Susan Griffin-Black

In the early 1990s, Susan Griffin-Black worked as a fashion designer at Esprit’s San Francisco headquarters. She left the industry. She co-founded EO Products with Brad Black, her co-CEO, at a time when "clean beauty" had no mainstream foothold or standardized ingredient transparency rules.

Recognized as one of the earliest pioneers in the clean personal care space, she built the original EO line around simple, plant-based formulations that stood apart from the synthetic-heavy drugstore products dominant at the time. The company now runs two brands: the core EO line and the mass-market Everyone for Every Body range, sold in retailers from local co-ops to national grocery chains. Griffin-Black marked EO’s 30th anniversary by honoring long-tenured employees who joined in the brand’s earliest days, and launched the "Rooted in Community" blog series to document the local partnerships and customer feedback that have guided the company for three decades.

She shared the brand’s origin story on NPR’s *How I Built This* with Guy Raz, and spoke at Cosmoprof Worldwide on aligning brand strategy with rising consumer demand for transparent, ingredient-conscious personal care. Long based in Marin County, Griffin-Black has tied EO’s identity to Northern California wellness culture, championing an integrated wellness lifestyle that extends beyond single products to broader daily habits for customers. She has remained co-CEO for the company’s full three-decade run, steering it through sh...