Mother+ Meets… Laura Rudoe, Founder & CEO of Evolve Organic Beauty
Welcome to Mother+ Meets… our interview series spotlighting women who are building brilliant things while also building a family. These are the stories behind the headlines, from late nights and bold pivots, to the quieter, less visible moments that shape everything.
This week, we meet Laura Rudoe, founder and CEO of Evolve Organic Beauty, the award-winning British skincare brand known for combining high-performance natural formulations with genuine sustainability credentials.
Since launching Evolve in 2009, Laura has grown the business into an internationally recognised beauty brand stocked in more than 30 countries. Alongside scaling Evolve, she is a mother, wellness advocate and passionate champion for positive change within the beauty industry.
We spoke to Laura about building a purpose-led company from scratch, launching a business with a newborn baby, and why success today looks very different from how it did seventeen years ago.
Tell us a little about what you do and what led you here.
My journey to creating Evolve came from two directions. I was on my own skin improvement journey, which led me into natural medicine and a lasting interest in how the body works as one connected system. At the same time I was drawn to ethical business, which is what I went on to study at Harvard Business School.
The two came together when I had the chance to help set up a natural and ethical beauty brand. I loved it, the building, the responsibility, the risk, and realised I wanted to be an entrepreneur in my own right. We could not take that first brand as far as I wanted to, and I knew I could go further by making it organic, cruelty free and sustainably packaged, so I launched Evolve in 2009.
I called my brand Evolve because it is about making small steps towards greener, healthier choices, an evolution rather than a revolution. Alongside the business, that early interest in natural medicine has never left me. I am a trained Reiki master and hold a certificate in naturopathic nutrition, and that systems view of the body runs through everything we make.
What does a typical day look like for you now, if there is such a thing?
There is a shape, even if no two days match. I start with the school run and a bit of daylight, often a cup of tea outside in the garden before the day begins, because morning light is the thing that sets my whole rhythm. Mornings tend to be internal: filming a piece of founder content, then one-to-ones with my team and our weekly marketing and product meetings. I keep a walk or a proper lunch break in the middle of most days.
Afternoons lean outward: sales and our international partners, PR, finance. I come off the computer by nine in the evening without exception and often much earlier than that, and the evening is for winding down and family time.
You launched Evolve long before sustainability became mainstream. What made you believe there was room for a different kind of beauty brand?
When I looked at the beauty market back in 2008, I saw that high-performing organic skincare existed but was out of reach for most people, and that the category still asked you to choose between clean and effective. I was sure there was room for something that refused to make compromises: organic yet effective, beautifully packaged yet accessible. Sustainability was not a mainstream concern in 2009, so it meant leading rather than following.
I was convinced the customer who wanted all of those things at once did exist because I was, and still am, that customer.
How has motherhood shaped how you work, or how you define success?
I founded Evolve in 2008 in the middle of the financial crisis while pregnant with my first child, and launched it in 2009 with a three-month-old baby, so business and motherhood have been entwined from the very first day. For years I ran on a kind of over-functioning, holding everything up and always giving to everyone. Working with a coach, I came to see it through an image that stuck with me.
I had been living like the sun, always on, always giving outward, when what I needed was to be more like a gardener, setting the conditions and letting things grow, with seasons that include rest.
That has changed how I define success. I used to measure it in output. Now I measure it more by whether I am building something that lasts without burning myself down to do it.
What do you wish people understood about building something from scratch?
That most of it is slow and unglamorous, and that the hard years do not look like much from the outside. From 2009 to around 2015 Evolve was a tiny team of two outsourcing its manufacturing and struggling to gain traction. There were real setbacks and a lot of self-doubt in that stretch.
I bootstrapped the whole thing without outside investment, so progress was rarely a dramatic moment. It was turning up and doing the next unremarkable thing, for years. People see the brand now and assume it unfolded according to a plan. Mostly it was persistence.
Where do you find your energy, and what tends to drain it?
My energy comes from fuelling my body rather than restricting it, which took me years to learn after a long stretch of low-carb and intermittent fasting. Real food, strength training, daylight first thing, a bath at the end of a frazzled day, and, slightly absurdly, singing along to music in the car instead of stacking another podcast on the drive.
What drains me is not hard work itself, it is carrying too much in my head, and the low-level vigilance of trying to optimise and monitor everything. The biggest thing I ever did for my energy was to treat stress as real and deal with the actual source of it, rather than trying to breathe or supplement my way around it.
What's one decision that changed everything?
Setting up our own studio in 2015. For the first years we outsourced manufacturing, which meant a factory would only run a batch of a thousand units of a single product, so we had to bet big on a few things and could not move quickly. When I brought production in-house to our eco studio in Hertfordshire, I could make a hundred units each of ten products instead, applying the kind of lean, small-batch development you see more often in tech than in beauty.
It changed everything. It let us offer far more choice, test and refine quickly, and learn in short cycles rather than long, expensive ones. That was the turning point that rebooted the brand and unlocked the growth that followed.
The beauty industry has changed enormously since you launched Evolve. What's one shift you're most excited about?
When I first started Evolve, I felt like the only crazy person who cared about clean beauty and sustainability, and now the rest of the industry has caught up with me, which is very satisfying to watch. The recent shift I am most excited about is the move towards skin longevity and a more biological view of skin: treating it as a living, self-regulating system you support over time rather than something to resurface or force. That is the territory Evolve has always worked in, so again it feels like the conversation is arriving where we already are.
What does balance mean to you right now?
Subtraction more than addition. For years I thought looking after myself meant adding more: more practices, more tracking, more control. What actually helped was doing less, carrying less, and trusting my body more.
Balance, for me now, is the gardener rather than the sun. Setting good conditions, allowing seasons, and accepting rest as part of the work rather than a reward for finishing it.
Finally, what's one thing you'd tell other women who are trying to do both: raise a family and build a company?
That you can have it all, but you sometimes have to be sequential about it. Not everything fits in the same season, and trying to do all of it at full intensity at once is how you end up depleted.
The other thing I would say is to stop trying to hold every single thing up yourself. I spent years certain that if I stopped paying attention something would fall, and learning to accept support rather than always being the one giving it changed more than any system ever did.
Laura will be hosting the Evolve Wellness Gathering on 26 June at Fora Henry Wood House in London. The afternoon will feature skincare talks, wellness workshops, sound healing, breathwork, facial rituals and the chance to meet Laura and the Evolve team. Guests will also receive a curated gift collection worth £75, including a bespoke facial oil blended on the day. Find out more and book tickets here.
QUICK FIRE ROUND
Current bedside book?
I have been loving romantasy as a way to switch off at the end of a busy day. A Court of Thorns and Roses got me hooked, and I have read plenty more in the genre since.
Go-to podcast or playlist when you need a boost?
I have an eclectic Spotify playlist of different tracks. The only criterion is that I can sing along at the top of my voice.
Favourite place to eat with kids, and without?
With children, somewhere that serves pizza. Without children, our amazing home-cooked local Indian, Aamcha.
A mantra, quote, or reminder you come back to?
At Harvard graduation, they said to us: "Do what you love and the money will follow." I've followed that advice my entire career.