Start Right Here! Podcast

Miki Wright, a salon coach and founder of the "Beauty Superstars Talk" podcast, says that working in the beauty industry was her destiny. But that doesn't mean that her path has been easy. Miki packed her worldly possessions into her car and drove from Houston to Washington, DC, determined to start her beauty career. She landed her first job asking women whose hair she admired where they got it do...

This week, I welcome Drs. Drew and Joya Lyons of Smile Savvy Cosmetic Dentistry to the show. I wanted to explore the link between the field of cosmetic dentistry and beauty. That's because you can't really talk about beauty without considering how your smile and teeth play into the equation. That's both aesthetically and vocationally.  I talk to the duo about how they each came to be dentists, why...

Dr. Edward Dickerson, founder of Fayetteville Plastic Surgery Specialists and Cape Fear Aesthetics is among a small group of  25 Black doctors who are double board-certified in facial plastic and reconstructive surgery. On this episode, he shares how he journey on a path from Peekskill, NY, where he grew up, to West Virginia State University (where a number of generations of his family have studie...

Dawn Fitch was living her best life as a graphic designer at Sony Music. But one day, as she walked down the street, she lost all feeling in her legs. Her body was sending her message, and while it took several years for her to be diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, she decided to look more closely at the products she used. Dissatisfied, she started making her own as a hobby, and the seeds of Po...

Makeup artist and Educator Mimi Kamara went to college intending to be a psychologist. Before she graduated, she decided to take her love of makeup and decided to make it her profession. And she succeeded. On this episode, Mimi shares her career ups and downs and the lessons she's learned along the way. She was so determined to work in the beauty industry that when she presented her makeup portfol...

What does it mean for a society to be truly inclusive? And why is aging left out of that conversation? These subjects are at the heart of my discussion with the model, producer, and pro-aging advocate Karen Williams. Karen was discovered by a photographer in a Toronto airport and began modeling at 13-years-old. She considered herself to be on the periphery, with lots of jobs for Seventeen and bran...

When it comes to dermatology, Dr. Cheryl Burgess of the Center for Dermatology & Dermatological Surgery in Washington, DC ., is in the 1%. She is among an elite group of key opinion leaders in the entire field with affiliations that range from the American Academy of Dermatology to her role as a board member of the Skin of Color Society .  She is also a clinical research investigator and holds fou...

If you've ever wondered what it's like to work in marketing communications, aka comms for beauty and other CPG brands, then this conversation with Liv Lewis, Senior Vice President of Client Experience at Egami, an award-winning multicultural agency, will answer many of your questions. Liv had her heart set on working in fashion when she first arrived in NYC. However, she couldn't envision a future...

Cheslie Kryst, Miss USA 2019, won the first pageant she entered as a freshman in her high school. But she also had her share of losses before she was crowned Miss North Carolina USA. But she kept coming back because she knew that she deserved to win. And so she did. By the time she won, however, she was a practicing attorney at a firm and juggled the demands of both until she became Miss USA 2019,...

When you hear the brands that Lorrie King has worked on it a who's who of legendary beauty brands. From her side gig at YSL Beauté, while she worked in finance, to John Frieda (before acquisition), Chloé Fragrance (with Mr. Lagerfeld), Elizabeth Taylor Fragrances, and those are just the start. Lorrie had a stellar career on the corporate side of beauty before she began working with beauty startups...

Jessica Pritchett, founder of Ooli Beauty knew that she wanted to be an entrepreneur. As a child, she watched her father, a pharmacist, make that decision after the only position he was offered was a janitor. Instead, he spent 16 hour days running his own pharmacy doing every job that was needed. Jessica started working in music and later cable television knowing that the loops that she had to jum...

It's been a little over six months since I launched the Start Right Here Podcast and I have had 27 guests who have dropped gem after gem. So to celebrate this milestone, I have gathered some key insights on breaking into the business, using transferrable skills, lateral moves, counteroffers, accessing opportunities, flexibility, advocacy, and knowing when it is time to leave a job. All this advice...

