Regulatory Toxicologist · Scientist · Explorer
Where science meets safety — and curiosity meets purpose.
Your favorite product passed my desk before it reached yours.
From a small town in India dreaming of a white coat, to the city that never sleeps — here's how a girl who never knew the cosmetics industry existed found her calling in the science of safety.
All I ever wanted growing up was a white coat and a stethoscope. Medicine felt like the only path. When that door didn't open the way I imagined, I found another one — Pharmacy. And sometimes, the detour becomes the destination.
I wasn't the kind of student who just showed up to class. I wanted more — synthesizing molecules, writing research papers, getting published before most people had even figured out their thesis topic. Learning wasn't a checkbox; it was a way of life.
Applications. Interviews. Visa interviews. I thought that was the hard part. At 22, I left everything familiar behind and moved to New York for my Master's. First time truly alone. First time in a city that felt both overwhelming and magnetic. New York didn't just welcome me — it challenged me to become someone I didn't know I could be.
My first real job came at Johnson & Johnson Consumer Health. Two hours each way, every day. People thought I was crazy. But I was doing real science — validating the "No More Tears" claim, building predictive models, learning what it actually means to protect a consumer. That commute? The best time of my life here.
I graduated in New York — and walked straight into L'Oréal. A dream? Absolutely. I was a Product Safety Toxicologist, diving deep into safety for everything from lipsticks to leave-on treatments. The perks were nice (free products — yes), but the science was better. I had found my industry — one I never knew existed just three years before.
At SGS, I'm the scientist who decides whether a product earns its place on the shelves of Amazon, Walmart, and Target. I review safety protocols, flag non-conformances, and ensure what reaches consumers is genuinely safe. The weight of that responsibility is something I carry with pride.
Somewhere in all of this — I travelled to places that felt unreal. Moved houses more times than I'd like to count. At 25, I bought my first car. I got my Mom to visit and watched her fall a little in love with New York too. Three multinational companies. Countless lessons. A life that, somehow, exceeded the dream.
Three companies, five roles, two continents. Here's what working at the intersection of science, safety, and regulation has actually taught me — the things you don't learn in a classroom.
Brilliant lab work that can't be translated into a compliant submission doesn't move a product forward. Learning to simultaneously speak the language of FDA, EU Cosmetics Regulation, ISO 10993, and REACH was the skill that made everything else defensible — and indispensable to every team I've worked on.
The 50% reduction in in-vivo testing failures at Kenvue wasn't just a win for the 3Rs — it was proof that well-validated in-vitro models can outperform traditional approaches. NAMs-aligned methodology is where the industry is heading. Understanding that early, and building towards it deliberately, is the most important technical bet I've made in my career.
A molecule passes an assay. A toxicologist calculates MoS. A regulatory team builds the dossier. A claims team validates the marketing. I've sat at every one of these tables across three companies. Understanding the full chain — not just your piece of it — is what separates a good scientist from an indispensable one.
Cosmetics, personal care, medical devices — each runs on completely different frameworks. Having fluency across EU Cosmetics Regulation, ISO 10993, and FDA QSR means spotting analogous problems faster and borrowing solutions that single-vertical scientists wouldn't reach for. Breadth isn't a distraction from depth; it accelerates it.
"Dermatologist-tested." "No more tears." "Hypoallergenic." Behind every marketing claim is a data package that has to survive regulatory scrutiny across multiple jurisdictions. Designing the testing protocols that generate that data — and translating it into FTC- and EU-compliant language — is a craft most people outside the industry never see.
Every MoS calculation, every NOAEL determination, every safety dossier ultimately answers one question: is this safe for a real person? Keeping that person in mind, not just the regulation — is what makes the work meaningful rather than mechanical. That perspective is what I bring to every assessment I sign off on.
Peer Reviewer — Ad-hoc Reviewer for the European Journal of Medicinal Plants. Critically evaluated manuscripts for scientific rigor, methodological accuracy, and compliance with journal standards.
The stories that stayed long after the last page.
Whether you're curious about regulatory toxicology, looking to collaborate, or just want to say hello.