Motherhood Identity Series with Mia Funt, President and Co-Founder of ByHeart
When this ambitious mom couldn't find a formula that didn't require her to compromise—she sought to create her own.
Mia Funt knows firsthand that the journey of motherhood is rarely straightforward. When she and her brother Ron co-founded ByHeart, they aimed to disrupt the infant formula industry with a product that wouldn’t force parents to choose between quality ingredients and clinically proven benefits.
Today, ByHeart is one of the top-selling infant formulas available in more than 5,000 stores nationwide, including Target, Whole Foods & others—with more than a million cans sold and an industry-leading customer satisfaction score.
But for Mia, the company’s success is deeply personal—inspired by her own feeding challenges with her three children, Neve (9), Rafael (6), and Simone (3).
In 2022, after years of meticulous research and development, ByHeart launched its first FDA-registered formula, redefining industry standards and helping parents feel empowered about their feeding choices. Through late nights, setbacks, and countless victories, Mia and Ron have built ByHeart alongside their growing families, finding strength and resilience as parents and co-founders.
Here, she sat down with us for this week’s Motherhood Identity Series:
Tell us about your career journey—and what inspired you and your brother to start ByHeart.
Before founding ByHeart, I was the Global Business Development and Global Product Marketing at Huffington Post, AOL, and Verizon, where I helped brands grow large and loyal audiences online. I was also a WPP strategy consultant to Fortune 500 food and CPG companies and government organizations. I have consulted for The Gates Foundation East Africa Coffee Initiative and am an active board member of TechnoServe, an organization that works with enterprising people in the developing world to build competitive farms, businesses, and industries.
But, when I had my firstborn, Neve, I found my feeding journey to be rockier than I had anticipated. As any parent will tell you, raising a newborn is full of twists, turns, detours—you name it. But when it came to feeding, I had my plan laid out and thought breastfeeding would be a breeze (spoiler alert: it was not).
I quickly found myself needing to use formula to feed my daughter, and didn’t even know where to begin. After asking friends, surveying the shelf of my local grocery store, and sifting through online product recommendations, I realized that every formula I found ultimately required me to make a compromise—there wasn’t a formula available with high quality ingredients or proven benefits that also left out fillers like corn syrup, soy, or palm oil.
I felt frustrated and discouraged by the options available to me and knew something had to change.
At the time, my brother (and future co-founder), Ron, was working in the life sciences space and was similarly disappointed by the lack of progress in the category. There was so much research being done to understand the magic of breast milk and how to make infant formulas closer than ever before, but so few of these discoveries were making it into the infant formulas found on shelves. We were both frustrated by the industry’s lack of progress and took it upon ourselves to do something about it.
Together, we sought out to create a new infant formula that didn’t make parents compromise on nutrition, quality ingredients, or clinically proven benefits—ultimately, we wanted to create a formula that with the goal of getting as close to breast milk to deliver the best nutrition for babies and help parents feel confident about their feeding decisions.
What was your breastfeeding journey like? Can you share the highs, lows and surprising learnings?
Like so many other parents, I found feeding to be more challenging than I had anticipated. Breastfeeding didn’t come easily—and led to many middle-of-the-night tears between my daughter, Neve and I. When my son, Rafa, was born a few years later, I was determined not to let that experience keep me from trying to breastfeed again.
Thankfully, it came a bit easier this time around, and I finally started to get the hang of things—but when Rafa was just eight weeks old, my appendix ruptured and I spent two weeks in the hospital. Needless to say, this threw a bit of a wrench in my feeding plan. When my third, Simone, was born, we had just completed our extensive clinical trial on ByHeart and received FDA registration—she was lucky enough to be the first-ever ByHeart baby, using the very product we put so much time and love into making. To this day, it’s one of my proudest moments as a parent.
How did motherhood impact your identity across all parts of your life—relationships, career, sense of self, body image, and so on?
I may not be too fond of all of my C-section scars, but I can tell you that I love every bit of being a parent. There are times where the ‘grind’ gets overwhelming, and I can feel the weight of all of the decisions and responsibilities resting on my shoulders, but it’s also at those moments where I become acutely aware of how fulfilled I feel.
