How She Did It: Infusing Indigenous Culture Into Cheekbone Beauty with Founder Jenn Harper

Jennifer Norman:
Hello, beautiful humans. Welcome to The Human Beauty Movement Podcast. My name is Jennifer Norman. I'm the founder of The Human Beauty Movement and your host. I created The Human Beauty Movement Podcast to help inspire well-being in the form of radical self-love, radical self-acceptance, and radical self-expression. On this podcast, I invite beautiful humans from all corners of the globe to join me for open conversations about their life lessons and the important work that they're doing to help heal humankind. Take a moment now to subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode. I'm so glad that you're here, joining me for today's show.

Jennifer Norman:
Now, I could not be more honored than to welcome Jenn Harper to the show today. Jenn is the founder and CEO of Cheekbone Beauty Cosmetics. She's an award winning social entrepreneur, and she's a member and descendant of the Ojibwe Nation. Throughout her life, Jenn struggled to accept her indigenous roots. She battled alcoholism and experienced firsthand how intergenerational trauma within the indigenous community negatively impacted her own family. Jenn is here to help all of us learn a little bit more about her culture, how she built her brand, and how she's fulfilling her life's purpose through her work. Welcome to the show, Jenn.

Jenn Harper:
Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here and have this conversation with you.

Jennifer Norman:
Wow. It is so great to have you. What an incredible journey you've been on. If there's something that I know as a former beauty exec myself, it's that representation matters. Yet the beauty industry is only waking up to the importance of supporting underserved populations. So I want to help spread your work and your message because I think it is so important and inspiring. So, for those who aren't familiar with your backstory, can you tell us about your heritage and the series of events that led you to starting Cheekbone Beauty?

Jenn Harper:
Yeah, I definitely don't have the normal path to entry in the beauty space. I was in the food service career, first in sales and marketing, and then I was in hospitality prior to that for many years. And I was actually selling seafood for a seafood company at the time, in 2015, of having this actual dream pop out of bed, middle of the night, three native little girls covered in lip gloss. And all I really remember from that dream is their rosy little cheeks, their brown skin, and their giggling and laughter. When I woke up, I grabbed my laptop and started writing out what is the foundation of our brand today. And at Cheekbone Beauty, we exist to help every indigenous person on the planet see and feel their value while we're crafting sustainable color cosmetics. That obviously wasn't our mission vision statement in those early moments, especially just after that dream. But the whole idea was, I was a huge fan of brands like Patagonia and Tom Shoes. And even in my seafood career, I really focused on supporting sustainable businesses, indigenous led fisheries.

Jenn Harper:
And I really believed that there was a better way to do business. And what Patagonia and Tom's shoes were doing was this whole concept of social impact. And I thought, okay, I could create this lip gloss, which was from the dream at the time, and then use a portion of the profits to do something to support my community. Then entering the beauty space, and of course, recognizing that there's an enormous amount of margin that's not available in the food space, and I'm thinking, why not use this industry to do something, to do good in the world? And that was the whole original idea. Fast forward recognizing now I really have no business being in this industry with what I actually don't know. However, I think coming at it through this lens and with this new set of eyes and this focus on indigenous roots as the foundation of our brand, we really have been able to bring something unique to the space, this perspective that really hasn't existed in the beauty industry to such a large scale anytime prior. And so that's something that we're really, really proud of. But our roots are, I always say, really small.

Jenn Harper:
We've just been doing this. It's a very short period of time. I didn't go into this full time until 2019 because much like most people that have a dream, it was a side hustle for three years. And then we got investors interested in 2019. So that's when I was able to quit my job and my positions in the food space and go all in into the beauty industry. And so we've been here since we've been able to transform the brand into what it is today. But we're really open and honest about how we make and create products. And this whole concept or idea of sustainability really should be discussed through a version of a journey as opposed to there's an endpoint.

Jenn Harper:
I feel like there's so much incredible innovation happening in the world that it just gives us more reason to look for new ways of doing things and what we do. When I say we look at this through this indigenous lens, indigenous people have a different worldview from a western worldview, and it's quite holistic in the sense that we really pay attention to all things that are coming from nature. And there's so much nuance in this space. And so thinking about how our ancestors did things, why they did things a certain way, and really bringing back, just, like, indigenous teachings to the forefront. And the concept of success within our indigenous communities is really about how much you're doing for community versus how much you're attaining for yourself, which is really in opposition of that western view of, like, what can we attain for ourselves and our own families? Whereas indigenous people look at how can we actually make our community a better place to live in for everyone? And so we take a lot of these and build them and incorporate them into the brand. We even took my anishinaabe teachings, they're called the seven grandfather teachings, and used those as our company's core values as we were building out the brand. And so we're really just trying to think about. And honestly, when it was just me, I would think about things like, okay, what were the worst places I worked? And how do you do the opposite of what they were doing and having those kind of, like, crazy pie in the sky ideas.

