Ahead of speaking at Beauty Connect LA 2026, KORA Organics Founder & CEO Miranda Kerr reflects on nearly two decades of building the certified organic skincare brand: from retaining ownership and earning consumer trust to navigating a changing beauty industry and building for the long term.

Miranda Kerr has spent almost two decades building KORA Organics. Founded in 2006 and launched in 2009, KORA Organics grew from Kerr's early conviction around certified organic skincare into a global beauty brand, while she retained ownership and creative and strategic control.

Ahead of Beauty Connect LA this October, we asked Kerr what that journey has taught her about building a beauty brand that lasts - from product efficacy and consumer trust to community, founder conviction and where the beauty industry needs to go next.

I think many people assume KORA works the way a lot of celebrity beauty lines do, where you're paid a fee and in some cases royalties to lend your name and face to a brand that's actually owned and run by a bigger company behind the scenes. But that's not the case with KORA. I built this business from the ground up and self-funded it myself, aside from a 5% investment back in the early research and development phase. I own the company. It's not a subsidiary of anyone else's business, which means I have full creative and strategic control over every decision, the formulations, the ingredients, the direction we grow in. I've also never taken a cent out of the business. Every single dollar goes straight back into innovation, clinical testing and growing KORA consciously.

That ownership also protects the integrity of the brand in a way people don't always think about. A lot of publicly listed or investor-backed beauty companies have a responsibility to shareholders, and that can quietly push a brand toward diluting formulas or cutting corners on ingredients to protect margins and hit growth targets. Because I own KORA outright, I haven’t needed to make that trade-off. Every decision is made in service of the product, its efficacy and the customer, not a shareholder report.

One of the biggest changes has been the consumer. When I started KORA almost two decades ago, people weren't asking many questions about ingredients. Today they're incredibly informed. They read labels, research formulations and expect brands to be transparent about what's in their products. I think that's a really positive shift.

At the same time, we've also seen a lot more greenwashing. Terms like "clean," "natural" and "non-toxic" have become marketing buzzwords, but they're not consistently defined or regulated. In the U.S. especially, the beauty industry is still relatively unregulated compared with markets like Europe. The European Union has continued to expand its list of prohibited or restricted cosmetic ingredients, now sitting at more than 1,700, while U.S. federal law prohibits just 11. That gap keeps growing, which tells you everything about the direction the two markets are heading in. It means consumers need to look beyond what's written on the front of the bottle and ask who is actually verifying those claims.

That's why independent certifications have always been so important to me. KORA is COSMOS Certified Organic, which is one of the world's most rigorous organic certifications for cosmetics, and we also formulate to meet the high ingredient standards recognised by organisations like the Environmental Working Group (EWG). Those third-party benchmarks help give consumers confidence that what they're buying has been assessed beyond a brand's own marketing claims.

What hasn't changed is that results are still everything. You can have the most beautiful branding or the biggest marketing budget, but if a product doesn't perform, people won't repurchase it. That's why every KORA formula has to do both: meet incredibly high standards for ingredient integrity and deliver proven results.

By staying close and staying honest. We focus on educating our community, not just marketing to them, sharing the "why" behind an ingredient or a formulation choice, not just the result. I'm also personally very present, whether that's on social media or through the partnerships we choose, and listening to our customers feedback and what they want.

Personally, it's definitely my boys. Children have this incredible ability to be fully present, endlessly curious and genuinely kind. Watching them grow reminds me to slow down, appreciate the little moments and keep learning myself.

Professionally, I'm inspired by founders and scientists who are pushing our industry forward with purpose. I love seeing advances in ingredient research that allow us to create products that are both highly effective and kinder to people and the planet. I think the future of beauty lies at the intersection of nature, science and transparency.