WHERE BRAINS MEET BEAUTY

Consider this episode a double header on friendship and business. Alicia Sontag of Prelude Growth Partners and Carla Ruiz of Johnson & Johnson met on the job and have stayed friends ever since. Over time their career paths have diverged, Alicia striking out on her own and Carla heading up Business Development at Johnson & Johnson, but their missions have stayed the same: Helping the next g...

The story of an brilliant business idea first sketched on a napkin is the stuff of legends, but in the case of Artis co-founders Leigh and Jeremy Adelman, it’s the real thing. Designed by co-founder Matthew Waitesmith, Artis has changed the way people apply makeup by completely changing the look and feel of makeup brushes, and in doing so, helping consumers unlearn bad beauty habits, one applicati...

Every entrepreneur has a different reason for going into business for him or herself. For Barry Beck, Co-Founder and COO of Bluemercury, it was a desire for personal autonomy, but even deeper than that, an almost instinctive need to disrupt and change industries. And that he has done. From snow shoveling loyalty programs at age 10 to forever changing how consumers shop for beauty, he’s changed eve...

Are we afraid of failure itself, or are we really just afraid of what other people will think of us if we fail? As a serial entrepreneur, Mariya Nurislamova has had to grapple with that question many times over, and more importantly, not let fear become the boss. In this episode, the CEO of Scentbird and Deck of Scarlet shares a few of her most memorable failures and her techniques for moving past...

What can make a beauty brand unique is often the founder’s story. There’s a trust and connection that just happens when you know hey - there’s an actual human behind this product! Often times those products are created to address an issue *said* founder has personal experience with, and for this episode’s guest, Francesco Clark, the origins of Clark’s Botanicals targeted exactly that. Except it wa...

Kristy Engels doesn’t have a beauty line, and isn’t a retailer, either. As the SVP of Marketing and Brand Strategy at Beauty Strategy Group and Beauty Barrage, she’s the third party you need when you’re the former trying to reach the latter. In other words: A vendor. “A lot of startup brands don’t have big internal teams - everyone they utilize is an outside vendor. I think for them, “vendor” isn’...

If you’re a fan of sheet masks, you have this week’s guest to thank. Charlotte Cho, founder of Soko Glam, was your typical SoCal girl—tanned skin, beachy hair and a no-fuss beauty routine—until she moved to Korea. It was there she discovered the highly detailed, skin-first Korean approach to beauty that, unlike America at the time, it was incredibly accessible, affordable and fun. In this episode,...

When Daniela Ciocan, Marketing Director at CosmoProf NA, scored her first internship at a huge legacy brand, she was surprised to learn corporate life wasn’t for her. “I’m very much driven by novelty and doing something new and different, and I realized working for such a large company, I wouldn’t have that opportunity,” she observes. That anonymous, cog-in-a-wheel feeling was an important a-ha mo...

This week Jodi talks to Nannette de Gaspé Beaubien, founder of skincare line Nannette de Gaspé. She pioneered the dry mask, which, despite its $100+ price tag, became an instant cult favorite. Though she’s brainy, beautiful and brimming with enthusiasm, the last part wasn’t always the case. It’s not like she hated her life, but until her 40s, she was doing what she felt was expected of her. “I liv...

Not all networking needs to happen at industry events or LinkedIn. Lauren Katz, Senior Creative Strategist at Moroccanoil, found her first job through her cousin’s wife - Jodi Katz. She promptly became Base Beauty’s first employee, and Base Beauty the first step in her beauty career. If you’re a new grad or about to become one, this is an informative episode on how to score that first job, how to...

Marcia Kilgore has held many founder titles: Founder, Bliss Beauty; Fitflops; Soap and Glory. And most recently, Founder, Beauty Pie. With this string of hits behind her, you have to wonder - what’s her secret to success? In this episode, she actually lays it all out by telling us what the meaning of life is for her. Don’t worry - this won’t be 30 minutes of new-agey platitudes. These are real-lif...

Angie Irish was an esthetician unhappy with the efficacy of natural skin care. So she decided to start her own line. But financing this new biz didn’t involve high-powered VCs or even a loan from her family. Instead, she sold her car, her washer/dryer set and “pretty much anything I owned with a motor” - talk about bootstrapping. Five years later, her line OZ Naturals brings in close to 8 figures...

