The Future Of Skincare Longevity: Why You're Getting Sun Exposure Wrong, How To Track UV Damage & Age Better Ft. Stacy Salvi of The90

**Michael Bosstick** (0:01)
Welcome to The Bossticks.
Starring Lauryn Bosstick and Michael Bosstick. Together, they are The Bossticks.

**Lauryn Bosstick** (0:14)
Stacy, welcome to the show.

**Stacy Salvi** (0:17)
Thank you. Thank you for having me.

**Lauryn Bosstick** (0:19)
We are using sunscreen more than ever. Everyone's using it. My daughter's even putting it on her legs. I've never seen so much sunscreen.

**Michael Bosstick** (0:26)
Your dad's putting on his lips.

**Lauryn Bosstick** (0:28)
My dad's putting on his lips. Sunscreen is literally everywhere. You can't get away from it. So why is the sun cancer rate up?

**Stacy Salvi** (0:36)
The sunscreen paradox is really, it's real. And we are using sunscreen more than ever, but one in five women get skin cancer and one in seven men get skin cancer. It's the most prevalent form of cancer around.
But nevertheless, we are still getting it. And I don't think there's a good understanding of why. And it's not until we start measuring what our actual exposure is that we're going to be able to do the necessary research to try to reverse that trend.

**Lauryn Bosstick** (1:08)
Is it because of tanning beds? Is it because we're out in the sun? Is it because of blue light?

**Stacy Salvi** (1:12)
For a problem like this, you have to start by measuring it.
And we have never had a tool to really measure the exposure that we've had on a long-term basis. And that will shed a lot of light, no pun intended, on why this is happening.

**Lauryn Bosstick** (1:28)
Why are you so passionate about the subject of the sun?

**Stacy Salvi** (1:32)
Well, I was raised by a dermatologist. So he really imparted on me the importance of always putting on sunscreen. I mean, I was the kid at summer camp with spackled and pasty white sunscreen. So it's really second nature to me. I think where my passion really lies is in health and overall health. You know, starting from a long time ago where I had an experience where I got super sick.
After my first year of law school, I was really beaten down. My body was, you know, just weaker than normal. My immune system was shot. I ended up getting a rare strain of meningitis.
And it put my body into sepsis. And I was critical unstable. I was in the hospital for nine days. It was totally crazy. But I walked out of there. And the doctor said as I was walking out, that I had only a one out of 10 chance of living.

**Michael Bosstick** (2:37)
What caused, looking back, do you know what caused that to begin with?

**Stacy Salvi** (2:40)
They will never know. They will never know. But my system was really weakened by, you know, the stress and the work that I had just put in through law school. And, you know, that really imprinted on me how important it is to stay balanced and to stay healthy. And it reminds me of a quote. When you have a healthy body, you have a thousand problems. But when you have an unhealthy body, you only have one.
So when, you know, when wearables came out all of those years later, I immediately was drawn to them. It's like, what's better to connect with your body and wear something that helps you understand, you know, at the time it was activity through steps, but it's only grown from there, right? Heart rate and sleep cycles and all of these things. So it's been a real passion of mine.

**Michael Bosstick** (3:33)
So let's talk about your career a little bit and how, because obviously you started in law.

**Stacy Salvi** (3:38)
Yes.

**Michael Bosstick** (3:38)
And then you made a pivot out of law to tech. How did, what did that look like for you?

**Stacy Salvi** (3:43)
It was a hard fought battle, I'll be honest with you. You know, a lot of people in my family didn't totally understand why I would leave such a prestigious career. But I didn't really see myself as general counsel. I wanted to be more on the forefront of, you know, building features and building products that people would love. So satisfied, actually, whenever I would see somebody wearing a Fitbit device, because I worked at Fitbit for a long time, I would see their wrist and I'd see that they'd be wearing a Fitbit and I'd ask them, what do you love about this? What, you know, what makes you happy? What have you learned? So it was always a real passion of mine.
And, but I was met with some headwinds along the way. So obviously, legal background doesn't necessarily mean that I'm technical. And I was told, you don't have the right background, you're not an engineer, you're not a computer science, you don't have a computer science degree. So you're not going to be able to build products.