The Jamaican Roots Behind My Block Skin’s Mission to Rethink Sunscreen FOR My Block Skin founder Dujon Smith, Jamaican heritage is more than a line in his biography. His mother Cheryl Henry was born in Kingston, while his father Alwin Smith hails from Whitehall in St Thomas. As a first-generation Jamaican American, he says his roots, family and community have long shaped how he moves through the world — and, increasingly, how he approaches beauty.

Invisible SPF for every shade from espresso to porcelain, one clear shield .

The idea for My Block Skin began with a frustration familiar to anyone with melanin-rich skin: Sunscreen that protects the skin, but seemingly changes it in the process.

“I was tired of sunscreen that was supposed to protect our skin changing the colour of our skin,” he says. “So many products left behind a white, purple or ashy cast, particularly on melanin-rich skin.”

His answer was My Block Skin, founded in 2023 with a deceptively simple premise: Sun protection should protect the skin without compromising how it looks or feels. “I wanted to build something rooted in inclusive beauty that allowed people to feel protected while still feeling powerful in the skin they were born with.”

Invisible SPF for every shade.

The founder may not come from a traditional beauty-science background, but he brought something else to the table: Years of experience identifying and investing in early-stage innovation. After earning his law degree from Northwestern University in Chicago, where he focused on entrepreneurship and venture capital, he spent a decade at Accenture working across corporate innovation and venture investing.

Among the most significant chapters of that career was leading Accenture’s Black Founders Development Program, which later evolved into the broader Founder Development Program. There, he helped deploy millions of dollars in investment and resources to women and minority founders building enterprise technology companies.

Dujon Smith, founder, My Block Skin.

That experience, he says, gave him a front-row seat to the mechanics of innovation — how to spot white space, identify differentiated ideas, assemble the right team and turn an early-stage concept into something built to scale.

With My Block Skin, Smith was applying that lens to a problem he had been experiencing himself for years. The early development of the brand brought together a team of back women chemists to formulate its initial products. As the company’s ambitions grew, so did its focus on the science behind the category. Smith began working closely with Chief Science Officer Jason Williams, a materials chemist and UCLA PhD candidate, to explore what could sit beyond simply making another sunscreen.

Williams developed the carrier system behind the brand’s patent-pending mineral sunscreen technology, now being advanced through UCLA’s Magnify incubator at the California NanoSystems Institute. The technology is being developed to help mineral UV filters remain more transparent on skin — a scientific pursuit rooted in the same beauty problem that inspired the brand in the first place.

Wherever the day takes you, start protected. .

For the founder, that makes the evolution particularly satisfying. What began as a personal beauty frustration has become an opportunity to explore the science of more inclusive sun protection.

“We started with the simple belief that sunscreen should protect your skin, not change its colour,” says Smith. “Now we are working to develop technology that could help address that problem at a much deeper level.”

Meet the Clear Coat Collection: Face, Body, Créme, After Sun and Lip Balm. .

The brand’s growth has already extended well beyond its direct-to-consumer beginnings. My Block Skin became the first black-owned sun care brand carried by Boots in its 175-year history, with distribution across more than 400 Boots stores in the UK and Ireland.

But the bigger vision extends beyond the bottle. He sees My Block Skin evolving from a sun care brand into a broader innovation platform, with the possibility of eventually licensing its technology for use across other beauty and sun care products.

It is an ambitious proposition for a company born from something so personal. But perhaps that is the point. For My Block Skin, the future of beauty is not simply about creating more products for more people. It is about changing the technology underneath them — and making room for more skin to be seen, protected and celebrated exactly as it is.

Why you’ll love it… SPF 15 Protection Clear & Lightweight Shea Butter and Botanical Oils deeply moisturises and restores. Perfect on the go!.

Shop in-store at Boots locations across the UK & Ireland.

Shop online: www.myblockskin.com