WHERE BRAINS MEET BEAUTY

Each year, the Listen Again Awards recognize the episodes our audience continues to return to. Conversations that stay relevant, spark reflection, and offer depth beyond the moment. We’re thrilled to honor the 2025 Listen Again Award winners in this special Where Brains Meet Beauty episode. Q1 Power Moves: Excellence in Leadership Episode 277 – Danessa Myricks & Anncy Rowe. A powerful conversation on leadership, vulnerability, and growth. Danessa and Anncy explored what it truly means to lead with intention, create space for honest feedback, and continue evolving. Their openness around fear, empathy, and personal power made this episode unforgettable.Q2 Health Compass: Navigating Wellness Careers Episode 288 – Lisa Rossmann & Bryan Appio. This conversation redefined modern leadership. Lisa and Bryan shared how empathy, clarity, and values-driven decision making shape stronger teams and better brands. A reminder that the most impactful businesses are built from the inside out.Q3 Career Capital: Voices in Beauty Finance Episode 294 – Annie Robertson Hockey & Lauren D’Amore. A thoughtful look at beauty through the lens of investment, loyalty, and long-term value. Annie and Lauren unpacked how careers evolve, how mentorship matters, and why trust and relationships drive sustainable growth across med spas and consumer brands.Q4 Artist & Influencer Insights: Wisdom Behind the Craft Episode 296 – Jess Martinez & Kirti Tewani. An honest conversation about building influence with boundaries, integrity, and intention. Jess and Kirti shared the realities behind virality, the importance of staying grounded, and why authenticity and creative freedom matter for both creators and brands.These episodes reflect the heart of Where Brains Meet Beauty. Real conversations, thoughtful perspectives, and voices shaping the future of the industry. ???? Congratulations to our Listen Again Award Winners, explore excerpts from the winners in episode 301 or in full wherever you listen to podcasts.

For its 300th episode, Where Brains Meet Beauty highlights two women who prove that creative careers rarely follow a straight line. Celebrity hairstylist and makeup artist Sarai Martinez and influencer and UGC creator Tania Grover share how childhood dreams, unexpected pivots and sheer perseverance shaped the paths they are on today.Sarai always knew she wanted to be a hairstylist, even drafting a sixth grade project imagining her future salon career. But family expectations and finances pushed her into fashion school, then insurance work, then years of assisting in high-end Boston salons on late nights and little pay. Marriage, kids and discouraging mentors led to a long break before she rebuilt her confidence, found supportive leadership and stepped back into artistry full-time. Today she works with prestige clients, balances her “Sarai by Day” influencer presence and stays grounded by choosing collaboration over diva moments on set.Tania’s journey started in high school with dance videos she posted “for fun” until brands began sliding into her DMs. Content creation followed her through college ambassador gigs, paid brand deals and internships she earned through her TikTok skills. Still, she keeps a full-time tech job that offers stability and flexibility while she builds her creator career. Her schedule is relentless - early mornings filming, editing during commutes, posting across multiple accounts but she thrives on the structure and maintains tight creative control, supported by a manager who handles negotiations.Both women talk openly about burnout, comparison, the pressure to constantly post and the often hidden emotional labor behind both artistry and influencing. Their shared message: trust your path, turn the detours into fuel, and don’t underestimate the power of a “practical” job to give you freedom, options and the confidence to say no.

