Christy Brown has made her mark on the Atlanta entrepreneurial scene as a founder, investor, and mentor. She’s now jumping back into a CEO seat at the head of Dr. Noze Best, a growing consumer brand focused on children’s healthcare products.
Brown said she first heard about the startup through the Emory RAISE Forum, a yearly investor pitch for early-stage startups in the Southeast.
She told Hypepotamus that it had to be the right product and the right team for her to jump into a CEO position again. Brown said she found both in Dr. Noze Best, a company launched by Emory pediatric otolaryngologist Dr. Steven Goudy.
“It had to be something special. It had to be something I was interested in and it had to be a connection to women,” she told Hypepotamus.
The company’s first product to hit the market in 2021, the NozeBot, an at-home hospital-grade nasal suction device for infants.
“If you think of that parent who is in the ER at 2am because their child literally can’t breathe, or that their child has contracted a virus in daycare and has to be suctioned…we’re really trying to put care into the hands of the parents to help them make great decisions at home,” she said. “We just want to get the parents to a state that they can have some proactive care and this is a fantastic tool.”
The team also plans to bring other products in the air quality and respiratory care space to the market in 2023. While Dr. Noze Best is only selling through online channels currently, Brown also sees opportunities to grow partnerships and expand its market strategy as she takes over in the executive seat.
Getting To Know Cristy
Brown has four exits under her belt in the ecommerce, professional services, and digital strategy spaces. Most recently she served as president of Launchpad2X, an accelerator program designed to create more female CEOs. The program recently shut down after 10 years in the Atlanta area.
She believes bringing her twenty years of experience to Dr. Noze Best is a unique advantage for the Atlanta-based consumer products company.
“Having a background in ecommerce and VC — as well as working as a fractional CEO and as a mentor to scaling CEOs — all of that cumulatively means I offer something unique to an early-stage company,” she told Hypepotamus. “I’ve had massive successes and I’ve also had massive failures. It’s a bit less intimidating for me to step into a CEO role at this stage. I’ve seen things done in all sorts of ways and so I can put my eye on the ball and focus on strategy.”
Dr. Goudy, the company’s founder, will move into the Chief Medical Officer position as he continues his full-time job as a pediatric otolaryngologist.
“[Goudy] sees our customer every day,” Brown added. “Having him as our Chief Medical Officer to help us navigate and think through how a baby is reacting to our products or the type of data parents need to be armed with…that is a great role for him.”
