About
We believe your skin is the layer that unites us to our bodies, our crew, and the land. We call it “LayerZero,” the one layer you can't take off. Tonali Labs exists to strengthen that layer. We combine cultural plant knowledge from Latin America and Mexico with modern barrier science to design our formulas. We're not interested in vanity skincare. We're here for skin health and sports performance so you can go further.
Priscilla Lopez
FUNDRAISER, AZTEC DANZANTE, SOCIAL JUSTICE ADVOCATE
She is a senior fundraiser at ACLU National and has raised over $25 million for social-impact organizations throughout her career. At Tonali Labs, she oversees vision, brand, and operations—connecting the people, capital, and partnerships. Outside of work, she is a rock climber, skier, and backpacker.
DR. JULIO BERNAL CHANCHAVAC
BIOCHEMIST & BIOMATERIALS SCIENTIST
He is a postdoctoral fellow in the Sanjay Kumar and David Schaffer Labs at UC Berkeley, where he develops dynamic biomaterials to better mimic the brain's environment and study how neural stem cells respond. At Tonali Labs, Julio leads in-house R&D and formulation innovation. Outside of work, he's an avid trail runner and rock climber.
LEARNINGS
Tonali Labs started as a frustration. After long days of climbing and backpacking, our skin was always trashed. We got used to slapping on whatever product was on a bathroom countertop or nothing at all. Despite our skin enduring the elements and major damage outdoors, it was rarely treated with care.
Talking with hundreds of climbers, snowboarders, surfers, and other outdoor enthusiasts, we realized that everyone was experiencing major skin damage, and very few had products they truly trusted. So we decided to build something they could believe in.
FIELD TESTING
We studied cutting-edge skincare ingredients emerging from Korea and Japan, and asked: How can we achieve similar performance using botanicals from Mexico and Latin America? Julio researched ancestral plant ingredients and paired them with modern bioactives to build our own approach to performance skin health.
We used a simple loop: listen → prototype → field test → refine. We’d develop a formula, hand it to climbers and other outdoor athletes, gather real feedback, then adjust texture, absorption, and performance until it worked.
THE RESULT
The BioActive Recovery Balm is the first product in a complete system of care that includes over 12 products. We created "The LayerZero System," designed to address skin challenges related to friction, dehydration, and exposure across different outdoor sports. The LayerZero is the only layer you can't take off, your skin.
