Karen Ballou always had the sneaking suspicion that she was being called to be an entrepreneur in the world of beauty. But it wasn’t until she had successfully won her battle with Hodgkin’s lymphoma that her passion was realized.

“It takes five years of being cancer free to be considered in remission,” Ballou says. “I was in year two and desperate not to have a reoccurrence and anxious to know what I would do when I was given that clean bill of health. I was working with a botanist at the time who understood the restorative powers the earth held. I knew if we could bring the earth’s healing properties to the skin, we would have something that we’d have to share with women all over the world.”

Ballou spent most of her adult life as a beauty executive. In addition to raising four children in the Hinsdale area, she is an esthetician and educator, an ingredient and formulation expert, a nutrition and skincare guru, Ballou has helped bring hundreds of skincare products to market.

“I was known as someone who could take your product from seeds to molecules

and from molecules to market,” Ballou says. “It bothered me that most skincare brands were treating skin conditions but not the skin itself. The skin is the body’s largest organ and absorbs everything we put on it—imagine if we treat it with really good ingredients, what it might do.”

Ballou was most inspired by work she was collaborating on using French green clay when she moved to the East Coast more than a decade ago. It’s the richest of all the natural clays, with 12 essential minerals that our own bodies are comprised of.

“I made it my mission to find ingredients like French clay that really help balance the body’s microbiome,” she explains. “In understanding the skin and in understanding how certain natural ingredients interact with it, we have created a simple line of products to get the skin results we were looking for.”

This was the impetus behind Ballou launching her luxury wellness brand—Immunocologie—eight years ago.

Immunocologie is the culmination of Ballou’s quest to create an incomparable clean line that nourishes skin from the outside in.

The plant- and mineral-based products are meticulously crafted from ethically sourced, sustainable ingredients from around the globe. They are free of artificial ingredients, parabens, phthalates, sulfates, mineral oil, formaldehyde, fragrance, and color.

“Our brand is very simple,” Karen says of Immunocologie. “The market is currently flooded with products and that makes it very confusing for consumers to know what is best for them. That’s why we at Immunocologie ask questions about your skin, its health, and how it relates to your lifestyle as a whole. We’re clean beauty with purpose.”

Once you make a purchase from Immunocologie, you are paired with a personal, professional skincare strategist. This expert—who has been personally vetted and trained by Ballou herself—will provide one-on-one instruction about individualized skin type and skin concerns and create a program that perfectly addresses each client’s needs. “Immunocologists” are the ultimate skincare advocates and will help clients achieve their skin goals by providing them with advice for the best products, routines, techniques, and more to create beautiful, nourished skin.

“I’m often asked by people beginning a skincare regimen where the best place to start is,” Ballou explains. “Education plays such a big role in helping clients reach their skincare goals and is one of my favorite parts of this business. A skincare routine can be as simple as cleansing, exfoliating, and hydrating. I don’t believe in creating something that’s impossible to maintain. And then by staying in touch with our clients, we can make adjustments as necessary.”

With Immunocologie, all skin types are safely and effectively nourished and balanced, resulting in healthy, bright, radiant skin.

Ballou makes it easy to try her products, with sample kits available for purchase from her website. She always keeps an eye on the changing market, even devising a quick-fix kit for those experience “maskne” in the last year due to our prolonged wearing of face masks. One of their best-selling products is the Super-7 Elixir

Serum that addresses the seven major signs of aging: fine lines, wrinkles, discoloration, dullness, dryness, dehydration, rough, and uneven texture. Ballou doesn’t refer to these prodaucs as anti-aging, but rather “pro-aging.”

“What I enjoy most about working with skin is seeing people truly happy when they get the results they’re looking for,” Ballou adds. “That is what keeps me going every day.”

To learn more about Immunocologie, visit immunocologie.com.