Jenn Harper:
But fast forward to where we are today from that little corner in my basement, we're now available in 60 Sephora Canada locations, and we're available in 550 JCPenney locations in the US. And then, of course, from our dot com website.

Jennifer Norman:
That's amazing. Congratulations. Your origin story reminds me a bit of Beatrice Dixon of Honeypot, who also got her business idea in a dream where her grandmother came to her. She was having vaginal bacteria issues that would not go away. Her grandmother visited her in her dream, told her what ingredients to use. She worked at a Whole Foods at the time, and went to the store shelves, got the ingredients, mixed them together, boom, her vaginal bacteria was gone. And that was the start of Honeypot. And so I want to just pause for a moment, because a lot of women, a lot of humans, frankly, but we have dreams.

Jennifer Norman:
We have dreams which are part of guides or spirit or energies telling us and leading the way. And then we get in the way. We are like, oh, that's a stupid idea. We get into this feeling of, like, impostor syndrome, or that business idea will never fly. And you mentioned something which was, I have no business being in this business. You had no business being in the business as it was built, because it was not built for women. It was not built by people who were serving community. It was built by people who wanted to make money.

Jennifer Norman:
And that is very different from building business to serve. And so we now understand, yes, investors and money is a tool for us to be able to be of greater service. Patagonia knows that. Tom's knows that. A lot of the companies in the B Corp community and the adjacent B Corp businesses know that, because that is really what it's all about. I believe that the indigenous people know that.

Jennifer Norman:
It's that we have to be in harmony with nature. We are part of nature. And so it's criminal. It's frankly ridiculous for us to be exploiting and extracting and doing these things in our business practices which are not going to be sustainable. And so I wanted to just pause for a moment and recognize you and honor you for listening to that voice, because I know it came pretty much at a time of tumult in your life. And there were a lot of things going on just as you were learning about intergenerational trauma and just things that bubbled up and caused you to take inspired action after you had that dream, because a lot of people ignore that. And I just want to encourage our listeners and our viewers to take inspiration from what Jenn did. She got up out of bed and created a business plan, darn it.

Jennifer Norman:
And it started out small. And it's okay. It's really okay to not think that you've got to scale up overnight. A lot of that just happens on a whim. But if you are listening to your heart, you're listening to your soul, and you are serving from a place of in such integrity with who you are, that is really, truly living out your life's purpose. So just wanted to honor you, Jenn, for that part and for doing what you're doing to serve.

Jenn Harper:
Thank you.

Jennifer Norman:
You're welcome. Now, I know that in 2016, your family suffered a major loss, the loss of your brother BJ, to suicide. And you talk about representation and how that particular incident really just energizes you all the time to continue working to support the representation of indigenous peoples. Can you say a little bit more about that?

Jenn Harper:
Yeah. As painful and tragic and still extremely painful to stay, as the loss is to me and so many of my family members, I really see it now as this idea of you can turn your pain into a power. Because honestly, I don't think. I don't know for sure, because we can't go back in time. I don't know if I would have continued to go on through some of the hard times of entrepreneurship had I not had this really big why. And I know we've heard experts like Simon Sinek talk about your why and understanding it. And we really see in business how critical knowing your why is. And my why has been that idea of representation and some conversations with BJ when he was alive would always be about if any native person anywhere was doing anything cool, my brother would send me a message or a DM and be like, share this.

Jenn Harper:
Look at this person. Look what they're doing. Yay. And I recognize now after he's gone, that was his way of feeling proud of who we are and where we came. Know, because of trauma, many of us have lived in shame, struggled with identity. And it was when the show in the US called Reservation Dogs became very popular over the last couple of years. Amazing show. Pop native culture.

Jenn Harper:
If you're from the res, if you have family on the res, it's like the lingo. The ways that they're acting is just so much like our community. And these characters in this show started winning so many awards. So it was one evening, there was a red carpet, and I was like, oh, wow. If my brother was alive, I knew he would be sending me messages about this, like, going crazy over it, right? And I was like, oh, my goodness. I really recognized that it's because he felt seen, and that's why he would do that. He felt empowered by what our people would be doing, and especially when they were recognized on grand and media platforms stages. He felt very proud.

