About Us
We live on the frontier between food and pharmaceuticals and we ’re fascinated by the expanding link between nutrition and health. Achieving optimum health isn’t always easy or obvious, which is why the team at Specialty Nutrition works to bring Effective Nutrition products to life in brands that matter. We obsess over the science of nutrition to create the most innovative nutritional and health-promoting technologies available, with proof that they work.
We are a nutrition consulting and brand-building firm focused on commercializing innovative, IP-protected nutritional and health-promoting technologies and products across the food, beverage, VMS and medical foods categories. We act as co-development partner with large consumer products and nutrition companies to rapidly commercialize nutrition innovations, represent academic institutions and individual inventors to find new applications for their inventions and create effective nutrition brands for commercial market launch. The professionals of Specialty Nutrition have been responsible for launching new nutraceuticals products with current annual retail sales for over $3.6 billion, across every channel of distribution.
Here’s a little more about us:
Alejandra Gratson is an accomplished R&D leader and innovator with nearly two decades of experience developing and commercializing science-based nutrition products across the dietary supplement, functional food, and consumer healthcare industries.
Alejandra is a Managing Director Specialty Nutrition, advising clients on R&D strategy, innovation, and portfolio development across the dietary supplement and functional nutrition space. Most recently, Alejandra served as SVP of R&D at Designs for Health. Prior to that, she spent over a decade at Reckitt Health North America, where as Sr. Director of R&D for the Vitamins, Minerals and Supplements business unit, she was instrumental in the discovery and development of Neuriva, a brain health supplement that became a $100M+ annual revenue brand and the fastest growing in its category. Earlier in her career, Alejandra held product development and regulatory leadership roles at Pfizer Consumer Healthcare, where she led product development and global regulatory strategies for the Centrum and Emergen-C franchises.
Alejandra brings deep expertise across the complete product lifecycle — from idea and insight generation through formulation development, regulatory strategy, clinical substantiation, and commercialization. She is passionate about identifying and developing innovation inspired by scientific and consumer insights and powered by robust, differentiated science. Alejandra holds a Ph.D. in Nutritional Sciences from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a B.S./M.S. in Food Chemistry from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich.
Greg Horn is CEO and Managing Director of Specialty Nutrition and Partner at William Hood & Company, a differentiated industry-focused investment banking firm covering the nutrition sector. Greg is also a co-founder of Nutrition Capital Network.
Greg has a long career in both operating and transactional roles. Earlier in his career he served as CEO of Health and Wellness retailer GNC Live Well (which grew from $400 million to $1.5 billion over his 11 years in management), CEO of Garden of Life and the Chairman of Royal Numico’s North American Executive Committee, overseeing all the company’s $2.5 billion specialty retail, mass market, and direct selling operations in North America.
More recently, Greg has co-founded several branded nutrition and healthy living companies including Brand New Brands, a functional food and beverage brand incubator, Attune Foods, one of the first probiotic foods companies, STRONG Research, a science-based sports nutrition company and Celsius®, one of the first functional beverages with clinical studies proving efficacy. He has served as founding CEO of several science-based nutrition companies including Axcella Health, a biotechnology company focused on therapeutic proteins and IncrEDIBLE Foods, an innovative food company based on a Harvard professor’s technology for creating delicious edible packaging.
Greg is a speaker on health and sustainability and author of the best-seller Living Green (Freedom Press, 2006), Living Well (Lighthouse Press, 2016) and co-author with Fred Maxik of The Meaning of Light (Lighthouse Press, 2011). Mr. Horn holds an MBA in Finance from UCLA’s Anderson School and a BA (summa cum laude, phi beta kappa) from the University of Redlands.