Beauty Bosses

Aidan Donnelley Rowley, a Yale and Columbia-educated lawyer, realized that secret dream of probably every young lawyer: quit it all and write a successful novel.  What stayed firmly secret however was how alcohol was playing an increasingly large role in her life as she dealt with the challenges of being a mom to three young daughters.  She realized that, as a writer, she could add nuance to the d...

When Nell Diamond was looking for bedding for her first "grown-up" apartment she faced the classic dilemma of being priced out of what she liked while being unimpressed with what she could afford.  So she joined her business school's incubator and turned a life-long passion for design and decorating into Hill House Home which purveys luxury bedlinen at reasonable prices.  In this episode of Beauty...

Marvin Eisenstadt was a young man helping build his father's company, Cumberland Packaging Corp., which had invented the sugar packet only a few years earlier.  Marvin had been tinkering with saccharin, a powerful sweetener, when he found that by combining it with certain other chemical compounds he could make a new sweetener that tasted much better than saccharin alone, and had a fraction of the...

Jill Kargman was a mom and writer living on New York's fancy Upper East Side.  She had always marched to the beat of her own drum but when her daughter asked why she didn't have red soles on her shoes like all the other moms she knew she had a story to tell.  Dr. Lara Devgan talks with the irrepressible Jill Kargman about being, writing and playing the Odd Mom Out, how battling cancer twice before...

Sarah Hoover's grandfather used to always take her to art museums when she was growing up, so it was not entirely surprising that she ended up as a graduate student studying art.  On a whim, however, she applied for and landed a job with Larry Gagosian. That decisively bent her career path away from the hallowed halls of academe to the fast-paced, dynamic world of contemporary art.  Dr. Lara Devga...

CeCe Barfield Thompson had a dream job with Bunny Williams, the doyenne of Upper East Side chic, and could not imagine working anywhere else.  However, with motherhood, her entrepreneurial genes kicked in (her parents and grandparents owned businesses) and she decided to strike out on her own. Since then she has built CeCe Barfield, Inc. into a leading New York design firm featured in all the main...

Brett Heyman was still a teenager living in Los Angeles when she bought her first 1950s acrylic clutch at a thrift shop on Melrose Avenue. Over the years, Brett's enthusiasm for these vintage bags only grew and so did her collection which, by the time she was a senior PR person for Gucci in New York, numbered over 100 bags.  When her first child arrived, the appeal of 6 annual trips to Milan quick...

Even though clients at the London spa where Georgia Louise worked kept asking for her, her bosses were not impressed.  Georgia pampered her clients by mixing various skin care products to create a perfect, tailor-made blend for each of them.  Clients loved it, but Georgia's bosses wanted her to stick to protocol. Feeling constricted, Georgia, then barely out of her teens, started her own spa and n...

Sarah Maslin Nir, a New York Times journalist, saw first-hand the less attractive side of the beauty industry when she wrote Unvarnished, an expose of working conditions in nail salons for which she was a Pulitzer finalist and which spurred regulatory changes.  Luckily, in this episode of Beauty Bosses with Dr. Lara Devgan she reveals that she still believes in the beauty inherent every single per...

Andi Miro was a first year dental student at NYU when a talk by Dr. Michael Apa inspired her to become a cosmetic dentist.  Little did she know that just a few years later she would be working with Dr. Apa who took your friendly uncle’s profession and built a global cosmetic dentistry powerhouse on it.  In this episode of Beauty Bosses, Dr. Lara Devgan talks to Andi and Michael about how aging imp...

Julia S. Powell was a successful Stanford-trained lawyer who kept getting asked by family and friends to create artwork for wedding invitations.  When her brothers gifted her a set of oil paints and started buying her paintings, she knew it was time to figure out how to make a career in art work.  In this episode of Beauty Bosses, Dr. Lara Devgan talks to Julia S. Powell about how she transitioned...

Amanda Freeman is an amazing entrepreneur who founded and built SLT into one of the most popular boutique fitness chains. In this episode of Beauty Bosses, she talks to Dr. Lara Devgan about the story of starting her business and wellness in general.

Stephanie Gottlieb is a remarkable woman entrepreneur who founded the eponymous jewelry line. In this episode of Beauty Bosses, she talks to Dr. Lara Devgan about her amazing story starting and building her business. 

I'm Dr. Lara Devgan, and I'm a plastic surgeon in New York City, the CEO of Scientific Beauty, and of course, a major beauty enthusiast. You are listening to Beauty Bosses, where we chat with fellow industry leaders who are shaping beauty, fashion, wellness, and all things pretty.