Jenn Harper:
And so when I started Cheekbone, I think that became a big. That is our why I want every indigenous person on this planet to feel valued and to feel seen. And that why hasn't changed, despite me having to always say things like, because people assume we were created just for indigenous people. And I'll use the reference of, like, Lancome was not just made for french people. Right? There's many brands that come from different cultural moments throughout history, but they are literally created for all humans, and we're in the same space. But I the had my own experience with this. I finally felt, I think, like, you know how powerful it is, and then you have your own moment where you actually get to experience something. Been saying representation matters for years, since starting the brand.

Jenn Harper:
But last year at Sephora, we got to do an event in-store. And I meet this family. They come in, and I was really working initially with Sephora clients, and I watched this family, who's also Ojibwe, come into the store. And they were there just to meet me. And there was a little girl and her little brother, and it was the mom and their auntie. I already felt so connected to them. And this little girl had the confidence and spunk that I couldn't imagine having at twelve years old. And so earlier that day when I walked into the Eaton Center, I remember looking up, and Sephora had paid for this huge billboard inside the Eaton Center.

Jenn Harper:
And it was our branded image and it was 'Cheekbone Now Available at Sephora'. And in that moment, I literally started sitting in the fountain on the lower level and sobbing because I just went back to my childhood. I used to go to the Eaton Center. I grew up in native public housing in Scarborough with my dad for a time. And for some reason, I would always want to go to the Eaton Center. I think just being girl loving stores and stuff and shop, shopping, and we would go. But I never had a memory of anything but being accused of stealing or my dad arguing with somebody about our native status cards. They weren't the best memories.

Jenn Harper:
And I thought about it driving home that night where that little girl and that little boy are honestly never going to wonder what's possible for them. Because unlike me, as a twelve year old kid, not having someone own a business that was in Sephora, that looked like me, that was Ojibwe like me, those two kids now met a woman who owns a brand available in Sephora, who looks like them and who came from the same kind of community they come from. So I believe that on this psychographic level, we as human beings, honestly don't understand till as of late, we're really recognizing the power of representation and how it really, I believe it will save lives. Because when you feel seen, you feel like you belong somewhere and that you fit in. And I feel like that's what our brand has been able to do. And on this idea of even if, even not just from a consumer level, another person, another woman starting a business, we could doubt ourselves for so many reasons. As entrepreneurs, we know that. But if we, someone looks to Cheekbone and I had this experience where one of the founders of a show on ABTN, she met me and she know, you have no idea how much you're inspiring our community.

Jenn Harper:
I met a young lady who wants to be the Jenn Harper in the lash community. Right? Like that. She was building a lash brand. And just to hear things like, I guess as the founder, you don't sit around thinking about, oh, but what a wonderful thing to hear, what a wonderful thing to have been shared with me because I really recognized after that, oh, wow, what a privilege that I get to help inspire people and see what's the potential for them. Because honestly, when people ask, how did this become successful? There's no real reason. I always just say, I don't have any special skill set. I just woke up every single day and did something to push the brand forward. So I always talk about consistency, and I think we have been led to believe by the systems that we live in and the systems at play that maybe none of this was possible for us because we hadn't seen it.

Jenn Harper:
Right. And was it designed that way on purpose? And I think we all know the answer is yes. So, however, at this moment, we're all here, people of color, breaking down barriers, doing things that have never been done before. And who knows who that's going to inspire along the way? And what an honor to be someone to get, to do that for somebody else.

Jennifer Norman:
Yes. Oh, bravo. Brava. I wanted to share how strongly I feel about your story and how it resonates with me as a Korean American who grew up ashamed of being Asian. I mean, I just, I went anywhere, I would always feel ugly. I would be embarrassed about how I looked. And then, strangely enough, I found solace, like, working in the beauty industry, it's almost like you gravitate to that which you don't have or which you want to get some validation towards.

Jennifer Norman:
And it wasn't until, I swear to God, it wasn't until K-pop became popular and K-beauty, I was like, are you kidding me? Korean is now cool? I couldn't understand it. I was like, Korean is now seen as beautiful. Oh, my God. And it all of a sudden. But this is what happens when you don't have representation and when the pop culture does not validate you as a person growing up, when you don't have that soul security and that inner strength and that self confidence in you, like some other people just naturally seem to have. And so, yeah, it's almost like this recognition, like, yeah, I do matter.

