Dr. Sophia Kogan: Inside the Integrative Medicine Architecture That Built Nutrafol's Hair Wellness Empire

As a part of our series about “Five Things Anyone Can Do To Have Fabulous Hair”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Sophia Kogan.

Dr. Kogan is the Co-founder and Chief Medical Advisor of Nutrafol, the pioneer behind clinically effective, natural hair wellness supplements, formulated with ingredients that target multiple root causes of hair thinning. After experiencing hair shedding and thinning due to the stress of medical school and residency, Sophia decided to combine her medical expertise with integrative and herbal medicine to research a holistic approach to hair wellness and help create natural, effective products for Nutrafol.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

When I was in medical school and during my residency (medical training), I began to notice that my hair was starting to thin and fall out. I was highly stressed, didn’t sleep well and didn’t eat well — and all of that manifested in health issues and of course massive hair shedding. What was worse, as a woman, I felt lost and alone in this experience. I wanted to change this. As I got more and more interested in integrative medicine, eastern healing and herbs, I realized that I could use my medical background to research and understand hair thinning from an integrative perspective, while also bringing forth the clinical efficacy of botanicals, herbs, nutrition and stress management on hair health and overall well being. My dear friends, and now business partners, Giorgos Tsetis and Roland Peralta had their individual stories with health and hair thinning and this brought us together as we wanted to create a natural and efficacious product.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

One of the most interesting moments of my career so far was connecting with my two partners, Giorgos Tsetis and Roland Peralta, while taking a break from traditional medical training. Sometimes, a break is exactly what you need to take a look at what’s working and what’s not. I am a firm believer that in the unknown, lie the most unique and interesting opportunities that guide you towards your true path. And magically, in those times, the right people show up to build this with you. Roland and Giorgos were my friends even before we started the company, but in that time, the three of us quickly bonded over our unique and personal experiences with hair thinning and an unwavering belief in the power of all things natural and science. It was through this connection that it became clear that we all had the same goal of wanting to produce a natural solution for healthy hair growth, that was actually healthy for the rest of our bodies. Our common experience ultimately led us to establishing Nutrafol together, which is something that I never would have expected to happen simply through meeting these two.

Are you able to identify a “tipping point” in your career when you started to see success? Did you start doing anything different? Are there takeaways or lessons that others can learn from that?

It may sound a bit crazy, but I think the time I truly realized we were tipping into something big was when we finally moved into a brand new, big and beautiful office. I remember walking in there and not truly grasping how in the world we went from just the three of us to over 70 people. My background is quite unconventional. As an MD with a focus on integrative hair health and the effects of botanicals, stress and nutrition on follicle biology, it took me a long time to find the best way to apply my expertise. My co-founders, Giorgos Tsetis and Roland Peralta had also struggled from their own experiences with hair thinning, and together we realized we weren’t the only ones — there was a significant gap in the market and a lot of people who needed help, just like us. In true start-up fashion, we started the company from Roland’s apartment and basically lived and breathed our inspiration day and night, spending an exuberant amount of time together. It was exciting and empowering to be working with two people like me, who wanted to start a conversation around hair and create an effective and natural solution for healthy hair growth. And from the start, having had our own experiences, we wanted Nutrafol to normalize the conversation around thinning, providing people resources they need to find solutions that are right for them. So the day we moved into this big beautiful office, I actually got tearful and took a bit to take it all in — to realize that we were actually well on our way. And even more so, we had over 70 people who believed in our mission and wanted to build it with us. Around the same time, I was traveling a lot to dermatology and medical conferences and I started seeing doctors talk about stress adaptogens, multi-factorial causes of hair thinning that included stress and environment, ashwagandha and curcumin — totally organically. They were lecturing about our ingredients! These were western medical doctors, who just a year ago were new to the concept of stress adaptogens and botanicals in general. We were making a change. And it was resonating everywhere. As for takeaways, the main takeaway I’ve learned in my career is play to your strengths and don’t waver in your mission. Don’t be afraid of new opportunities and even failures. You will always learn something new about yourself through the process and when your heart is in it, you will undoubtedly make a change.

In your experience what were the most effective ways for your business to generate leads and sales? Can you share a story or give an example?

Since Nutrafol’s inception in 2015, we’ve aimed to fully listen to the needs and desires of men, women, and individuals in general on their hair journeys. We’ve grown Nutrafol by understanding the importance of truly knowing our customers and their unique characteristics. Likewise we took great measures to listen to the physicians who recommend and use our products for their patients. That’s how or Women’s Balance, a formula for women going into and through menopause, was actually born. It was through their insight that we realized we had to go back to the drawing board and understand that these women actually have totally different needs based on changes in their hormones during this time. So it’s actually listening and responding quickly that I think makes our brand successful. When you’re in an industry like wellness, where effective products and customer service are key, it’s paramount to truly understand the wants and needs of customers. Whether that is talking to them via a Zoom happy hour on their personal experiences or collecting information via surveys, or providing our customers with personal consultations with trained hair expert naturopathic doctors to support their lifestyle choices, these unique interactions give us feedback and make us better. A majority of our customers come from recommendations from influencers they admire, family, friends and our network of 1500+ physicians who trust Nutrafol for clinically effective results. It is imperative that we clearly communicate with our users, provide accurate information on the efficacy of our product and set expectations on the outcomes. Nutrafol is not a quick fix supplement for hair wellness, it’s a lifestyle.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person to whom you are grateful who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

