My name is Leila. I am a Somali woman, raised in Kenya, living in London. For most of my life, my skin was at war with me.

From my teens into my adult years, I lived with severe acne. I tried everything — prescriptions, clinic visits, treatments that promised results and delivered disappointment. In my twenties, doctors put me on long-term antibiotics. They cleared my skin for a while, but at a cost I didn't understand until years later: my hormones were disrupted, my gut was damaged, and my body felt like it no longer belonged to me.

The moment that changed everything came through a Chinese doctor. He didn't examine my skin. He felt my pulse. He asked me what I ate. Then he said something I was not prepared for:

"You have been eating the wrong food for your body your whole life."

He told me to cut wheat, dairy, and sugar. I was sceptical. I was also desperate. So I tried it.

Within weeks, something shifted — not just in my skin, but in my energy, my clarity, my sense of self. That experience transformed how I understood food entirely. I stopped seeing meals as routine and started seeing them as medicine. I began experimenting with ingredients, working with nature rather than against it, and reconnecting with the herbs and whole foods I had grown up with in East Africa.

Healing my body from the inside became a way of life.

But the real origin of Upendi Skin came later — and it came through love.

My second child developed eczema as an infant. As a mother, watching your baby's skin crack, flare, and itch is one of the most helpless feelings in the world. We tried different treatments. We were prescribed steroids. And I watched those steroids do their own damage to his young, delicate skin.

I could not accept that this was the only answer. Everything I had learned through my own healing — the power of natural ingredients, of listening to the body, of working with what nature provides — told me there had to be another way.

So I started experimenting. I researched formulations. I worked with unrefined butters and nourishing oils — the kinds of ingredients that African women have used for generations to care for their families' skin. I tested formula after formula until I found one that worked. His skin calmed. The flare-ups eased. The damage began to heal.

That formulation became Upendi Face and Body Butter.

What I bring to Upendi is not just a personal story. I am a registered children and families social worker with over 25 years of experience across direct practice and senior management — leading five specialist teams — MASH, Youth Justice, Edge of Care, Evolve, and Specialist MASH — and supervising six team managers.

That career taught me things no skincare course ever could. It taught me how to listen — really listen — to what people need beneath what they say. It taught me how families function under stress, how chronic health conditions affect not just the person suffering but everyone around them, and how the right support at the right time can change the entire trajectory of a life.

It taught me that wellbeing is never just one thing. It is food, environment, relationships, identity, and the quiet daily choices we make about how we care for ourselves and the people we love.

For several years I also volunteered as a teaching consultant with Kingston University London's School of Social Work, delivering workshops to BA and MSW students — passing on the understanding of whole-person wellbeing to the next generation of practitioners. This was voluntary work undertaken alongside my professional career.

When I formulate a product, I am thinking about the whole person. When I write about wellness, I am drawing on decades of understanding what it actually takes for people — especially women, especially mothers, especially those navigating life between cultures — to truly thrive.

Upendi is where all of that meets.

Upendi is not a brand I show up for occasionally. It is how I live every day. I tend a garden where I grow my own food. I forage for herbs and wild ingredients on walks through the city and countryside. I cook from scratch using the whole, natural ingredients that healed me. I practise yoga weekly. I walk daily.

The Upendi Kitchen recipe book — where I share the meals and ingredients that transformed my health — grew from this same daily practice. It is the inside companion to everything we make for the outside.

My heritage runs through everything. The shea, the cocoa butter, the ancestral knowledge of East African women who understood that nature provides — if you know what to look for. I know what to look for. And I made it into a jar.