Joanna Vargas tells me that caregiving is her love language. Having had childhood aspirations to be an artist of some kind, Joanna studied photography and women’s studies in university with a particular fascination surrounding how women were portrayed in art and media. Joanna’s graduate thesis looked at whether or not women’s beauty routines existed for the male gaze, concluding that no, self care is something we do for ourselves. Following a number of years working as an esthetician, Joanna had grown tired of seeing clients given the same facials and being sold the same products. Driven by a wish to create her own treatments and be guided by each individual’s needs, Joanna opened her first namesake spa in New York City in 2006. By 2011, having grown her business with little more than word-of-mouth marketing, Joanna had become something of an industry go-to and had accumulated an impressive list of celebrity clientele. Passionate about delivering good nutrition to the skin, and wanting her clients to be able to achieve and maintain spa results from home, she developed her own product line. In Episode 93 of the Glow Journal podcast, Joanna shares the ins and outs of finding the right manufacturer, why her early memories of her grandmother have served as the inspiration for her career, and how grateful she is to be her “tattooed Latina self” in the landscape of the beauty industry. Listen now on iTunes and Spotify. #glowjournal