BC Business
While working full-time, Humphry joined the Naked Snacks team, focusing on community management and launching grocery sales.
Life Story: The early stages of Ryley Humphry’s life seemed to go exactly according to plan. Get into UBC; take some time off to model in places like Tokyo and Paris; graduate with a degree in sociology and the most prestigious designation the school’s undergrads can receive; immediately land a coveted job as a coordinator at BC Women’s Hospital & Health Centre.
But behind the scenes, Humphry was battling anorexia, an illness that had started during her mid-teens. At 25, she received a daunting diagnosis: “I was told that if I didn’t do something about my health, I would have osteoporosis by the time I was 30 and was at risk of other serious health complications,” she recalls. So she checked herself into a residential treatment centre at almost exactly the same time her now-husband, Neil Thomson, decided to officially launch health food producer Naked Snacks.
Two years later, while working full-time, Humphry joined the Naked Snacks team, focusing on community management and launching grocery sales. “I called every grocery store in the Lower Mainland trying to get us listed,” she says. Today, she also works for UBC Sauder School of Business, which she joined in 2019. Humphry raises funds for the school and Creative Destruction Lab West, a program for seed-stage, science-based companies.
Bottom Line: Richmond-based Naked Snacks is now in more than 175 vendors across the country, including Whole Foods Market, Urban Fare and Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, and raised $250,000 in its first round of funding.