Casey Georgeson Aims to Take the Beauty Industry in an Uplifting Direction

Teresa Franzia (left) with her sister

Casey’s family history is indeed impressive, but her drive for success comes from deep within. She spent her career creating extremely successful wine and beauty brands and now makes a name for herself pioneering the use of CBD in the beauty space.

She started her career in New York as a producer for CNN on their morning show. She enjoyed the fast pace, the storytelling and the hardworking culture. However, the job came to an end when she returned to California to help a family member deal with some health issues. That challenge turned into joy when she soon met her husband, Zack.

San Francisco became her new home, and in 2005 she landed a unique role in the wine industry developing a wine brand for younger consumers. That brand, Cupcake, went on to great acclaim, and Casey built a name for herself as a brand developer.

Eventually she decided to leave The Wine Group and attend business school at Stanford while interning for Sephora. “They’d never had MBA interns before,” laughs Casey. “They couldn’t pay me, so they paid in makeup.” She made her mark, and after graduation Sephora offered her a job.

Casey considers the years she spent there a PhD in branding. Her role was to develop exclusive brands like Marc Jacobs Beauty, Disney, and Elizabeth and James. “It was fascinating,” she recalls. “I worked with formulas, packaging and the storytelling of it all, which gave me a deep understanding about what matters most to the clients.”

Casey consulted for Sephora until 2015, when the wine industry lured her back in. She created 50 wine brands before deciding it was time to build something of her own. She was hesitant at first, knowing what it would take to be a founder and the time she would need to spend away from her husband and three daughters.

But she realized she was onto something big when she was introduced to CBD and its anti-inflammatory properties. It was her clearest idea for a brand: bring the healing effect into the skin care realm. “I started playing with CBD and making formulas in my kitchen,” she shares. “I realized it’s truly one of the most exciting skin care ingredients of our time.”

In that kitchen Saint Jane Beauty was born, inspired by an actual saint who lived in the 1500s and dedicated her life to healing women—specifically women society shunned, the very old, the sick and unwed mothers. “It’s in her honor that we take a healing-centric approach to skin care with this unbelievable heritage at the heart of everything we do,” Casey shares.

Saint Jane launched in 2019, and even through the COVID-19 shutdown, the brand continued to grow. Casey says, “During quarantine, people began thinking about their self-care ritual differently. That was really good for us because we’re all about wellness, clean beauty and helping people nurture their skin. I wanted Saint Jane to be special and different.”

As a mother of three daughters, Casey is passionate about empowering women. Saint Jane Beauty supports organizations that help girls and women achieve a brighter future. Girls Crushing It empowers young women to build confidence through entrepreneurship. The Loveland Foundation’s goal is to ensure that black mothers have equal opportunities and access. Saint Jane donates all their proceeds from Ritual, one of their lipstick shades, to Lipstick Angels, which offers beauty and skin care services to women experiencing cancer.

Looking for a change of pace during COVID-19, Casey and her family packed up their lives in Northern California and made a home in Manhattan Beach. “The South Bay has captivated us,” she says. “It used to be hikes on the weekend. Now we take the girls to the beach and look for sand crabs and seashells. Being by the water has been good for our souls. We are in heaven.”

Back at work, Casey is facing interesting challenges but is excited about the opportunities ahead. The cannabis industry is highly regulated, making it very difficult to do business—much like her great-grandmother Teresa experienced while running a wine business during Prohibition. Still, there is a lot of room for brands in the beauty space to succeed, and Saint Jane plans to be one of them.