Erin Patten’s résumé reads like a fairly conventional corporate-leadership track: a BBA in Marketing and a BA in Plan II Honors from UT Austin in 2007, then dual Master’s degrees from Harvard Business School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government in 2015, followed by more than 15 years across fashion, beauty, retail, philanthropy, and technology leadership roles. In 2016 she became the first woman and first person of color appointed to chair UT Austin’s McCombs BBA Alumni Advisory Board, and in 2021 she returned as the university’s distinguished alumni commencement speaker.
What isn’t conventional is what came next. Patten built her current business, The MetaBusiness World, after a period of serious personal crisis — the loss of her father, a close friend’s murder, and her mother’s suicide attempt — that sent her into a deeper study of metaphysical psychology alongside her existing business background. The company mentors female entrepreneurs, pairing conventional business strategy with the frameworks she developed processing that period of her life. In fall 2025, she extended the work into product with Ra Beauty, a plant-based hair care and skincare line — not her first run at the category, either: an earlier plant-based hair product collection she developed had already made it onto shelves at Macy’s.
Patten has been direct about why she chose to build something new rather than climb further inside a company: “I launched because my son is watching me, even from a distance, and I wanted him to see his mother rise.” It’s a personal stake laid over a genuinely unusual founder profile — Harvard-caliber corporate credentials paired with a business built explicitly out of surviving a hard period, not around it.
Her operating philosophy for the entrepreneurs she mentors cuts against a lot of standard startup advice: “The hustle got you here, but it won’t get you where you actually want to go. Flow will.” Coming from someone with 15 years inside high-pressure corporate leadership before she said that, it reads less like wellness branding and more like a hard-won correction.