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Meet the team | Alice

Written by on January 30th, 2018.      0 comments


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2018 means a couple of new faces at Go Native, so we thought we'd take the opportunity to introduce them to you. Meet Alice, a former-food editor and beauty product hoarder. 

My day usually begins with...a bunch of unread Whatsapp messages from family back home in the UK to reply to, and ends with...a cup of valerian tea and half a page of the same book I've been attempting to read for a year.

How long have you been part of the Go Native team?
Not long! I started officially in January. Before that, I was the food editor at Metro and Paperboy (RIP) magazines, and before that, the online editor of Dish magazine. I still spend a lot of time thinking about the next thing I'm going to eat, but last year I decided it was time to learn about a new industry, one I've been passionate about since I was very young.

What's something people would be surprised to learn about your job?
Because we're such a small team, everyone gets really stuck in when it comes to the physical labour involved in packaging products to order. I don't think weight-lifting is the first thing that comes to mind when you tell someone you work for a natural beauty company, but a lot of the job requires stamina and strength.

Did you make any New Year's resolutions for 2018? What were they?
I make the same resolution every year: to enter more competitions, there's literally nothing to lose!

When did you first discover the joys of making your own beauty products?
I have always been a huge hoarder of all things beauty, forever reading the ingredients labels on my favourite products to try and suss out those that worked best for me. It was a total revelation when I realised you could make a body butter with just two ingredients a couple of years ago. I quickly became addicted to that gorgeous melting-on-the-skin-feeling of cocoa and shea butter blends.

Ingredient you're currently loving?
Safflower oil. Also known as thistle oil, it's naturally very high in omega 6 and omega 3 essential fatty acids, which means it absorbs easily. I have quite acne-prone skin, and have found safflower to be one of only a few carrier oils my skin will tolerate without breaking out. As it's quite a dry and rough oil, you ideally need to blend it with softer oils such as apricot kernel, almond or macadamia nut oils. I've been trying it with rosehip oil - for its natural tretinoin properties - and a couple of drops of vitamin e, and so far, so good!

And - because we all love a recommendation - are you binge-watching/listening/reading anything good at the moment? 
I'm a big podcast person. One I always come back to, particularly on dreary Auckland days, is BBC Radio Four's Desert Island Discs, where people of note choose the eight discs, a book and a luxury item they'd take to a desert island while being interviewed about their lives. It's been going for 75 years so there's a deliciously extensive archive to mine through.

Tell us something we'd be surprised to know about you? 
I studied social anthropology at Edinburgh university, and my favourite topic was the anthropology of death. There's something very comforting about studying such a confronting subject, because it reveals how ultimately weird western attitudes towards it can be. I can go on about it after a glass of wine...

What's the best part of working at Go Native? 
Being surrounded by (mostly) beautiful-smelling ingredients and trying out recipes, when the time allows, and working with my friends. Oh, and being able to go for a swim straight after work at nearby Cheltenham Beach. It's still novel to me, despite having lived in New Zealand for seven years.

Follow the whole team and see behind the scenes at Go Native on our Instagram page! 
 

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