered by Oceanographers at Scripps here in University of California, San Diego, and it was the best anti-inflammatory for the skin, bar none. I put it in everything because inflammation is the bottom line of aging. Everybody is aging. It's also the bottom line of every skin condition that you can name and it's so effective. You don't need a lot of it so it doesn't boost the price up. Unfortunately, when Hurricane Ian came through a few years ago, it wiped out all the sea whip beds, they're all gone. And because it's such a complex molecule, we can't do a bio mimic of it and we haven't been able to ferment it yet. So, when it comes back and putting it back in everything but that was my favorite ingredient. And then I think Retinaldehyde which is the closest form of retinol or retinol aids to retinoic acid without having a prescription, your barrier repair ingredients. I love glycerin, like Dr. Vicki does, we talked a lot about it that. 5% glycerin in a formula will help to reestablish the barrier of the skin, tetrahexadecimalascorbate which is a stabilized time release vitamin C and 2 to 5% Niacinamide. And remember when we were talking Dr. V about Niacinamide and some people have reactions to it? I did some research into that I found out something really interesting. It's the Nicotinamide that the Niacinamide is taken from if there's any residue of that that's above a certain parts per million. They'll have a reaction to it. So, it's not the Niacinamide, it's a nicotinamide that they're having a reaction to.

Dr. Vicki Rapaport  24:05  

Well, and it's obviously not common because those products would be taken off the market.

Trina Renea  24:13  

Tune in next time for part two of our conversation. 

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