Meet Saloni “Sal” Rao, Special Projects Associate at GlossGenius. Read below to learn what she loves about working at GlossGenius, the kinds of problems she’s solving, and where she thinks the company is headed in the future.

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What Attracted You to GlossGenius?

One of the things I love most about GlossGenius is the diversity of backgrounds on our team. We have folks who are makeup artists, finance gurus, community leaders, and more. I, too, came to GlossGenius through a pretty non-traditional path.

In a past life, I did a ton of work in the public sector – I worked everywhere from the White House to Capitol Hill to the Public Defender Service – all three branches of government! In my most recent role before GlossGenius, I worked as a management consultant to help Fortune 500 consumer tech companies solve big questions like “We have $1 billion to invest… what do we do with it?!”

I learned from these past experiences that I love helping people and thinking about big, meaty problems. But I was missing the realness – seeing the people I was impacting with my work and seeing my work through to the finish line, from “blue sky” strategy to execution! 

As I mentioned before, a service-oriented mindset is really important to me. What attracted me to GlossGenius was the ability to stay super close to the people that we serve – the fantastic, fabulous, and fierce beauty and wellness pro community – and to work on projects, initiatives, and tools that are going to bring tangible value (in time, dollars, and peace-of-mind) to these pros. 

I believe that technology will be the most significant tool to enable empowerment and equality in this century. Every day, I wake up super excited and energized to be a part of that mission – to get the chance to empower pros with technology to help them control their livelihoods and businesses.

What’s Your Favorite Thing About GlossGenius So Far?

My favorite thing about GlossGenius, hands down, is our customer base.

In anything I really pour my heart and soul into, whether in my professional or personal life, I need to tie that hard work to a deep, personal connection. For me, I feel that connection to GlossGenius through small business owners.

Small business ownership is personal because of my mom. She is the owner (operator, CEO, president, accountant, only employee, etc.!) of a home-grown desserts business in South Florida. She has been baking for as long as I can remember, but really kicked it up a notch during the pandemic. She incorporated Sweet Elegance Foods (check out her Instagram, and beware the sugar cravings that may follow!) as an official business last year.

I’ve seen first hand not only how difficult running a small business is, but also how much love and care goes into everything she does – from rolling dough for her famous cinnamon rolls to juicing dozens of limes for her signature key lime pie to spending hours on the phone with individual customers talking about their vision for a particular birthday cake.

I know how hard it is to be a small business owner, and particularly a business owner in the beauty and wellness industry. They are on their feet for 10-plus hours a day. They barely have time to eat. They pour their heart into making their customers feel happy and beautiful. And they give so much of themselves to others. Having seen my mom build and run her own business, I really understand how being a service-oriented entrepreneur is such an incredible endeavor.

I think the selflessness, drive, and dedication of my mom and our GlossGenius beauty pros is astounding. Getting to wake up every day and help make the lives of such incredible entrepreneurs easier is what makes it all worthwhile!

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What's Unique About Your Role at GlossGenius?

At GlossGenius, I work as a Special Projects Associate on our Go-To-Market team. In this role, I do what I love most, which is tackle big, nebulous (but important) questions head on. I’m able to work not only on foolproof strategies to solve these questions, but also lead efforts on operationalizing those strategies on our team and across the company.

During my time at GlossGenius, I’ve had the opportunity to tackle questions like: “How do we create community?”, “How do we make beauty pros more successful?”, “How can GlossGenius better serve established beauty pros who operate solo, or in teams?” and to actually go after building the tools and supporting marketing infrastructure to solve these problems.

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How Do You See the Company Growing?

I've said it before and I’ll say it again: the team at GlossGenius is unmatched. In my past professional experience, I found that the quality of a team is the deciding factor for success. The excitement, electricity, and dedication of your colleagues is the key ingredient for building something incredible and doing things that no one has ever done before.

I think that over the coming months and years, GlossGenius will push tirelessly to develop features, tools, platforms, and opportunities to make our beauty and wellness pros the most successful small business entrepreneurs they can be – and the most successful bunch of pros in the beauty and wellness industry.

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GlossGenius is actively hiring across many departments – check out our open roles here.  

Additionally, below is some recent press you may be interested in:

• TechCrunch: GlossGenius Triples Valuation, Raises $25M to Give Beauty Industry's Tech Stack a Makeover
• Tearsheet: 2022 Winners of Tearsheet's Power of Payments Awards: GlossGenius Wins Best Payments App
• Entrepreneur: 100 Women of Influence in 2022 (including GlossGenius CEO, Danielle Cohen-Shohet)
• BeautyMatter: GlossGenius and the Power of Customizable Beauty SaaS
• Fast Company: The 10 Most Innovative Retail Companies of 2022