“I was working as an event planner, and I was just so sick of it,” she tells xoNecole. “I decided I didn't want to be there anymore — I didn’t want to live my life like this. My body just felt it. I was getting hives all over, I was so stressed; I would be crying all the time.”
As a means to explore her newfound freedom from a corporate life, Brown began dabbling in various video-based projects, from music and social justice. However, her true passion was to create a beauty brand that aimed to reconnect with her inner child.
“I made a promise to myself — and I wrote this in my resignation letter, actually — that I would always choose myself,” she reflects. “Glosshood is an extension of that: choosing yourself over and over again and getting back to that little version of yourself that prioritized play.”
As a first-generation Jamaican-American, Brown found herself crossed between strict cultural norms towards makeup and her own desire to explore the glamour of coming-of-age traditions. “If you know anything about Jamaican or Caribbean parents, you know they're very strict about makeup and ‘coming of age type things,’” she shares.
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“I made a promise to myself that I would always choose myself. Glosshood is an extension of that: choosing yourself over and over again, and getting back to that little version of yourself that prioritized play.”
For her, lip gloss wasn’t just a product, it was a rite of passage into becoming the woman she’d ultimately be. “Luckily, my parents were pretty open to letting me wear nail polish and stuff like that, but when it came to makeup, my parents, my dad especially, was like, absolutely not.”
Soon, the beauty supply store became Brown’s playground and the foundation for a product that would make her mark on the beauty industry years down the line.
“When I was creating Glosshood, I thought, What's the thing that can always make you feel beautiful?” she says. “Anytime you just want that extra little oomph in your life, you just put on some lip gloss, and you're like, okay, I feel better.”
Going into her 4th year, the Sephora Accelerator Grant recipient and beauty ItGirl is determined to be “the biggest beauty brand in the world,” trusting that everything she envisions will fall into place. “I've never really wondered how because I knew that if God gave me the vision and put it in my mind, I could do it, and he would put everything in place for me.”
And she’s doing just that, one lip gloss at a time.
Sienna Brown on what it means to be an ItGirl:
“Being an ItGirl means finding solutions — and not taking ‘no’ for an answer. I cannot tell you the amount of times people have told me no. And I've been like, what do I do now? But one thing that always keeps me going is thinking about where I started. Being an ItGirl is like a form of constantly affirming yourself because nobody believes in you the way that you're going to believe in you.
"So when people see you coming out, and you know, being proud of what you're putting out into the world, people want to be a part of that, and people want to support you, but you have to give them things to support. That's what being an ItGirl is to me.”
On navigating struggles and challenges in her career journey:
“When I was first starting my company, and even today, I'm a very scrappy person. I didn’t have the money to pay someone right out; it became a thing of capital. And that's something that I find a lot of founders have to overcome very early on. You're doing what you can with what you have and that's my number one advice to people: start where you're at; do what you can with what you have. You can do a lot more than you think, especially if you're willing to teach yourself. Overcome the idea of, ‘I don't have the money to do it,’ — it’s about getting scrappy and really being devoted to learning and teaching yourself.”
On the advice she would you give young women who desire to make their mark:
“I think the number one thing is to be yourself. Who I am with my parents is who I am with my friends. Who I am with my friends is who I am with you right now. I am fully myself. One thing that I will always pride myself on is that I never know everything. I learned so much stuff day in and day out, and while I'm learning, I still don't know everything.
"Be willing to change things. Do not be married to the ideas or the things that come up or pop up along the journey. Remain nimble and remain flexible; in thought, in practice, and in ideation — that's where the magic happens.”
"Remain nimble and remain flexible; in thought, in practice, and in ideation — that's where the magic happens."
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On what excites her about the future of Glosshood:
“I'm excited for it to be the biggest beauty brand in the world. It sounds absolutely insane saying it because it's like, how are you going to do that? But I've never really wondered how because I knew that if God gave me the vision and put it in my mind, I could do it, and He would put everything in place for me. He would align my steps for me.
