Set aside his trajectory as an investment-banker-turned-Glossier-president and now Sakara Life chief executive officer, Henry Davis still has range to spare.
Specifically, musical range, from the time he embarked on piano lessons at 6 years old to the DJing, band-playing, music-producing and sound meditation sessions that he has engaged in ever since (with each phase memorialized via the quarterly playlists Davis has been curating for the past eight years strong).
“We’re bound by so many rules in life, and music is and always has been this incredible escape — a place you can go and express yourself freely,” said Davis, whose London upbringing played a formative role in defining his music appreciation and taste in tunes. “I had access to such innovation and variety of sound, right at my doorstep.”
Indeed, Davis was a preteen during the early-‘90s heyday of English rock band Oasis, an era which inspired the then-fledgling musician to form a band of his own.
“I remember thinking, ‘being in a band is the coolest thing ever,’ and I assembled any friends that could play instruments and we cobbled together this, sort of, noise-making group, it’s probably fair to call it,” Davis laughed.
Though he dabbled with many instruments and sounds (at one point, Davis was a member of a hip-hop group called La Famiglia), the guitar soon became his instrument of choice.
“It’s such a storytelling instrument. You can do so many things with a guitar that are both expressive and tactile,” he said.
One could say it checks out that the man who left a lucrative finance job in 2014 to move halfway around the world and help Emily Weiss build Glossier (then still called Into the Gloss) would be drawn, even in music, to what seems the most effective means of story-building.
That same inclination later drew the executive to music producing, too.
“I’m quite good at hearing the thing that really matters,” said Davis. “Musicians will come with an idea and as a producer, you’re like ‘I hear all of it — but that’s the bit — that’s the thing that matters here, and we’re going to go and build around that.”
It’s what he considers his “real” musical skill — and one he leans into in business, as well.
“That’s a role I’ve played in many of my jobs as an operator — where you’re kind of looking at, ‘OK — what matters most here?,’” he said. “That producer mentality is something I excel at — probably out of necessity — because I was never the best musician in the room, but being the one who can help the best musicians be better is generally a good place to be.”
His joining Sakara in early 2024 as CEO parallels this mission.
“When I met cofounders Danielle DuBois and Whitney Tingle, we clicked in the same way that I click with an artist I’m collaborating with,” said Davis. Best known for its plant-dense meals and range of health supplements and powders, Sakara has been operating an almost entirely direct-to-consumer business since its founding, with certain offerings otherwise available at Erewhon. The brand was said in 2023 to be hovering around the $150 million sales mark.
“Wellness is a category that has been so segmented into different bits — skin health, hair, fitness — but all of those things are very much functions of each other, and there’s an opportunity for a lifestyle brand to come in and own that. Sakara is well-positioned to be that brand,” said Davis.
Davis considers his lifetime of music experience as the grounding backdrop (or soundtrack, if you will) to his life. “Music is so humbling,” he said. “There’s always something more you can learn, something you can be better at. I’ve found it to be a great tool in both keeping me learning, but also staying humble about the need to learn.”
