NBJ Award 2023: Mission and Philanthropy

This article originally appeared in the Nutrition Business Journal's Awards Issue.

When Demond Martin received an honorary Doctor of Public Service degree at the University of North Carolina’s commencement ceremony last spring, he shed a little light on why he retired after 22 years as an investor to launch WellWithAll, a supplement company that is funding and building health initiatives to support Black, Brown and underserved communities. It all goes back to his grandmother, known to everyone in her community as Miss Polly, who worked constantly to help other people.  

“I watched her give people a place to live who didn’t have one, can vegetables and apples to give food to people who didn’t have it. She made everybody a quilt, even though she didn’t have much,” Martin told the crowd. “With this company, I’m carrying on my grandmother’s legacy of using whatever skill you have to help others. Doing something for others will give you joy and send ripples through the world that you can’t even imagine.”

Martin and Carmichael Roberts, a venture capitalist who has managed over $2 billion of active capital, co-founded WellWithAll last year as an economic engine to drive positive social impact and change. The brand’s supplement line, which includes blood pressure and sleep support formulas, men’s and women’s multivitamins, vitamins D3 and K2, and omega-3s, is primarily sold online and recently launched into Fruitful Yield Health Food stores in Chicago, which are owned by NOW Foods.

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WellWithAll has pledged to donate 20% of the profits from the supplement sales to fix healthcare gaps and provide underserved communities with the information they need for smart self-care, offering health and wellness education and resources through various channels, including events and social media platforms.

WellWithAll has already donated $150,000 to community-centered organizations that address health inequities in Chicago, Boston and Charlotte, N.C., and is investing in youth and young adults who will serve as community ambassadors focused on mental and heart health. Through a partnership with The Dimock Center, a healthcare facility in Boston, WellWithAll is providing education and treatment to improve heart health in local communities, and along with HeartBright, a nonprofit in Charlotte, it is funding preventive cardiology programs in economically disadvantaged communities. The goal is to donate $300 million over the next 10 years.

WellWithAll was founded to support better health care for Black people and other underserved communities. Credit: Canva

Beyond philanthropy

Make no mistake—this is more than just philanthropy. WellWithAll founding executive Michael Archbold, former CEO of GNC and president of The Vitamin Shoppe, says the company’s mission-forward approach is uncharted territory in the supplement industry.

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“There are lots of companies in the vitamin and supplement space, even in the nutrition space, that are great companies that have really nice products that also have a mission and a philanthropy they support,” Archbold says. “This turns it the other way. We are mission-forward, a health and wellness brand dedicated to addressing the health disparities that have impacted Black, Brown and underserved communities.”

Archbold, who is on the board of the Council for Inclusive Capitalism and served as its startup CEO, says WellWithAll is a shining example of inclusive capitalism—creating long-term value that benefits all stakeholders, from investors and employees to communities and the planet—at work. Guided by a core group of religious and ethical leaders, the Council for Inclusive Capitalism is based on the belief that, in the words of Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, “Capitalism is the only economic system with the capacity to reimagine and remake the world, so that the workings of business can be undertaken to the benefit of all.”

That concept underpins everything WellWithAll has set out to do. “As Demond always says, philanthropy alone is not enough,” Archbold says. “Because frankly, if it were, this would have been addressed by now.”

Addressing the narrative

For WellWithAll, the primary mission was never to find white space in the marketplace where the company can compete but to address the societal problem that needs to be solved, Archbald explains. “We’re doing this because this needed to be done,” he says. “The why for WellWithAll was because the initial team recognized the health inequities that were going on in the world.”

The statistics cited on WellWithAll’s website tell a compelling, if disturbing, story. Black Americans are 30% to 40% more likely to die from a heart attack and four times more likely to die from a stroke. Black women are 3.5 times more likely to die from complications during childbirth. Though the neighborhoods are only 3 miles apart, life expectancy of residents in Boston’s primarily white Back Bay is 23 years longer than that of Roxbury residents, who are mostly Black.

These statistics are ugly, says Lori Leslie Robbins, WellWithAll’s chief marketing officer, but the narrative that drives them is uglier still. “Black and Brown folks have really been left out of the health and wellness conversation—overlooked, underserved and misunderstood. So, starting with the root cause of the societal wrongs and the systemic issues, the output is all these staggering facts.”

In keeping with WellWithAll’s mission to transform the conversation by mobilizing “one family, one community and one neighborhood at a time,” Robbins says, most of its outreach is aimed at building connections through live events and social media. Martin has participated in fireside chats in Los Angeles and Charlotte and will speak on the mainstage at the 30th Essence Festival of Culture in New Orleans in July. WellWithAll is a brand partner for that event and plans to introduce the company and its mission more broadly there through sampling and a variety of wellness-related activities.

“People just like being able to be together and having the ability to connect more intimately and more deeply,” Robbins says. “And it allows us to continue to infuse their insights and their needs into the products that we’re developing, as well as the community we’re building, to support them on that journey.”

The NBJ 2024 Awards issue is available at no cost at the NBJ store. Subscribe today to the Nutrition Business Journal.