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This week’s Elevate Live session for “Fashion and Beauty” focuses on the crown that we all proudly wear every day; our beautiful, glorious, Black hair. Rachael Carson, Co-Founder of Afrocenchix, Dominique Jasper, Founder of CrwndApp, and Aleisbel Vazquez, Founder of CurlPop, join us for a Live session focused on demystifying Black beauty standards, specifically with regard to Black hair. An enormous and growing market, Black hair can be complex and divisive, and after this session, you’ll truly understand the scope of it all. Our guests will be breaking down past experiences with societal pressures on changing hair so that it’s “acceptable”, negative stereotypes, and the importance of the Crown Act. Empowerment and real stories can stem from our hair. In the Black community, our hair is not just a lifestyle; it’s a movement. You won’t want to miss this one.

Rachael Corson

Rachael Corson is the Co-founding Director of Afrocenchix Ltd, a sustainable and ethical brand challenging beauty standards to provide safe products for black and mixed heritage women. Rachael is a public speaker best known for her winning pitch to celebrity judges including Vanessa Kingori (publishing director at British Vogue) and Ashton Kutcher at the WeWork Creator awards two days before giving birth. She's a blessed mother of two aspiring to fit 8 hours of sleep into her schedule.

With a background in trichology, Rachael also spends her time writing myth busting blogs about afro hair and running Hair Care 101 workshops to educate our community and promote good afro-hair practices. Rachael also writes sci fi novels and short stories when she's not busy managing a creative and diverse team towards realising the global vision at Afrocenchix.

Dominique Jasper

Dominique Jasper is the Founder of CRWND. a natural hair app creating a digital sacred space for women on their natural hair journey. Working in the Tech industry as a Product Owner for over 10 years, Dominique wanted a way to combine her love for natural hair and tech. She had a strong desire to provide a platform for Black women to gain access to natural hair resources and create community all in one place. A community and a space to ask questions and gather with like-minded women was something she wished she had when beginning her journey. Since she couldn't find anything like it, she created it and thus came the birth of CRWND.

Dominique has been natural all her life but began the "no heat" journey back in 2010 and never looked back. She has been featured in Hype Hair Magazine, Curl Magazine, a guest panelist on the CurlFest Empowerment Stage 2019, highlighted in Essence, a Kinky Conversations co-host (a natural hair digital program), Revlon Realistic partner, and so much more. She believes that the natural hair journey is not just about hair but a journey back home, to self acceptance and self love. It is those key ideas that live at the core of her mission to encourage women to cultivate and nurture a space, just for them, to uplift each other and be uplifted. The app is available for download in the Apple App and Google Play stores now.

Aleisbel Vázquez

Founder CEO Aleisbel Vázquez Sheppard of all things Curlpop: is the owner and Founder of Social platforms Curlpop ® , CurlPop ® Salon , CurlPop® University —an educational space and based in South Florida. She has popularized the infamous #CurlPopCut . “I realized early in my career that people who weren’t naturally curly or carried our texture were making money off us. I felt it was time for us to fill that space by celebrating our own and creating opportunities for our own growth in our personal lives and providing tools to create business spaces so that we can bank on what’s naturally ours.“

The educational spaces are designed to learn the tools on how to take what’s naturally theirs and turn it into a successful business while growing and learning and celebrating their own and each other's natural hair . The love of natural hair and embracing her curls along her skill for business has allowed her to travel the world. Her work has been seen in all natural curly hair textures , celebrities, editorial sets , launching products and beauty brand consulting. Dubbed as the go-to curl ambassador, brand educator, and trendsetter known as the "Curl Innovator", Aleisbel Vázquez is known to embody her brand tagline and culture : Curlpop is a Vibe.