Meet your hosts!
Rick Simpson
Rick Simpson started in the health food industry in 1983 and is largely self-taught by people he has worked for and people he currently works with. Rick started working for Mrs. Gooch’s Natural Ranch Markets (a large health food chain in Southern California that has since been purchased by Whole Foods) in 1983 and quickly rose through their ranks because of his dedication to the stores success.
Rick left Mrs. Gooch’s in 1987 and then went to work for a vegetarian restaurant for a short time before traveling across the country for a period of time. Upon his return, Rick went to work for an integrative medical clinic in Torrance, CA. It was here that Rick was trained by the owner, a Ph.D. Biochemist and also learned the “manufacturing processes” for the production of encapsulated nutritional products. The Ph. D. Biochemist that he worked for had started manufacturing his own products and Rick largely ran the production part of the doctor’s business. In 1993, Rick left the integrative medical practice in order to start his own nutritional consulting business. Even though Rick greatly enjoyed doing the nutritional consulting, he decided to pursue manufacturing of nutritional supplements in 1996. This was the beginning of Rick’s experience as a “business owner”
and he really enjoyed being able to “put into practice” all he had learned about manufacturing in his own business.
Rick then decided to start his own line of supplements in 2001 when he purchased the rights to one of the companies he had manufactured for…this company was Emerald Laboratories. It really had been Rick’s dream to be able to manufacture his own line of products in his own manufacturing facility and that dream was realized in 2001 when he started to sell to health food stores with the Emerald Laboratories Line…this company is now called Ultra Laboratories.
Today, Rick works with top-notch people like Dr. Mark Stengler and many of the executives at his manufacturing plant. Rick’s manufacturing plant is cGMP Certified and also has an “in-house” lab where all ingredients are tested for identity, strength, purity and composition. Rick personally consumes over one hundred nutritional supplements per day in his quest for “optimal health” and is thrilled to be able to control the quality of the products he consumes by manufacturing them in his own facility.
Melody Martorana
Melody Martorana has enjoyed being part of the Wellness Industry for over 10 years. She started out as the National Sales Manager of a supplement company that Rick Simpson manufactured additive-free products for at the time. In her 6 years there, she was surrounded by highly educated mentors that shared with her their wealth of knowledge about nutritional science and the benefits of additive-free formulations. It was in this world that she found fulfillment in the opportunity to truly help others.
Coming from outside of the industry, she had taken supplements all of her life but never fully understood the impact that choosing the right forms of nutrients could have…and she realized that most people outside of the Wellness Industry were also “in the dark”. Now armed with this knowledge she became passionate about sharing it with others so that they too could make educated decisions and truly life-altering changes to better their wellness.
As she developed into an educator, she also pursued more knowledge with which to help others and became a licensed Esthetician.
In 2009, she went to work for the “source” and became a part of the Ultra Laboratories team. By working on site where the actual manufacturing facility produced the products, she developed an even deeper understanding of what it truly meant to produce “quality” supplements. As a result of their shared vision, Melody works closely with Rick Simpson in the position of Executive Director.
She loves the opportunity to travel and train store employees as much as she loves talking to people who call in from all over the country. She finds extreme gratification in the opportunity to help “turn the light on” for those looking for answers and seeking direction in their quest for better health.
