This Woman Has Cushing Chemistry

Rachel Sommers ’07 Turns Sorrow into Entrepreneurial Success

For Rachel Sommers ’07, the moment of inspiration that made her an entrepreneur came in the midst of grief.

She was just a couple of years out of college and had begun a position at Allied Printing, her family’s thriving business in Manchester, Connecticut. She imagined many years working alongside her beloved father, who was the CEO. Then John Sommers Sr. ’74, was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer. Four months later he died.

The stress took its toll on Sommers, including on her skin. “It looked like I had aged eight years in eight months. I looked awful,” she says. She wandered into a cosmetics store and asked what they had for sale that might help. In a moment of unexpected honesty, the salesclerk told her nothing in the store actually worked and advised Botox.

“I just remember being like, ‘What on earth are you talking about? How is this possible? We put people on the moon. We have so much technology. With all these products on the shelves, how does nothing work?” Sommers says.

She found herself thinking back to those agonizing months when her father was ill. Searching for something that might help, Sommers pored over alternative cancer treatments. One of the alternative treatments that she had uncovered was bee venom, as it contained a chemical compound elastin and, in fact, mimics the effects of Botox on a smaller scale. Sommers was intrigued and started researching.

“I look ed like an absolute crazy person. I had flyers on my wall and research and all these highlighted articles,” she says. “I basically sat in my apartment for a year known as mellittin. Mellittin is the only naturally occurring compound that is able to break into disease wall barriers such as those in HIV and cancer. Although it didn’t necessarily cure cancer, she thought this was interesting and noted it. As she pondered the saleswoman’s comment, she remembered reading that bee venom also contained collagen and and taught myself about chemical compounds and decided that one day I was going to correct this issue in the market and bridge that gap.” Intoxicated Cosmetics, which makes venom-infused serums, was born.

Since launching in 2019, the company has attracted attention from publications including British Vogue, Forbes, and BoxyCharm. The products are in dozens of medical spas and in retail outlets throughout the country as well as on the company website.

“ We’ve really enjoyed some awesome success,” Sommers says. “I guess it’s been about three years now. It’s been an adventure for sure.”

Sommers’ comfort with delving into chemistry has its roots at Cushing Academy. She says she wasn’t a gifted student in that course — “I struggled to get a B-minus,” Sommers says — but she was intrigued by the topic, in part because of the example of her teacher, Dr. William Sponholtz. He told students about trips to the Amazon and about the flora and fauna there. For Sommers, that was a seed planted. “Fast forward, now I regularly look to places like the Amazonian rainforest for uncovering new venomous chemical compounds that exist in nature but really haven’t been super researched,” she says.

Some of Dr. Sponholtz’s influence was the chemistry, but much of it was just encouragement. “He told me that I can do whatever I really set my mind to, “ she says. One tangible piece that stuck with Sommers was that he used one of her projects as an example for subsequent classes. “I told him, ‘I suck at chemistry. I’m terrible at chemistry,’” she remembers. “He basically told me that chemistry is what you make it and that you don’t suck at anything.”

“ That is such a classic tale of teachers at Cushing just encouraging you, pushing you beyond your boundaries,” Sommers continues. “All of a sudden, before you know it, you’re the role model for what other people should do.”

The other Cushing lesson Sommers has carried into her company is to be who you are. Intoxicated Cosmetics embraces Sommers’ own striking and confident style. The company’s motto, in the midst of a field of competitors focused on everything natural, warm, and fuzzy, is “skin care that bites back.”

“ We’re kind of the bad girls of beauty. Just really owning it and staying true to myself is the reason why I got here,” Sommers says. “I don’t need anyone else’s opinion of myself to be who I want to be, and I think that from a leadership perspective, that it’s important. I tell our interns, ‘Be who you are because no one else can be you. And that’s your superpower.’”

Despite the family legacy — in addition to her father, an aunt (Heather Perry ’71), an uncle (Gerry Sommers ’75), and a brother (Matt Sommers ’11) also attended Cushing — Sommers didn’t arrive at the Academy until her junior year. She remembers visiting earlier with her father, who was a trustee, and always feeling so at home.

“I just felt like it was so much more inclusive and welcoming,” she says. “It was a feeling of belonging right away.” To this day, Sommers’ Cushing friends are some of her best friends. Her family remains very involved with philanthropic efforts on behalf of the school.

“I just had the most amazing experience there,” Sommers says. “I really do feel like it kind of set the bar for who I am today and what I’ve done. Everyone was always very encouraging of my ideas and ambitions from when I was there until literally decades later. So I’ve always loved that about Cushing.”