IRI-Sys’ Karen Yarussi-King: Empowering Indie Brands with AI Compliance Assistance

How does one go from environmental consultant to global chemicals company rep to co-founder of an AI-enabled regulatory compliance tech provider? “It’s kismet,” says Karen Yarussi-King.

When Karen Yarussi-King left graduate school in the early 1990s to work as an environmental consultant, she had little inkling that cosmetics, much less data management and decision-support software, would become the focus of her career. Artificial intelligence was in its nascency, mostly bubbling off her radar compared with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) cleanup of the Hudson River, the Exxon Valdez oil spill, and other, more pressing concerns. By the time she joined Avon Products in 1998 as a regulatory affairs specialist, she had served five years at global chemicals producer Schenectady International, whose environmentally conscious activities made an impression on Karen during her graduate studies.

It was at Avon that she was tasked with developing the regulatory portion of a web-based system for formula management, an experience that would lay the groundwork for IRI-Sys, which she co-founded in October 2023. Along the way, she held regulatory management roles at Honeywell, Limited Brands, Burt’s Bees and StriVectin and launched her own consultancy, Global Regulatory Associates.

Karen has been an IBA board member since July 2023.

IRI-Sys’ regulatory software portfolio includes IRI-Index, a robust database of more than 30,000 ingredients that supports compliance with regulations across 70+ countries and the requirements of six major U.S. retailers – Ulta, Sephora, Credo, Target, Walmart and Whole Foods. Designed to “simplify, streamline, and elevate your compliance journey,” IRI-Index issues notifications about regulatory changes and leverages AI for formulation insights (e.g., compatible ingredients) and recommendations (e.g., cleaner alternatives).

IRI-FM is a formula management system that enables users to innovate with confidence while staying ahead of regulations, including evolving requirements around fragrance allergens. The platform boasts instant, one-click impact assessments and submission-ready reports for governmental or regulatory bodies, among other benefits.

Today, Karen is especially excited about her firm’s Regi AI Compliance Agent, particularly its capacity to support small businesses. Currently in beta mode with a March/April launch target, Regi is designed to analyze a given formula and provide compliance insights in seconds.

Karen explained, “For companies that don’t have regulatory people who can do the interpretation using the Index, or don’t have the bandwidth or the number of products that necessitates the IRI-formula management system – how can we give them a tool where, if they have virtually no regulatory knowledge, they can put their formula in the system, push a button and get what they need out of it? That’s why we started with Regi.”

Compared with larger companies with more complex chemistry and formulation management needs that may require IRI-Sys’ full suite of solutions, the “baby brands” of the world represent a different use case that Regi seeks to accommodate. Demand for such solutions is growing rapidly, particularly as regulatory requirements proliferate around the globe and at the U.S. state level.

“A lot of founders come to me, and they know enough to be dangerous. Now I have something to give them,” Karen said, describing Regi as a guidance tool to support product development, marketing and regulatory compliance activities.

“If you’re a marketing person at a company and you want to see if a formula is compliant because you’ve decided you want to take it to India, you can stick it in the Regi system and it tells you, yes, you can take it to India, but you can’t take it to Southeast Asia because it has x in it. If I want to take it to Southeast Asia in two years, I’m going to tell my third-party manufacturer to remove that ingredient so I can sell it there. It kind of allows you to control your own destiny.”

Karen used a different term when describing the serendipitous series of events that led to her current station and partnership with IBA. Notably, IBA President and CEO Don Frey served as a mentor at Avon when Karen was plugging away at the firm’s formula management system decades ago, and the software for that Avon system was called Flo, the same name used by her founding business partner, Florian Zajic. “It’s kismet,” she said.

Interested parties are invited to try Regi now and provide feedback to IRI-Sys. The firm is working on system enhancements ahead of launch, including the ability for users to upload a PDF rather than manually inputting formula ingredients and percentages. At launch, Regi also is expected to offer streamlined reports and trade names at a fraction of the cost of competing systems.