“It takes a village,” as we say. Community and family are everything. I am most grateful to my two co-founders Roland Peralta and Giorgos Tsetis for both their friendship and shared vision. It is together that we leveraged our unique expertise to come up with a whole new category of hair wellness in a market that only had very few alternatives. They had such a strong conviction and business innovative minds, and I brought the science. Some people say don’t go into business with your family and friends, but I think our bond as friends supported us through the tough times. I also want to highlight our families who believed in us from the very beginning. It was Giorgos, Roland and my families who supported us and helped us get the company off and running. They, along with our friends and community were our first angel investors to financially support our vision. We were truly blessed to have their unwavering belief in our success from the beginning.

Can you share a story with us about the most humorous mistake you made when you were first starting? What lesson or take-away did you learn from that?

During the early days of our business, we made the common mistake of trying to fit in. For instance when we first launched our products, we manufactured our men’s product line in blue packaging and our women’s product line in pink packaging. This color scheme reflected societal constructs (maybe even a baby shower), but not Nutrafol. We quickly pivoted away from this because it wasn’t an authentic reflection of our brand or our diverse company, which aims to address the needs of individuals, not stigmatize them further into buckets of blue and pink. We have learned from this rookie mistake and are now incredibly focused on representing ourselves in a genuine way.

You have been blessed with great success in a career path that many have attempted, but eventually gave up on. Do you have any words of advice for others who may want to embark on this career path but know that their dreams might be dashed?

“Fall seven times and stand up eight.” It’s all about continuing to persevere and try even through challenges or failures. If you don’t try, then you aren’t even giving yourself an opportunity to succeed. Failure is a part of any entrepreneurial journey. Failure teaches us and helps propel us forward in a different direction, but this can only be achieved if one continues to try. As we were creating Nutrafol, there were ample moments of failure, which in retrospect were all there to actually realign us into even better situations. It has taken us countless hours of pushing through these failures to come out on the other side, only to face another challenge, as entrepreneurial life is truly a roller coaster of failures and wins at once. If Giorgos, Roland and I didn’t continue to persevere, Nutrafol would not exist today. We are so thankful to have had each other, our community and our families as a support system during those early days because it made it easier for us to remember to keep trying.

Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. Can you please share “Five Things Anyone Can Do To Have Fabulous Hair.” Please share a story or an example, for each.

At Nutrafol, we take a natural, holistic approach to targeting root causes of hair thinning and poor hair health. These include stress, hormones, environment, aging, metabolism, nutrition, lifestyle factors and more. The five things anyone can do to have fabulous hair include:

1. Reduce Stress: Unfortunately, chronic stress has been steadily becoming an increasingly common part of our daily lives. More recently, acute stressors like the fearful time we are living through are adding to that, as we see a rise in sudden shedding. While it can greatly affect men too, stress is particularly one of the most common reasons for shedding in women. When our bodies are exposed to acute stress, stress hormones like cortisol rise and signal many hair follicles to prematurely shift from anagen (growth phase) to telogen (the resting phase), where hair prepares to shed three to six months later. Repeated exposure to stressful situations such as emotional, relationship, finance, employment, and physical health problems also play a critical role in the disruption of the normal hair growth cycle. We know that hair health is closely linked to stress management which includes both de-stressing with self-care, meditation, yoga or hobbies, and also finding ways to build biochemical resilience to stress — by taking a supplement like Nutrafol which includes stress adaptogens. The stress adaptogen in Nutrafol is a standardized, patented form of ashwagandha that has been clinically shown to lower cortisol levels in chronically stressed adults.
2. Take a Holistic Approach: Hair is always an external reflection of our internal health. It is caused by multiple factors and thus in order to take better care of our hair, we must take a holistic multi-pronged approach. Nutrafol believes in hair wellness, as in wellness from the inside that manifests in wellness from the outside. In fact, the industry category was created by us as a drug-free, holistic alternative to the hair care and hair thinning solutions that exist in the market. Nutrafol believes in the power of bioactive, medical-grade botanicals that work from within the body to combat a multitude of root causes of thinning. In general, when taking supplements, it’s very important to make sure that they have clinical evidence. In the case of Nutrafol we invested countless hours and finances into conducting the most rigorous clinical studies that showed that Nutrafol effectively improves hair growth. So I would recommend a supplement like Nutrafol. It’s important to note, however, that lifestyle modifications like eating a nutritious well-balanced diet of whole foods, avoiding toxins, giving your hair breaks from styling, using safe products, adding de-stressing and exercise into your routine with your chosen intervention — will have the biggest impact.
3. Discover Your Hair Triggers: Each person is unique. The root causes that compromise hair health can affect everyone differently, which is why It is important to identify the factors that influence your hair. At Nutrafol, one of the ways we support and educate our users is through our Hair Wellness Quiz. Nutrafol’s Hair Wellness Quiz asks questions about a series of habits and lifestyle behaviors to get a sense of how the common causes of hair/thinning — metabolism, nutrition (gut health), stress, hormones, genetics and the environment — may play a role in hair health. Through the Hair Wellness Quiz, our team of naturopaths and experts can provide personalized recommendations on which products make the most sense for each person’s unique needs. Nutrafol also provides users with ongoing access and support from our team, offering information and guidance throughout their hair journey.
4. Be Patient: There is no magic pill. I am not here to tout Nutrafol as one, either. Nutrafol works thanks to our patented Synergen Complex, which is a unique combination of medical-grade, bioactive ingredients that addresses underlying causes of thinning hair — like stress, hormones and nutrition — with stress adaptogens, antioxidants, and DHT-targeting botanicals. The Synergen Complex is the foundational formula in Nutrafol’s three core products — Nutrafol Women, Men and Women’s Balance — clinically shown to improve hair growth and reduce shedding. However, these ingredients take time to work within our bodies, so consistency is key. While every person is different, most Nutrafol users will notice changes to their hair within 3–6 months of daily use, which is what our clinical studies showed.
5. Try Nutrafol: Take your hair wellness quiz and find your personalized recommendation on our site!

