I chose the name Black Sheep Salon because

I spent the majority of my life struggling to find a my place in the world. I’ve always felt like the black sheep everywhere I went but I didn’t understand why until I found out that I’m autistic. I wanted to create a space where I felt comfortable enough to unmask, be my authentic self, and advocate for my needs without shame or embarrassment.

My goal is to create a more intersectional salon experience for both stylists and guests by centering BIPOC, disabled, queer, trans, and fat experiences. I work with a judgement-free and harm reductionist approach to hair as many of my guests are coming into a salon for the first time in quite a white, so I think it’s extremely important to meet everywhere where they are at.

Image description: Fair skinned chubby person with a mint green buzzcut and large black framed glasses and a black and grey tattoo sleeve.

I was barely graduating high school with several undiagnosed learning disabilities, so college was not a strong option for me. I decided to turn my special interest of doing punk kitchen hair into a career and sign up for beauty school.

Halfway through beauty school in 2010 I started my career at a local barbershop in Long Beach and shortly after graduating I enrolled in barber school. I worked in barbershops for the first few years or my career because I felt uncomfortable in salon spaces, but I had a difficult time working in a CIS and heterosexual male environment. The pressure of being the only non man at most barbershops pushed me into the salon world and I began learning color a few years into my career which became a big passion for me.

When the pandemic hit in 2020, I was fortunate to find online education through Cut it Kinky, a group of Black women who teach pros to work with tight curl clients in the salon. Quality curl education, especially tight curl education has always been difficult to find in Southern California, so I am very fortunate that my time off during the pandemic gave me access to so much quality online education.

After struggling to compromise on my morals I decided to open Black Sheep in 2021. I felt all stylists should be trained to work with tight curls in their natural state and felt frustrated that other stylists did not care about the same things that were important to me.

My goal as a salon owner is to create a space for artists to thrive where they have the full autonomy to run their business however they see fit for their unique needs. I believe that the average employer does not possess the understanding to meet the needs of disabled and neurodivergent people like myself, putting them in very vulnerable positions where they are in survival mode and unable to thrive.