Hello, my center stage beauty bays. How is everyone today? Welcome to Center Stage beauty Podcast. I am Kelly Alfonso. I am born and bred from the beautiful island of Trinidad and Tobago.

I am what they call Trini to the bone pageant girl extraordinaire Ms.Teen Trindad and Tobago, to be exact. Yes, your girl has a lot of titles. I spent the majority of my life studying fine arts and did various exhibitions in my home country. I am heavily inspired by the works of Van Gogh, DA Vinci, basically the entire Renaissance era.

I took my passion from the arts to makeup. Once I emigrated to New York, the city of dreams and opportunity. I worked from counters to corporate for different makeup and skincare brands. At one point in my life, I was like, what about this hair girl? What are we going to do about that?

But hair intimidated me for so long, especially when I think artists paint and hair stylists sculpt two different skill sets. Anyway, I was determined and enrolled in beauty school. But every day I was told by my instructor, you're not good enough. You should not be doing hair. You are lacking the skills.

I eventually dealt with the situation the best way I can and graduated. However, that teacher really tore down my self esteem. I delayed taking my state board exams because, honestly, I felt that I was never good enough and I could never be a good hairdresser because she built such a fear in my heart. Then one day I really wanted this job. When I tell you I really wanted this job.

I really wanted this job. But you really had to know here and be licensed. Your girl still applied. Anyway, I guess the interviewer saw right through me, and I didn't even make it to the second round. There were so many jobs I had to turn down because I was not licensed.

After a few of these instances, I grabbed my cosmetology books and study it from front to back. I scheduled my practical before my theory. Who does that out of all my cosmetology girls? No one I ever graduated with scheduled their practical, which is their hands on before there theory, especially if it's an area that you're not great at. Anyway, your girl passed the theory, and passing gave me the encouragement and mindset that I can do it.

And in about four weeks, to be exact, your girl is licensed. Yes, I'm official. I am a cosmetologist. Soon after, I started working in the Spa & Salon arena. Now I'm a hair and makeup stylist for film, TV and theater.

I hope to motivate, inspire and empower all of my viewers from my story. We all can be a stronger community by motivating and empowering each other to be better representations of ourselves. By receiving the knowledge, mentorship, and above all, the guidance. I created Center Stage Beauty podcast during the summer of 2022. I felt as though there was a void in the Beauty Podcast stage.

The mission of this podcast is to provide a place where a guarded industry can meet with the underrepresented community to provide a forum where knowledge and success stories can be discussed and create solutions towards growing a stronger, more inclusive industry that better reflects all creatives and individuals. Our target audience consists of career changers, creatives, entrepreneurs, techies, students, LGBTQIA plus and an underrepresented communities, just to name a few. We empower individuals with the knowledge and capabilities to create their own legacy, which is so very important in today's climate. Stay tuned for social media updates on Instagram and TikTok. Our episodes drop every two weeks.

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