Meet Irena Loloci
I spent over a decade as an Emergency Officer with the United Nations World Food Programme — deployed to some of the most remote, conflict-affected regions on earth.
What I didn't expect was the beauty.
Amid the devastation, I kept encountering the same extraordinary thing: land so rich with botanicals that scientists travel the world to study them. Afghan Rose Oil. Albanian Immortelle. Ingredients that have been used for centuries — growing wild in places the world had forgotten.
And I kept hearing the same questions from the people who lived there.
"How long will the aid last?"
"How can I find work when the assistance ends?"
I couldn't stop thinking about it. These communities had something extraordinary growing right outside their doors — and no sustainable way to turn it into a livelihood.
So I built one.
Rena Roots sources its key ingredients directly from these regions, at fair wages, through relationships we built ourselves. Every bottle creates a job. Every purchase extends that chain.
Your skin gets the rarest botanicals on earth. A family gets an income that doesn't depend on aid.
That's not a marketing line. That's why this brand exists.
My “AHA” Moment in Afghanistan
In 2017, during a field mission in Afghanistan, I stumbled into a rose oil distillery.
I wasn't supposed to be there. It wasn't on the agenda. But nothing could have prepared me for what I found.
Farmers who had abandoned opium crops were growing roses instead — and thriving. The air was thick with one of the most intoxicating scents I had ever encountered. I held a vial of the oil and felt something shift.
This was it. This was the answer growing in the ground.
Afghan Rose Oil is one of the rarest, most precious ingredients in the world. And here it was, in a conflict zone, being harvested by people who just needed someone to believe their land had value.
I thought of Albania, where I was born. Of the Immortelle flower that grows wild in the hills there — the everlasting flower, scientists call it — one of the most regenerative botanicals on earth.
I had spent a decade asking how to help communities rebuild. The answer had been in the soil the whole time.
Rena Roots was born to celebrate beauty from unexpected places — and to prove that the most extraordinary ingredients on earth come from the places the world overlooks.
Beauty From Unexpected Places
After years working in food and nutrition with the UN, I kept noticing something: the same botanicals that nourish the body transform the skin.
The science was the same. The opportunity was clear.
What if the most effective skincare on earth could also be the most ethical? What if buying a serum could create a job instead of depending on aid?
Not a donation. Not a percentage. A livelihood.
Drop-By-Drop™ — this is what happens when beauty and humanity go hand in hand.