Ara Katz’s breastfeeding experience led her to the microbiome and inspired a personal mission to explore the importance of microbes and how they can impact the health of our bodies, our children and our planet.
Ara is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Seed Health, a microbial sciences company pioneering applications of bacteria to impact human and environmental health. Their foundry model partners with leading scientists to translate breakthrough science into live biotherapeutics and innovations for consumer health with a portfolio targeting conditions where bacteria can become or replace the primary standard of care. Its consumer division, Seed, develops scientifically-validated, next-generation probiotics with a mission to bring much-needed precision, efficacy, and education to the global probiotics market. It’s environmental R+D division, SeedLabs, develops novel applications for bacteria to solve some of our most pressing ecological challenges.
Translation: disrupting the BS in the $50B global probiotics market and stewarding the future of how we will use bacteria to restore and sustain human (think: gut, skin, oral, vaginal, and more) and planetary (think: honey bees, soil, water, food supply, plastics crisis, and space) health with serious science.
Ara is a serial entrepreneur, dot-connector, first-principles thinker, and lifelong questioner. She combines an incessant pursuit of truth with her translational storytelling ability to steward the future of science communication—and change the way we discern evidence versus evangelism in making choices for our bodies, our health, and our world.
Ara previously co-founded and served as CMO of mobile commerce marketplace, Spring (sold to Shoprunner), was on the founding team of social commerce company, BeachMint (sold to Conde Nast), advises and is an angel investor in various companies like mindbodygreen, Stadium Goods (recently sold to FarFetch) and women’s healthcare startup, Mahmee.
She has been a fellow at the MIT Media Lab’s Center for Future Storytelling and CCA’s Design MBA program, was named in Marie Claire’s “The New Guard: The 50 Most Influential Women in America”, listed on Business Insider’s “Silicon Alley Top 100” and “36 Rockstar Women in NYC Tech”, and Create + Cultivate’s 100 List for STEM.