Lecturer in Beauty Therapies
Millers Yard

Joanne M

00:00:03 My name’s Joanne M, I’m an International Examiner for CIBTAC, examining beauty and holistic therapies in colleges around the world, and I’m also a Lecturer, and teach my on courses. I teach beauty therapy, so manicures, pedicures, waxing, facials, eyelash tinting, eyebrow tinting and makeup. And advanced makeup, because I’ve been – I’ve done my television and media makeup for fashion and photography, and worked with a photographer for a while. And then I teach like hot stone massage, which is really popular, especially in the colleges, at the moment. And massage, aromatherapy, reflexology. So a whole wide range – and Hopi ear candling, and Indian head massage.

00:00:45 Well I really enjoyed my Literature and English, I was very good at English, and I was very good at performing, I was in everything to do with dance, music, drama, plays – and not so brilliant at Maths. Which is why I didn’t get in to the University I wanted to do, because originally I wanted to be a Drama Teacher, and I missed my Maths GCSE. And that’s why I ended up going through Clearing, and doing an English Literature and Linguistics degree. And I was doing Drama on the side, and getting very good results, but they couldn’t swap it to the Drama degree. So that’s when I – I dropped out and changed to this. When I dropped out of University, I did feel a little bit of guilt, especially towards my family, because I felt like I was letting them down.

00:01:29 Because I felt like going back to college and doing NVQ was equivalent to a GCSE, and I was already at A level standard. But I went against what the family thought, and I think ever since then I wanted to prove to them, and especially to my father, that I could – I could do better than that, and enjoy something that I would be interested in, and make a career out of it.

00:01:55 I went straight from the HNC and I opened my own salon. But I was from a broken home, and I just live with my father, who had gone bankrupt, he actually went bankrupt three times. And fortunately though, I managed to get with the Prince’s Trust a grant to set up my own business. And I was the first person in the country, I believe, under New Deal. I had the Minister of Education … Bailey come to open my Salon, and take photographs in there, which was really scary, because I had to pretend to be doing a facial on the Minister of Education – so! It worked really well for 18 months, I built it up from absolutely nothing, but then I fell pregnant with my first daughter, and at the same time the shop was sold, so I then utilised my skills and I went mobile, which is another avenue you can go once you’ve got your qualification. And then I went more into teaching ’cause I – while I’d – while my baby was young I went back and did reflexology, aromatherapy and my teaching qualification.

00:02:51 And when my daughter was one and a half, my Dad suddenly died out of the blue at 54, and – had a heart attack. And I went into a very deep depression when my father passed away, and my ex-husband had gone off to work abroad, and I was left with a one and a half year-old baby. So yeah, it really affected me in a deep way, and I think what I did – just like when my family split up, I put myself into my schoolwork – when he passed away, I did bury my head in my own work, for the next three years solid. Until I really needed to take a break, and slow down a little bit. So I decided to write 15 courses of my own, and have them approved by Governing Body, which is what I’d been doing for somebody else and making her all the money, which I did successfully, and I’ve been doing now for about eight years.

00:03:38 I think I’m still going to continue doing the International examining, I really enjoy that, but I think it would be nice to settle down eventually, and maybe open my own private school again, when the children are a little bit older. And also maybe have a Salon again, because I do miss actually doing the treatments, and performing the treatments on the clients. So it would nice to have somewhere I could treat clients, and run my private beauty school.

00:04:00 ENDS