“It’s about being the most faithful version of myself. Everyone's looking at me like Sienna, you're crazy. And I'm like, well: it's crazy until it's not. I cannot wait to have the entire world experiencing their inner child in real-time through beauty.”
To learn more about the ItGirl 100 List, view the full list here.
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“I got very, very curious about everything that went into making a website pop,” she tells xoNecole. “I started to dig into the minutiae around what excited people to view and visit certain sites — it was very apparent that there was a lane for me to explore.”
At the time, Dimplez was a grad student studying physical therapy, so while marketing and digital storytelling wasn’t the initial path she saw for herself, it was the one her curiosity led her to. “It wound up being a circumstance of my hobby piquing my interest in this area, and there ended up being a career path for me in the area.”
As many up-and-blossoming ItGirls use the internet to share their niche interests and build communities around their hobbies and passions, a common hesitancy for some is turning their hobbies into careers, only to lose the initial spark that brought them joy. For Dimplez, the distinction within this conundrum was clear.
“There's a difference between hobby and passion for me,” she explains. “I would never monetize [my hobbies] because that's something that just genuinely brings me joy.”
She continues, “I'm passionate about how people think, what people enjoy consuming, and how artists tell their stories. That's my passion. I don't mind monetizing my passion because I would do it whether I was paid for it or not.”
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"I'm passionate about how people think, what people enjoy consuming, and how artists tell their stories. That's my passion."
Dimplez is candid about the fact that when she first embarked on her career, social media was shifting into an entirely new frontier, and the title of “digital marketer” didn’t exist. That’s why, years later, becoming a director of digital marketing and now, the Senior Vice President of Marketing at Capitol Music Group, is a full circle moment.
“I definitely want to give a nod to Michelle Jubelirer, who was the CEO at the time,” Dimplez shares. “When Michelle was appointed CEO, I was one of her first calls because she cares about artists, she cares about storytelling, and she wants the best people around to do those things. Under her tenure and guidance, I co-lead a team of the best digital marketers, short-form content creators, and digital technologists in our industry. And with them, we were able to not only turn the company around but turn the label group around to its greatest success in the last 19 years.”
For Dimplez, lifting as you climb has been the hallmark of her trajectory and the template for the ItGirls coming behind her, looking to blaze their own path. “I expect anyone who wants to be a digital marketer to beat me: be better.”
On what it means to be an ItGirl:
"It means that I am representing us well. My mom is my favorite girl known to man, because in every room, she represented, not only herself, but she represented everyone who she stood for, well. Oftentimes, I am in rooms where I am the only Black woman, I am the most senior Black woman, I am the most senior immigrant, I am the only immigrant, whatever the case may be.
"Oftentimes, I am in rooms where I am the only Black woman, I am the most senior Black woman, I am the most senior immigrant, I am the only immigrant, whatever the case may be."
"It's not lost on me that in the spaces I occupy, I am not only representing myself, but I'm representing everyone who will come after me. And to be an ItGirl, it means I am doing this justice."
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On how she overcomes challenges in her career journey:
"The biggest challenge that any of us will ever face in different environments is communication. It's not that we're not speaking the same language, but we're not understanding the same. I remember one of my mentors once told me that we judge ourselves based on intention, but we judge everyone else based on action. And what I found a lot in the corporate space was, people were judging actions versus intent, and we needed to level set.
"A lot of workplace or career challenges literally boiled down to miscommunication — whether it be intentional or unintentional. And as an executive, a woman, and a human, the moment we become better communicators, the less friction we will have."
On the advice she'd give women who aspire to follow a similar path as her:
"To anyone looking to follow in the same pathway: do it and do it better, be greater. I was only able to even visualize my role because I thought of executives that came before me. I think often of Vivian Scott Chew, Lynn Scott; these are Black women marketers that lifted as they climbed, and made it a point to protect their artists, protect the talent that they represented, and create a lane for themselves that didn't really exist.
"Whatever anyone is thinking, you can do it. Do it even bigger. Do it even better. Because I think everyone is capable of doing it."
To learn more about the ItGirl 100 List, view the full list here.
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