Can you share 3 ideas that anyone can use “to feel beautiful”? (Please share a story or example for each.)

I think being beautiful is truly a reflection of feeling beautiful. It’s the light inside that really shines outside. That being said, what makes you feel beautiful could be something you put on, do, say or how you care for yourself. Three ways that I help myself feel beautiful include:

1. Saying a positive affirmation to myself in the mirror such as I am beautiful, I am safe, I am strong and my hair looks great today. It could also be just saying something nice versus dropping into self-deprecating talk that we are conditioned to be so familiar with by society that judges and makes us feel not-good-enough.
2. I am actually very simple with fashion, but I have some favorites. When I am not feeling great, I try putting on something that makes me feel good, sexy and confident. Perhaps it’s that favorite dress or blouse that just feels so good on my skin or has a story attached to it. Bottom line is that I do it for me, not for anyone other than me and that makes me feel beautiful and cared for.
3. Pursuing hobbies, interests, activities that bring me joy and light me up inside. It is important to spend time doing the things that you love, that make you feel replenished. I feel most beautiful on the outside when I am truly lit up from the inside.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

My first instinct is to say environmental reform, equality, fighting taboos and elevating women. One thing I am super proud of is that I think we are actually already inspiring a movement that I have longed to fight for. As a woman, having gone through the isolation and self-shaming of hair thinning myself, my mission at Nutrafol has always been to help break the societal inequalities around this. With our team at Nutrafol, we are inspiring a movement that destigmatizes women’s hair thinning, which in my opinion is one of the final taboo topics of women’s health. Likewise, we also aim to create products that are specific for women’s needs at different stages of life. Many menopausal women feel like they are a forgotten demographic, and these are powerful women with wisdom that only comes with age and deserve to not only be addressed, but also celebrated. Nutrafol is actively working on this by making resources around holistic health and women’s hair thinning more accessible, and simply starting the conversation. There are a lot of women who don’t even know that hair thinning is incredibly common, and feel alone. We aim to educate and empower men and women with holistic solutions that work.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

Ahh, I have so many! I actually created a shared note on my iPhone with a whole list of quotes that I keep adding to and share with some close people in my life. It’s hard to choose a favorite one, but here is one that I think spans both personal and professional life really well. “It costs a lot to be authentic. And one can’t be stingy with these things because you are more authentic the more you resemble what you’ve dreamed of being.”― PEDRO ALMODOVAR.

I strive to be as authentic as I can be with everyone in my life, most importantly me. Being true to what you stand for, no matter what others may say can be unnerving, but really it will cut so much unnecessary doubt out of your life. When I think of this quote, it applies to our company as much as it applies to us as individuals. It’s our integrity and authenticity in what we stand for that shines through and allows us to attract the right talent, our customers and always keeps us on the right path. Just like there is no right path in life, there is no right path as an entrepreneur — there is only your unique, individual, authentic path.

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world with whom you’d like to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this. :-)

I know this is a reach and a dream, but I would love to sit down with Oprah Winfrey. She’s incredibly inspirational as she’s navigated multiple industries and career paths with ease. I love how she stays authentic to her core beliefs and actively reflects them in leadership style. Most importantly she uses what she knows to spread the right kind of message — to elevate people spiritually and empower them with tools.

How can our readers follow you online?

Look out for my regular appearances on the @Nutrafol Instagram channel or you can find me on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophia-kogan-md-9874a5172/).

Thank you so much for this. This was very inspirational, and we wish you only continued success!

About the Interviewer: Jilea Hemmings is a staunch believer in the power of entrepreneurship. A successful career revamping Fortune 500 companies was not enough for her entrepreneurial spirit, so Jilea began focusing her passion in startups. She has successfully built 6 startups to date. Her passion for entrepreneurship continues to flourish with the development of Stretchy Hair Care, focusing on relieving the pain associated with detangling and styling natural black hair. For far too long, people with tender heads have suffered in pain. Until now.