About Us

Our Mission

Our founder Yelitsa Jean-Charles gave a TedxTalk exploring the issues of race, identity and diversity. She looks to the options society provides to girls of color and considers a more diverse and inclusive future powered by women entrepreneurs.

Healthy Roots Dolls is a toy company that creates dolls and storybooks that empower young girls and represent the beauty of our diversity.

65% of the world’s population has curly/wavy hair. In 2016, Dove conducted a study and found that only 4 out of 10 girls love their curls. Toys impact how we think, act, and perceive ourselves. So when girls can’t find dolls that look like them, it negatively impacts their self esteem.

That’s why we created Zoe, the first Healthy Roots doll.

We go beyond just painting a doll brown. We create an educational play experience with curl care.

Healthy Roots Dolls have a medley of facial features, skin tones, and hair textures that can be styled in countless ways. Our dolls have multiple interests and aspirations which exposes young girls to their own unlimited career potential. Our goal is to represent the voices of young girls in the toy industry with products that empower, educate and inspire self love.

Our mission is to bring curl power to the toy aisle with products that reflect the diversity of our reality.

OUR FOUNDER, YELITSA JEAN-CHARLES & HER STORY

Yelitsa never had a doll that looked like her growing up. The one time her parents gave her a black doll, she burst into tears because it wasn’t the “pretty one”. Since then, Yelitsa has made it her goal to make sure that no other children feel the way she did about her own appearance growing up.

While in her Junior year studying Illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design, Yelitsa redesigned the fairy tale Character Rapunzel as a brown girl with beautiful kinky hair. After speaking with classmates and friends, she saw the opportunity to address the demonstrated need for more diverse toys and representation in children’s publishing.

With a grant from the Brown University Social Innovation Fellowship, support from the RISD E’Ship Program, Masschallenge Accelerator program and 674 dedicated Kickstarter backers, Healthy Roots Dolls was born.