Meet Aishwarya Iyer: The Founder and CEO of Modern Cooking Brand Brightland

Welcome to Second Life, a podcast spotlighting successful women who've made major career changes—and fearlessly mastered the pivot. Hosted by Hillary Kerr, co-founder and chief content officer at Who What Wear, each episode gives you a direct line to women who are game changers in their fields. Subscribe to Second Life on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere you get your podcasts to stay tuned.

Aishwarya Iyer is setting a new standard for cooking with her brand, Brightland. The brand not only is dedicated to enhancing the cooking experience through bespoke, high-quality olive oils, vinegar, and honey but also takes immense pride in the trust, traceability, and transparency of its products. Iyer built Brightland as a modern cooking brand that is honest with its consumers by breaking down barriers and revealing exactly what is formulated for each custom-blended, authentic oil and vinegar. Carefully sourced and crafted in California, Brightland works with small farms to produce goods that are never overprocessed, rotten, or fraudulent and doesn't use fillers or artificial preservatives. 

For Iyer, the mission was simple: What we put in our bodies should come straight from the earth—not a lab. In the initial launch, the business sold out of its inventory within a week, garnering a 1000-person waiting list. Today, in addition to the Brightland website, the incredibly chic bottles are available in over 700 stores nationwide. 

Before Iyer discovered the overwhelming wellness benefits of olive oil, she actually spent a decade of her career in a completely different industry. She began her career at L’Oréal in the luxury products division at Lancôme. She then moved on to spend the next decade of her career working in public affairs and corporate communications at various technology companies in both New York City and L.A. Listen to the latest episode of Second Life to hear how Iyer found her calling in the cooking industry and how she turned her calling into a burgeoning business.