My kids love to ask me which child I love the most, and I always tell them that with every child, my heart expanded: there’s a special (and equal!) piece of my heart for each of them. And, ultimately, I think that’s part of getting older and more comfortable with change or the idea of taking on more and more—my role as a mother is always evolving, and it allows me to bring new perspective to the other sides of my life: as a wife, as a founder, as a manager, and as a friend.
And the more I grow, the more I realize how much every moment counts! In order to show up meaningfully in all of these ways (while also getting the job done), I need to be efficient with my time and make decisions more intentionally—it’s how I juggle everything I need to juggle.
Why are you so passionate about baby nutrition? How do you think it relates to mom’s mental health?
What’s more intimate and personal than how you feed your baby and support their growth and development? The first 1,000 days of life are the most critical for the development of a baby's systems: immune, gut, brain, digestion, and metabolism. For parents who cannot or choose not to breastfeed—a group that describes 80 percent of American families—infant formula is the only other suitable complete nutrition for babies.
We’re so proud to have created a no-compromise formula that combines certified-clean ingredients and a patented protein blend that’s the closest to breast milk, providing babies with the best nutrition possible and giving parents peace of mind. Feeling confident about your feeding choice is so important in helping you feel confident in the earliest days of your parenthood journey.
Many parents are often shamed for using formula or non-traditional feeding options. Why is it important to empower parents about all of their feeding choices?
Feeding is one of the most intimate and personal choices you can make as a parent, and it’s our vision at ByHeart to help create a world where all parents can feel amazing about feeding, no matter how they do it. For us, this meant building from scratch and creating a no-compromise, all-in-one formula using the highest quality ingredients and making a commitment as a company to support parents throughout their entire feeding journey, start to finish.
As a mom and as a leader in this critical category, it’s so important for me to ensure that ByHeart shows up for families in meaningful ways, whether through educational materials, community experience, expert perspectives, or even just lending an ear to someone going through a difficult time on their feeding journey. New parents are under enough pressure as it is, and we want to do everything we can to create a world where families can make feeding decisions based on what’s best for them, free from expectations or judgment.
What were some of the biggest challenges you faced as you created your company? What was the research and manufacturing process like for formulas?
Where do I begin!? It took us five years to develop our formula, with each piece of the process throwing us more curve balls than you can even imagine. But rightfully so—infant formula is the most highly regulated food in the world. When we started building ByHeart, we discovered that the only way to truly innovate a new infant formula to do better for babies required a ground-up approach to scientific research, global ingredient sourcing, innovative product development, clinical testing, building state-of-the-art manufacturing and distribution, and an extensive FDA registration process.
When ByHeart launched, we became the first new infant formula manufacturer in the U.S. in 15 years—and we’re so proud to now own and operate three manufacturing facilities in Pennsylvania, Oregon and Iowa.
How do you balance being a mother of three and your career? Do you have any specific strategies you use?
My mom always told me you can’t be everything all at once. And while I have always listened to her advice, I didn’t entirely understand it until I started ByHeart within the same year that I started building my family—there was (and still is) a lot to juggle.
It’s so important for me to keep in mind that no matter the day, week, or month, there will always be things needing my attention—I won’t be able to do everything all at once, and it’s up to me to focus on what’s most important, like bedtime with my kids! Striking the perfect balance at any one time isn’t realistic—I think we all need to be a bit easier on ourselves.
What advice would you give a mother trying to navigate the stigma around using formula?
Educate yourself as best you can on your feeding options, but ultimately remember that you know what’s best for you and your family. Trust your instincts and also remember that much of parenthood is trial and error! You got this.
What’s next for ByHeart and you?
We’re doing so much at ByHeart that’s a direct result of getting insights and hearing feedback from our community. It’s so important to us to show up for parents in meaningful ways—and to listen to them and learn from them—and we have a rockstar team that works night and day to create opportunities for us to do so. In particular, we’re so excited to continue to add retailers to ByHeart’s roster so that parents can find us wherever they shop—like Whole Foods and Target, many other stores, and of course, ByHeart.com. And keep an eye out for our periwinkle lids in even more places and spaces later this year (and beyond!).