Our Story
About the Founder
I am Wendy, a food scientist, entrepreneur, and the founder of SESA. After a PhD in Food Engineering and over a decade at The Coca-Cola Company and McKinsey & Company — building products and strategy — I wanted to make food differently. With real nourishment at the center, and clean label as a must.
But SESA didn't start in a lab. It started with a year when my body asked me for something different.
The Year My Body Asked for Something Different
It started with my back. It wasn't a catastrophe, but it was the first time my body set a limit I couldn't negotiate with. Workouts stopped. Sitting through a full workday became something I braced for.
Then quieter things. My hair started thinning — enough that I noticed it in the drain, in photos, in the way I started wearing it. My skin changed. I was tired in a way that sleep didn't fix.
Stress doesn't always announce itself. Mine showed up in my hair, my skin, my back, my energy. I wanted to answer it with something gentle and sustainable — something that felt like food, not a project.
It Started at My Kitchen Counter
It started in the morning, with yogurt.
I began adding seeds to it — black sesame, pumpkin, flax, chia — a spoonful at a time. It was the smallest change I could make, and the only one I managed to keep. Repeatable, and folded into something I was already doing.
But it only worked standing at my own counter. On the mornings I was traveling, or moving between meetings, or out the door early, the seeds stayed home.
That gap is where SESA came from. I wanted the same nourishment in a form I could take with me — something I could put in a bag and eat with one hand. The eight ingredients in SESA aren't far from what was in that bowl.
Coming Back to Black Sesame
Of everything in that bowl, I kept returning to black sesame. It wasn't a discovery so much as a return.
Black sesame simply existed in my childhood in China — in drinks, desserts, and everyday foods shared across generations. Black sesame soup on cold mornings. Sesame paste stirred into things. The women in my family ate it for hair, for strength, for warmth, long before anyone thought to call it wellness.
When I looked at it as a food scientist rather than as a granddaughter, the profile held up: one of the most mineral-dense seeds available — naturally rich in copper, iron, magnesium, calcium, and zinc, with healthy fats and plant lignans that nutrition research continues to document.
Nothing had to be added to it. That was the part that stayed with me. It was already whole.
Small Actions, Repeated
I want to be honest: I didn't have a transformation. What I had was a series of small choices that were easy to keep — and over months, not days, I started to feel more like myself.
I can't tell you a snack fixed my back or my hair. Bodies are more complicated than that, and I'm a scientist before I'm a founder. What I can tell you is that the smallest, most repeated decision of my day was the one change I actually sustained — and sustaining something turned out to matter more than optimizing it.
That's SESA. A better everyday default.
“I believe in the kinds of foods women across generations have used for nourishment, strength, and balance. SESA is that — made for the way we actually live now.”
— Wendy, Founder of SESA, PhD, MBA
Real Food, Real Minerals
I built SESA around minerals — iron, magnesium, zinc, calcium, manganese, and copper. Six naturally occurring essential minerals that play a role in energy, hair health, and everyday wellbeing.
Black sesame carries them already. SESA is just the form it takes now: a crunch you reach for alongside your morning coffee, at 3pm, or after a workout. Mineral-rich, ingredient-honest, and made to be eaten every day.
Dozens of Batches to Get It Right
A crunch this clean took time. Balancing genuinely mineral-dense nutrition with a texture worth reaching for meant dozens of test batches. Too much binder and it turned soft; too little and it fell apart. I reworked the ratios again and again until every 30g serving delivered real minerals, 5g of protein, and 4g of fiber — and still shattered with the right crunch.
The ingredients earned the same scrutiny. I audited more than a dozen suppliers — tasting, testing, and comparing batch by batch — before choosing the sesame that met my standard for flavor, freshness, and mineral integrity. Most ingredients are organically sourced, so you can enjoy it with the whole family.
*These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.