About Me

I was 16 years old when I went to Broadway Beauty School in Seattle full time. By the time I was 18, and 2 more schools, I was teaching as a "cadet" at the beauty school in Auburn, WA. That didn't go over extremely well to the girls that were in the high school graduating class that I was supposed to be in, that were students of mine. I decided I needed salon experience before I could be an instructor at a beauty school.

It's been 22 years I've been in this business now. I worked for a few salons in Washington but I knew that I needed to be doing something else.

1989

In order to follow my quest to be a great hairdresser, I moved to California when I was 21 because I wanted to work in Beverly Hills. In 6 months I found an apprentice position with Salon Guiseppe Franco in Beverly Hills. I started over as an apprentice. Everyone had to. It was very humbling and a test for my attitude. At least 75% of new hires quit or were fired in the first three months. Giuseppe was a real hard ass back then. He probably still is. (A few months back he saw me in the back alley and asked me to come back, said I belong there because that is where I started.)

I realized here that I really didn't know as much as I thought I did. They put me through the ringer and forced me to be a great hairdresser. I was the slave. I shampooed, applied color, did blow-drys, held the hair in parted sectioned while the stylists cut, sprayed the hair with water for them while they cut even. I held the foils on the head when they did a foil. I wasn't allowed to look away for a second. Classes every day, extensive hands on every week, color class after color class, different cutting techniques from Vidal Sassoon to Sebastion and everything every other stylist knew too. Could ya handle it? It was hell at times. But I met interesting people and had a lot of fun and got in trouble too.

After awhile, I parted with Giuseppe on a bittersweet note. Then, I could not pass up the opportunity to work at another great salon in Beverly Hills, Salon Cristophe. At that time, Cristophe has the highest price haircut in town, that I knew about. There, I worked for an Israeli hairdresser named Sami. He taught me the smoothest way to blow dry thick, frizzy hair into shiny silk.

1992

This year I went back to college at Santa Monica College part time and was working for Max in Westwood, LA. Max was a good boss. We were a great team there. We would have lunch time together, hang out outside of work. Usually because we were out together on business doing hair shows, hair for runway, concerts, exhibitions, beauty shows, model competitions, commercials, and more. Being involved in hair shows is my favorite. Here, I learned how to really whip up some nice hairstyles, updos and really fun things for the shows.

1994

The Northridge Earthquake knocks me out of bed January 17th, at 4:31am. By April I was back in the Seattle area where my family lives. Blah, not the brightest decision I made in my life I realize, but that's me, I need my family too. Nothing exciting really happened for awhile so I'll leave the dull details out, continued to raise my son and searched in vein for a salon I could stomach. Got married, had a step daughter, then divorced after a short time.

Meanwhile, I was in college, trying to come up with a way to do something else. I studied business, Multimedia, Fine Arts, Dance, Scriptwriting, Web Design, Animation, Sound Editing, and got a 3.8 GPA, but only because of an F in one class.

In May, 2003, I joined up with Lanza International as an educator, and then, of course, L'Oreal stole me away. Lanza has nice shampoo and all, but my times with L'Oreal ROCKS, and they have better professional hair color.

I was part of the L'Oreal Professionell Artistic Team. I had the opportunity to style hair for the L'Oreal shows, teach color in salons, and get to work with some of the best portfolio artists of all in the country, like Jo Blackwell owner of the Dop Dop salon in SoHo New York, Micheal McCune from Brassfields in Tacoma, Robert Dibartola from BC, and Carlo Novoa of West Hollywood, just to name a few. I've since quite L'Oreal because with my own salon and my LA schedule, I can't afford to do it. I loved working with L'Oreal, traveling, and my awesome team that I worked with. It was good to do and extremely educational, but I'm a business woman these days.

Here are the L'Oreal National Sales Conference Pictures from January 2004 in Las Vegas.

2005

This is the year my son graduated and turned 18, so I took a part time job again Beverly Hills on Canon Drive, a block away form Giuseppe Franco. Now I work there part time, one week per month.

2006

Very busy year. I finally was able to hire a full time assistant, Stephanie. She's the best. I opened my own salon in Federal Way, Washington. I still travel to LA once a month.