When Shekela Joseph got her first job as a cashier at Sephora, she was excited; however, hair had always been her thing. But her colleagues saw something different, they saw Shekela's face as a canvas, and they wanted to use her as their model time and time again. Along the way, she picked up the skills and moved to a beauty advisor role and was so proficient that she was recruited as a beauty edu...

Eunice Cofie-Obeng wasn't thinking about a career in beauty until she had a chemistry class in college in which the professor taught her and her classmates to formulate a chemical relaxer and other beauty products. With her interests piqued, she wanted to know and do more. And skincare became her focus. In fact, Eunice had the idea for the Nuekie product line more than a decade ago. While she hone...

Monae Everett initially became a hairstylist because she didn't believe in being broke in college. But afterward, she set her sights on becoming a celebrity hairstylist before she understood what would be required of her. Once she discovered that she needed to learn more about hair and the industry, she secured a salon at a chain salon in Virginia, where she mastered the art of doing every hair te...

On our second special Men's Edition, Corynne Corbett welcomes Mezei Jefferson, Assistant Vice President, Education Curriculum, ACCESS, and Digital Content for L'Oréal's Professional division. Although Mezei grew up around the industry because his grandparents owned a salon, being a hairstylist wasn't his initial career ambition. Mezei wanted to be a rock star (although he neither sang nor played a...

If you asked Kimberly Smith, founder of Marjani and co-founder of the Brown Girl Beauty Co-op in Washington D.C., about pursuing a career in beauty, she might have once told you that wasn't in the cards. However, a local Sephora trip, where she found not one contour product suitable for her medium brown skin tone, changed her perspective.  Before that trip, Kimberly was firmly ensconced in her car...

Beauty wasn't on Dorian Morris' mind as a career but she got a taste of the industry early when she worked with the fragrance buyer at Robinson-May. But she didn't think about it again until she'd already worked as a planner at Macy's, obtained an MBA from Harvard Business School, and done a stint working in brand management at CPG behemoth General Mills. Dorian chats with us about how she found s...

Tasha Turner thought that she would have a career in fashion, especially after she landed her first job as a booker at Elite Runway. But editorial came calling. She was the first Black editorial hire at Town & Country, working as an assistant in the beauty and accessories departments, but while she learned to be an editor there she knew that it wasn't her long-term home. It was at her next job, at...

Ron Robinson's mother wanted all of her sons to be doctors. Ron, who is now the Founder and CEO of BeautyStat Cosmetics, went as far as attending medical school before he decided it wasn't for him. Putting his background in chemistry to work he landed a job at Clinique and one of the first products he helped to formulate was their Turnaround products. From there he moved to mass brand Revlon and l...

Dixie Lincoln-Nichols learned about natural beauty ingredients at about five-years-old from her grandmother in Trinidad. But accessing that knowledge came much late, following a brief career as a biology teacher. After a diagnosis of uterine fibroids and an encounter with an insensitive doctor, Dixie started exploring ways to heal herself naturally. She saw an opportunity to bring toxicant-free be...

Patrice Yursik was already a pint-size beauty aficionado at 8-years-old when she worked at a boutique in her native Trinidad. But writing also called her and eventually she was able to merge her two interests when she launched one of the first natural hair beauty blogs, Afrobella, in 2006. Patrice explains how she not only learned tech to build her blog but how she built a community pre-Twitter an...

Meloney Moore, associate chair of The Business of Beauty and Fragrance department at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), joins this week's podcast to discuss how leveraged her experiences at fashion brand Liz Claiborne, to Toys 'R Us, to spirits company Diageo, to break into beauty at the Estee Lauder Companies. She tells us why global marketing is a lot like being the Secretary of Stat...

Ni'Kita Wilson has always loved science. She thought she'd become a doctor, but a summer program where she got to shadow MDs as she studied for the MCATs made her realize she didn't have the passion for it. But she stayed with science and when into forensics straight out of college, Quickly realizing that this was the wrong job for her, Ni'Kita started looking for other work and stumbled upon cosm...