What prompted you to start your own business? continued
So with the help of my dad, months of detoxifying her body, and by changing what she used in her salon, her health is now back and her business is better than ever. She now promotes organic hair color. When I heard this story, I started to re-evaluate my own environment as a stylist.

I realized that most of the products on the market we use in hair color are poisonous, and after much research found that there are fantastic alternatives to our beauty regimen. The public just needs to be informed. So after much research and months of converting, I opened up "O." All Organic Salon & Spa in January 2010. My goal is to educate my clients on what ingredients to avoid in order to remain healthy and feel beautiful.

What is your educational and career background?
Originally, I went to Shasta School of Cosmetology during my last year at Foothill High School as an ROP student. For the past five years, I have been studying the benefits of the organic beauty industry and looking for alternatives to set me apart from the rest (providing the ultimate alternative in organic hair care). My continuing education has included hands-on classes in fine-tuning my skills in the current techniques of fashion design, and devoting myself to keeping up with this redeveloping industry. Using chemical-free processing, I have also worked under the direction of Debbie Callegeri, my mentor, who has been a professional in the field for over 20 years. She has been an awesome inspiration in my career and has helped me to express my creativity more fully.

Hair dressing is much more than just cutting hair; it is the chemistry that is most important. I also research on my own. We live in a society that if full of different toxic chemicals. There are often traces of these in the water we wash our hair with. Copper, for instance, is very common in our area. Copper is soluble in water, where it can function at low concentration as bacteriostatic substances, fungicides and wood preservative; however, copper can be very harsh on your hair and cause many negative health-sabotaging side effects. My job is to understand the chemistry affecting a client's hair and scalp, and to find the safest way to remove toxicity so she can grow healthier hair, while at the same time and giving her the desired result. I like to consider myself the "holistic hair doctor."

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