Durana Elmi is best known for her co-creation and piloting of the leading wellness brand Cymbiotika into a multi-million dollar success story. Her accolades are well-earned as she discovered how to overcome the challenges of producing high-quality supplements and turning her dream into reality. As she pushes the expansion of Cymbiotika into a multinational operation, she engages in multiple charitable efforts while helping women find their inner strengths to succeed in their careers. Her story is an inspiration for women who are looking to make strides in their careers and do it their own way.

Finding Success in a New World

Durana was born and raised in Afghanistan in a household that used Eastern medicine for healthcare. This life experience gave her an appreciation for the properties of holistic self-care and well-being and became a foundation for her eventual co-founding of Cymbiotika. Eventually, her family left Afghanistan for America, and her new life began in Virginia before eventually settling in California.

She credits her mother with being a role model and showing her how a woman can survive adverse situations, provide for their families, and help others. This inspired her to attend UCLA to earn her degree and enter the corporate world for employment.

Before she co-founded Cymbiotika, Elmi worked her way up through the corporate ranks at different Fortune 500 corporations. Even though she quickly rose through the ranks, she saw first-hand the challenges women faced as they climbed the corporate ladder to become powerful decision-makers. Her experience and influence helped her form her management style and desire to help women become just as successful as she has.

Durana Elmi Leads a Powerful Platform to Empower Women

Durana has adopted a people-first style of leadership that involves focusing on the individual to help them become a strong player. She’s known for providing mentorship to her employees by showing them how to identify and capitalize on their strengths, find their weaknesses, improve them, and plan for their career growth within the company. Anyone who comes to Durana or is identified by her for help is given the tools they need to succeed and find themselves in positions of employment they once only dreamed about.

Along the way, Durana leads by example through philanthropy and instills this in her team. Through Cymbiotika, Ms. Elmi sponsors events such as raising funds for breast cancer research, beach clean-up events in San Diego, the Boy Scouts of America, and Warrick Dunn Charities, and is a board member of the Union Aid for Afghan Refugees. She also feeds people experiencing homelessness in San Diego on a regular basis.

Ms. Elmi prefers to take a gender-neutral approach when it comes to promoting and mentoring employees within Cymbiotika, but she also engages in philanthropic endeavors that focus on helping women in a number of ways. In 2021, she founded a non-profit known as Helping Hands for Afghans (HHFA), a project that helps women and children seeking refuge from Afghanistan. To date, the foundation has helped over 20,000 refugees, and she has partnered with other non-profits in providing non-food goods to people living in Afghanistan.

Showing Others How to Lead With Kindness

A boardroom is all too often a place where leaders rule and dictate instead of providing support and guidance to their employees. Elmi works to change that through the mentoring of fellow women entrepreneurs and showing them that they can be effective leaders. Her leadership style and mentoring have resulted in the creation of women leaders who can be successful, deliver results, and give employees the space they need to succeed in their roles.

Durana’s experience shows that women can become highly successful in the world of business, regardless of where they come from, and achieve just as much as men. She embodies the American rags-to-riches success story from a female immigrant standpoint and works hard to share that pathway with women from all kinds of backgrounds.

Connect with Durana Elmi on Instagram, and learn more about Cymbiotike here.