ABOUT US
From Origin to Audience
Botanical sourcing. Functional formulation. Strategic advisory. Ingredient storytelling.
EthnoPharm partners with natural products, ingredient and wellness brands to source distinctive botanicals, develop functional products, and communicate the value of their ingredients.
Founded by Kerry Hughes—Ethnobotanist, Herbalist and Author—EthnoPharm connects plant knowledge, scientific evidence, sourcing relationships and market strategy. We help companies move from promising plants and ingredients to differentiated products, meaningful education and compelling brand stories.
Our work spans botanical discovery, biodiversity-focused sourcing, functional formulation, practitioner education and market development. We also partner with brands on commissioned visits to ingredient-growing and sourcing regions, bringing the plants, producers and practices behind their products into field-based content and campaigns.
Whether you need a sourcing partner, a botanical formulation advisor or a storytelling collaborator, EthnoPharm brings scientific depth, commercial insight and firsthand curiosity to the work.
Meet Kerry Hughes
Ethnobotanical Explorer & Strategic Advisor
Kerry Hughes brings decades of experience introducing botanicals and functional products to market. Her work connects the places plants come from, the science behind their uses and the opportunities to build value around them.
Her experience includes contributing functional formulation to brands including award-winning De Soi and Noot Drinks; co-architect of Fair for Life Social & Fair Trade Programme by IMO and Certified Regenerative by AGW; and leading market-development projects in more than ten countries for organizations including the UN International Trade Centre, USAID and WWF.
An author of clinical herbal medicine textbooks published by leading medical publishers, Kerry brings deep botanical knowledge to formulation, technical education and brand strategy.
As co-founder of the newly launched SLO Health Center for Longevity and Functional Wellness, she works alongside a medical practice bringing functional nutrition and botanical-focused protocols into practice. This practitioner perspective complements her work with brands serving professional and consumer wellness markets.
Areas of Expertise
- Botanical raw-material sourcing and supply partnerships
- Functional formulation and botanical ingredient selection
- Ingredient storytelling, social content and campaigns
- Botanical innovation, strategic advisory and market development
- Practitioner education, technical marketing and claims alignment
- Ethnobotanical discovery and branded ingredient development
Plants Can Heal People & the Planet
Kerry Hughes and Ethnopharm are driven by the tenacious fascination with the potential health enhancing role plants can play, and our purpose is ethnobotanical discovery and strategically innovating and expanding the boundaries of new natural product development. We aim to catalyze phyto-product breakthroughs that have been applied to bring to market new, efficacious and profitable products that not only heal people but also protect our threatened global biodiversity.
