Our Story

Our purpose is to make a positive impact on our community and the world. Protea does this through our mission of helping all people feel more confident in their skin. 

Protea™ is a female founded skincare movement on a mission to propel skincare confidence through holistic products and a revolutionary esthetician-match service, connecting you with skincare professionals based on your unique skin’s needs and their specialities. Founder Mackenzie Jorns knows how difficult it can be to find a specialized and thorough esthetician who will ask the right questions and give the right advice. Fair-skinned but the daughter of an African American, Jorns’ biracial skin has a unique composition that was often overlooked, as were all of her siblings. Her and her family's unique experience was her inspiration to start Protea’s Skin Support Consultation Platform. The Skin Support Platform offers a variety of licensed, specialized, experienced and vetted skintechs that not only ask the right questions but are unaffiliated with brands and independent from skincare lines, promising a bespoke skincare strategy for the skin of all people, from light skin to dark skin and everyone in between.

    About Our Founder    

    Mackenzie Jorns, founder of Protea is on a mission to make skincare more approachable and accessible for all. Her passion for holistic medicine manifested following a late stage lymes disease diagnosis where she experienced side effects from eczema to neurological trouble. Empowered by the experience and in awe of the powers of Eastern medicine, she launched a line of skincare products to help others with their skin health through natural ingredients. Jorns’ humanitarian spirit, cultivated through volunteer work as a teen and adult, inspired her to extend the brand mission to those in need. With every product purchase, Protea donates thoughtfully curated SkinConfidence™ Kits to unhoused women in homeless shelters.

    Fair skinned but the daughter of an African American father and a Caucasian mother, Mackenzie has always struggled to have her true identity seen. As a biracial person who presents white, no one would think to ask about her heritage and would be shocked to learn of her African American roots. This feeling of not being fully seen has followed Mackenzie since childhood and presents itself in many areas of her life, including her beauty and skincare routine.  It’s proven difficult to not only find products to fit her olive undertones, but she struggled finding an esthetician that knew how to care for her unique mixed skin and asked the right questions to create a care plan unique to her. Mackenzie's siblings, all with various skin tones, experienced similar issues. Recognizing a hole in the skincare industry, Mackenzie created a more efficient approach by introducing Protea’s Skin Support Consultation platform, an esthetician-match service and virtual consultation scheduling process to connect you with estheticians that specialize in various skin ailments, treatments and skin tones.