Erin Williams had her heart set on Broadway, not the beauty industry. But for all her efforts, performing wasn’t panning out, and her day job as a makeup artist was. It eventually lead to the launch of her skincare brand, Erin’s Faces, and the two experiences couldn’t have been more different. “With theater, it was like I was army rolling through the dirt, let’s get this done. With this [Erin’s Fa...

Laura Gerchik, General Manager of Biologique Recherche, explains why the company doesn’t jump on every new marketing trend or churn out an endless parade of new products. Steady in their approach, confident in their product, she thinks “What we need to think about is that consumers are so much more educated today.” The same could be said about her life - she came to the studio with notes on hand....

An entrepreneur since the age of 10, Stacey Levine has been working with family one way or another for decades. The former retailer and current co-founder of Glo Science smile brightening tools shares how she’s navigated the professional with the familial, from her mother, husband and two adult sons. She also offers candid advice on how to dissolve and gracefully move past business partnerships wh...

Call him a 21st century renaissance man: Laszlo Moharita, Global Director of Beauty Products at Johnson & Johnson, describes himself as a “squared up engineer who also likes to paint.” This yin-yang quality is more likely than not how he’s found himself in charge of creating everyday objects so well designed, we all take them for granted. Lotion pumps, dental floss, perfume bottles - Laszlo is...

As a former management consultant and now CEO of personal care device brand FOREO, Paul Peros, like many Gen X’ers, spent the early part of his career working long hours. Like most of his peers, working late equated to working harder. “Unfortunately for us, I think we’ve been a part of the culture of all-nighters and things like that,” he observed. Fast forward to 2018, where he now heads a compan...

As a model and YouTuber with over 1 million subscribers, it would seem Cassandra Bankson leads a charmed life. But just a few short years ago, she was the scourge of her peers, mercilessly bullied for extreme cystic acne that covered 90% of her face and upper body. Years were spent enduring stares and taunts of Worthless! Disease! Filthy! Outside of school, her afternoons were spent cycling throug...

“Networking”. It’s a word that can conjure up ideas of aggressive, winner-take-all, shameless self-promotion, yet it’s supposed to be the most effective way to find new work and useful connections. In this episode, guest Caroline Fabrigas, CEO of Scent Marketing and Co-CEO of Scent Invent, offers up a new definition of networking, one she says is more about “Putting out a hand instead of taking on...

Margarita Arriagada was a high-powered retail exec who tried to dial back her career not once, but three times. After four decades of logging serious air miles and being what she calls, “A weekend mom, a weekend wife, a weekend daughter and sister”, she spontaneously called it quits on the corner office. Hear how she knew it was time to step out of the org chart and into new, very different kind o...

Like a lot of teenagers, Marisa Vara Arredondo had acne – really bad acne. But unlike a lot of them, she let that experience inform all of her career choices. As the founder and CEO of Phace Bioactive, she’s been laying the foundation for the first pH optimized skincare line since college, but not in the ways you’d think. She never became an aesthetician or dermatologist, and didn’t major in chemi...

This week Jodi sits down with makeup artist (her makeup artist!), Amanda Thesen, who tells us how the career of your dreams may be one you never even thought to have. Hear how she went from stage actor to bartending to a surprise turn as a makeup artist, and how “failing” was a vital part of getting there. @wherebrainsmeetbeautypodcast basebeauty.com/podcast

Never in a million years (his words) did Joseph Quartana picture himself working in fashion or fragrance, but he went on to do both, and to serious acclaim. With no background in fashion, he founded Seven New York, which became one of the most influential retail destinations in the early aughts, stocking designers that would become today’s major names, like Raf Simons, Haider Ackermann, Peter Pilo...

WHERE BRAINS MEET BEAUTY™ brings the unique, personal stories of our industry's most interesting people to a wide audience. It also shares the stories of the original WHERE BRAINS MEET BEAUTY - the team at Base Beauty Creative Agency. Give a listen to Jodi's episode with Carey Segal. She's an important part of the agency and podcast marketing. She works with us in between dance and acting audition...

Matt Stillman went from TV exec to skincare guru, a pretty big career change by any account. “I've been a full time weirdo my whole life.” he observed. “And sort of followed a winding path to something that looks like a career.” In this episode, he connects the dots between creating hit shows to creating paleo skincare, and how staying true to his “weird” has helped him put it all together. @where...