Episode 299 of Where Brains Meet Beauty™ brings together two very different kinds of “technicians” who both turned specialized skills into flexible, creative lives. AR and AI developer, content creator and Cannes Lion winner Grace Choi sits beside fashion industry veteran, technical design consultant and creator Emily Kammeyer Sumner for a conversation that moves from X-Men superpowers to tax codes for dogs, and somehow makes it all make sense.Grace shares how a makeup printer startup led her into AR filters, where she now builds the viral effects that other creators and brands rely on. She pulls back the curtain on being an “influencer’s influencer,” why a single well made filter can unlock hundreds of thousands of videos for a brand, and what it really means to bet on yourself without a safety net. She also teases her next chapter, shifting from building inside platforms like TikTok to building a platform of her own.Emily traces her path from sewing in a neighbor’s pattern room to becoming a technical design leader in fashion, then walking away to build a life as a full time beauty and fashion creator and consultant. She talks about fit as a true loyalty driver, her work in size inclusive design, and the moment a routine doctor visit made her realize she was secretly working two full time jobs. She opens up about IVF, why she chose to let her community be part of that journey, how she navigates putting her son in content, and even how her dog Roxy is becoming an “entrepreneur” in the creator economy.Together, Grace and Emily dig into the realities behind the grid: setting revenue goals, choosing the right manager, saying no to work that does not fit, and resisting the constant pull to turn every beautiful moment into content. From flexible schedules to burnout warning signs, from villa baby moons to late night laptop hours, this episode is a masterclass in building a career that is ambitious, sustainable and still deeply human.

Episode 298 of Where Brains Meet Beauty is one of the most emotional and human conversations of the season. Celebrity Esthetician Miranda Sturce and creator, former Miss South Carolina and Bachelor alum Davia Esther Bunch join the show for a raw discussion on ambition, burnout, healing and finding your way back to yourself.Miranda shares how caring for others has been part of her identity since childhood, soothing her father’s hands after long labor-filled days. That instinct led her into luxury hotel spas and ultimately her own practice, where touch becomes both artistry and therapy. She talks openly about the emotional weight of being a solo esthetician, the pressure to hold everyone together and the importance of slowing down long enough to feel your own feelings.Davia’s story mirrors Miranda’s in surprising ways. She trained for years to become a professional ballet dancer, performed in Russia, then had to walk away after injury. That loss spun into pageants, where she won Miss South Carolina and went on to compete at Miss America. Then came The Bachelor, a move that gave her visibility but also forced her to face everything she had been running from. Now she balances content creation with a full-time beauty marketing role, and she speaks candidly about negotiating fair rates, unlearning people-pleasing and finding grounding in storytelling. Her newest dream: writing a memoir, one memory and one messy truth at a time.Together, Miranda and Davia explore what it means to hustle without losing yourself, how to stay human in an industry built on performance and the quiet courage of asking for a pause when emotions break through. It’s a reminder that careers anchored in care require caring for yourself too.

In Episode 297 of Where Brains Meet Beauty, founder and CEO of Glamazon Beauty Cosmetics Kim Baker and content creator and Your Glow Guide author Felicia Walker sit down to talk about building careers that did not exist when they were kids.Kim’s path starts at 13 as a model with Elite, crossing paths with legends like Andy Warhol and Basquiat, then being pulled out of the industry for her own safety. She later returns, co-pioneers plus-size modeling and eventually pivots into makeup artistry after years of struggling to find foundation that matched her skin. Mixing shades behind the counter at brands like Prescriptives and Bobbi Brown became an education in undertones and inclusivity that now powers Glamazon Beauty. Today, she is part artist, part founder, part motivator, writing handwritten notes to customers and using public speaking to help women feel “beautifully empowered.”Felicia’s journey began in a different place: HR executive by day, beauty obsessive by night. She launched a blog simply to pour out everything living in her head about skincare, ingredients and routines. That curiosity turned her into an early “digital beauty space architect,” breaking down formulas and skin types long before ingredient education was mainstream. Blogging opened doors to editorial, product development and now authorship. Her focus has evolved into helping people truly understand their skin and spotlighting 50+ skincare and longevity, a demographic she rarely saw represented.Together, Kim and Felicia talk about listening to the “whisper” of a calling, balancing data with gut, handling comments with grace (and a bit of edge when needed), and using influence to educate rather than just sell. One builds confidence with a foundation stick, the other with a framework for skincare, but both are expanding what it means to have a career in beauty on their own terms. Check out more from Kim at glamazonbeauty.com (https://glamazonbeauty.com/?srsltid=AfmBOooTkNB1cJY0YYJth5G6yDTICXuYu9shA0tl0qHWIpWS7yOK-O82) & Felicia's book Your Glow Guide (https://www.amazon.com/-/es/YOUR-GLOW-GUIDE-Personalized-Companion/dp/B0D8TVTQZD).