Advocating for Representation with Jenn Harper

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Jenn Harper (she/her) is the Founder and CEO of Cheekbone Beauty Cosmetics, Inc.. Cheekbone Beauty is a digital direct-to-consumer brand helping Indigenous youth see themselves in a beauty brand while using the concept of Life Cycle Thinking (LCT) in the brand’s ethos and in developing products. Cheekbone Beauty’s mission is to help every Indigenous youth see and feel their enormous value in the world while creating sustainable cosmetics. Cheekbone Beauty is a B Corp Certified company committed to meeting and exceeding high standards of transparency, employee benefits, and charitable giving not only to staff but to supply chain practices.

During Cheekbone Beauty’s infancy, Jenn endured a heavy personal loss with the suicide of her brother B.J. This loss, though difficult, has remained a driving force behind the desire to see Cheekbone Beauty succeed with its mission, to empower Indigenous youth. In addition to Cheekbone’s mission, she strives to educate as many people as possible about the Residential School System, and the effects it has had on her family and friends through decades of generational trauma. She speaks regularly to university, college and high school students about social entrepreneurship, empathy and the history of her First Nations family.

Website | Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn | YouTube | TikTok

Discussed in this episode:

• How Jenn’s Indigenous roots inform her understanding and practice of feminism
• Jenn’s journey away from and back to her Indigenous family
• The power of representation for empowering others like you
• The role residential schools played in her family’s history and in inspiring her
• Why Jenn doesn’t believe in luck, and how sobriety helped her take a big chance on her business
• How being naive about the industry was a benefit, and helped Cheekbone Beauty end up in JC Penney and Sephora
• The moment that Jenn knew her work around representation was making a difference
• How Jenn is integrating her Indigenous roots and commitment to visibility for her people into Cheekbone Beauty
• The benefits of B Corp certification
• Starting the business with $500, 3 products, and a Shopify website
• Securing financing with a values-aligned funder to grow the company
• Starting where you are, and growing with an eye toward the values you want to exemplify
• What she’d change if she started her business over today
• How Cheekbone Beauty is part of her brother’s legacy
• The ways she honors her heritage in the names and ingredients of her products
• The story behind the name of Cheekbone Beauty

Resources mentioned:

• B Corp Certification
• Raven Indigenous Impact Fund
• How I Built This with Sarah Blakely
• “Braiding Sweetgrass” by Robin Wall Kimmerer
• “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey
• 1% For the Planet
• Cheekbone Beauty Scholarship Fund

Learn more about accountability coaching with host Becky Mollenkamp at https://beckymollenkamp.com

A full transcript of this interview is available at FeministFoundersPodcast.com