Susanne Norwitz did not come to skincare the usual way. Before she was blending chia and advanced actives in a solar‑powered lab, she was a political and Fortune 100 speechwriter, refining other people’s messages while quietly crafting formulas of her own. Eventually, the disconnect between big claims and ho‑hum results in beauty became too loud to ignore, so she traded talking points for pipettes and set out to build a line where the marketing would finally have to keep up with the science. Over more than 11 years, that quiet decision has grown into one of the most awarded indie beauty brands, recognized for results... not noise.

Her fascination with the Maya people started long before Maya Chia. As a child, she listened to stories from her father, a surgeon who traveled to Guatemala to repair cleft lips and palates for Maya families, and later she became stepmother to two sons born in that same region. Discovering just how powerful chia is for skin - and that it has been revered by the Maya for thousands of years... was the final nudge that turned a long‑standing obsession into a brand.

Susanne’s idea of “clean” was never about banning long ingredient lists on principle; it was about lowering the body’s toxic burden using real data as a compass. That mindset led Maya Chia to be an early pioneer of then‑novel ingredients like astaxanthin in skincare, and among the first to bring dermatologist‑loved actives such as azelaic acid and tranexamic acid out of the doctor’s office and into daily routines in a thoughtful, consumer‑friendly way.