In the world of wellness, Christine Bullock wears many hats. An entrepreneur, health expert, fitness guru and working mom, she’s enjoyed a well-rounded career while navigating the challenges of starting her own family.
Both Pittsburg natives, Christine and her husband, Robert Simon, met in Santa Monica and settled in the South Bay after marrying and preparing to start a family. After struggling for five years to conceive, the couple adopted a baby girl, Remington. They built their dream home in Manhattan Beach and then welcomed a second daughter, Poppy Sky.
Though family remains her top priority, Christine has long explored her passion for wellness—most recently in skin care. When an opportunity to develop her own line presented itself, she jumped on it. Christine partnered with a family who not only created a top global skincare company but also owned their own lab. Christine shares, “They realized that having their own lab allowed them to control all of the ingredients.”
That insight, coupled with Christine’s creative and marketing know-how, inspired Christine to create Kayo. The body care products are designed free of chemicals, toxins and other harmful ingredients but incorporate scientific delivery methods like peptides to improve results. Shape awarded them with the “Best Scrub” and “Best in Beauty” awards for their firming serum for cellulite treatment, and Remedies recognized them for the remodeling serum.
“It’s all about the regimens and the routines of care. I believe this to be true for our sanity, as much as it is for our wellness.”
Christine has her sights set on evolving Kayo to a full wellness brand, believing the only way to get the best results is to approach your self care from the inside out. Kayo formulated supplements based on Christine’s 20 years of experience meeting with physicians, experts and nutritionists from all over the world. She incorporates what’s worked for her during her battle with health conditions including thyroid and infertility issues. “I feel like I’ve been through a lot, and I restored my body naturally,” she says.
Christine first became passionate about the human body at age 3, when she dreamed of being a ballerina. Sadly, a series of injuries forced her to choose a different path. She went to massage therapy school for a year and then to college to study behavioral psychology and education, while teaching yoga to support herself.
Christine stretched her knowledge to the beauty arena when she began working for Sephora as a national trainer, educating new employees on ingredients, fragrance and skin aging. “It was such an amazing experience for me. We learned from Dr. Perricone and the creators of StriVectin, philosophy, bareMinerals and Anastasia,” she says. “I gained so much information—not only on the aging process on products and ingredients but on branding and what the consumer wants.”
She switched gears to work for a plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills in the microcurrent business, traveling around the world helping spas understand the benefits of the technology, “Microcurrents operate at a cellular level, so I learned deeply about how the cell works, the mitochondria and the energy—the pure youth of the body. I also gleaned information from doctors from India and Asia about all this natural health.”
While working for a medical device company, Christine would go into surgery with plastic surgeons in Beverly Hills and Santa Monica. That inspired her to get back to fitness and wellness and help people pre- or postsurgery. Her husband encouraged her to leave that lucrative career to pursue her love of fitness full time.
She received her barre certification and got hired immediately at Equinox to run their Pilates studio. During that time she became a successful fitness model and trainer, leading multiple instructional videos.
She expanded her repertoire further as a pre- and postnatal specialist, trained by Julie Rader and Chelsea Rothert. “Chelsea was a doula. And so training under a doula, you actually prepare women for delivering instead of teaching them to stay fit for pregnancy,” she shares. “I started focusing on the changes that my clients were having as pregnant women, and it opened my eyes to skin changes on the body. Everyone is paying top dollar for juices and clean water and everything else, but what about applying clean products directly to your largest organ: your skin? There was nothing on the market like that.”
Even while running Kayo, Christine continues to teach fitness to people online. “I teach through the FitOn app,” she says. “It’s amazing, it’s free, it’s global and it’s actually bigger than Peloton or anything similar. I have loved working with Brooke Burke too, who is just such a beautiful individual. We’ve done tons of workouts together on her app, and we are working on the newly launched Sports Illustrated online channel.”
All the experience, knowledge and goodness of Christine’s journey of health, fitness and wellness have cumulated in Kayo, with the ultimate goal of being the global leader in body care. “It’s all about the regimens and the routines of care,” she says. “I believe this to be true for our sanity, as much as it is for our wellness.”