Jennifer Norman:
It's that ability to then be that role model for somebody else to recognize that they matter, and then the ripple effect of just pride. And the reason why you are successful, Jenn, is because you are you. The reason why is because you're true to you and to your experience and understanding that this is how I felt. I no longer want to feel that way. And today, you are perfectly poised to help and inspire the person that you once were. And there are millions of people who are feeling not seen and not heard. And that's what my podcast is here to shine a light on. And I'm so happy that you're here to share your story and to encourage others to be inspired by an indigenous way of being.

Jennifer Norman:
And in talking about that, I would love for you to share, because I know that you talk about the indigenous peoples being like 'the OGs of sustainability', which I think is hilarious and true. So I'd love for you to share a little bit about some of the practices and the values within Cheekbone that are reflective of indigenous culture.

Jenn Harper:
Yeah. And I chuckle because I made that statement because I'm always hearing, and this is no shade to the white folks, but just hearing their story..."I was in New Zealand and found this ingredient, or in this part of the world, or in this part of North America..." and I was like, you know, the indigenous people of that land know so much about that plant medicine more than you could possibly imagine.

Jennifer Norman:
I heard one fabricated story, and I know that it's true. A lot of companies will fabricate origin stories as their aha moments. And one was, "I was walking along the beach in Santa Monica, and I saw a plastic bottle on the beach, and it just shook me to the core. And I said, I need to do something about this plastic crisis!"

Jenn Harper:
Like, one bottle. If you go to Santa Monica, I'm pretty sure there's not just one bottle on the beach, and on the streets above.

Jennifer Norman:
I know, go on. Go. Just. I just. Go on.

Jenn Harper:
No. And that's why I think I made that bold statement and not, I really firmly believe this and I know don't like to like, I think, of course, I love my culture, but I know there's a lot of humans on this planet that really care about it as well. So I also want to preface by saying that I just think when I learned and started really connecting with learning about indigenous teachings, I was really just blown away at, oh, wow. And I was saying this to someone earlier because we were actually talking about the investment world and how indigenous folks right now are trying to reframe how they invest in businesses. Yet a lot of the models are just traditional VCs, they're just putting an indigenous label on it. But we're like, how is that different? How are we actually going to shake this model up? And anyway, I was like, I wish our people really were more documenters, because I know that there was probably a way when it came to trading in the early days of North America or places around the world. Like, I gave you this many pelts.

Jenn Harper:
Let's talk about in said many. Like, there was probably a way that it was done right, and so we were trying to dive into that a little bit. And so when I think deeply about just the oral traditions that were passed on, it's pretty powerful that they still exist. We still know about them, and how in so many of our communities, they're maybe not exactly the same, but they're very similar. And I try to describe it as, it's just like it's innately in me. And I know that as a young person feeling drawn to things that none of my friends were ever drawn to, or thinking about career paths and wanting to be, as a young person, a marine biologist, because I recognize there's probably so much under that ocean that we don't know about. And what if you can discover something? You know, what? Just so many things that I knew innately when I look back over my life, that I had always felt so connected. And I think the best story when I'm relating this to my own personal family.

Jenn Harper:
I was having a conversation with my father, and it was in the spring and he lives on the res and he was telling me that our cousins are coming over. And I was like, what? And what he was talking about at that moment was like the bears were coming out of hibernation and were the bear clan. And he was calling them our cousins because. And he wasn't chuckling even though I was. I'm rhyming off my actual human cousins. And he's like, no, he's like the bears. And I'm like, oh, okay. And I was giggling, but he was just very serious because they're family to us, right? That to him is like, there's no joke about that.

Jenn Harper:
That's just who we are. That's how we speak. And I just have never seen culturally, on a global scale, groups of people so protective of biodiversity. And we know that that article that came in National Geographic, that pointed out that indigenous people make up 5% of the global population, but they are the ones protecting 80% of the world's biodiversity. And what that means is I was like, okay, look at the headlines. When we had issues in the Amazon, who's protecting those rainforests? It's the Amazonian indigenous people. Who's protecting, or started to have protesting, when fires were happening in Australia? Like, the indigenous people were like, we told you this was going to happen because of this said reason. In New Zealand, in Canada, pipelines in the States.

Jenn Harper:
Like, it would be endless if we said we weren't the people on the front lines. And there's a reason. And it's because if you look at our oral traditions and our stories, the earth is their mother, right? I remember reading this incredible quote as a young person from Tecumseh who was like a chief and he was meeting some political figures as America was being built and they gave him a chair and he's like, no, I will not sit on a chair. I'm going to sit on the breast of my mother. He was going to sit on the ground, right? There's no chuckling after a native person would say something like that because it's like truly how they feel, right? You see, you go and show up at a powwow or for me, I'm thinking of a family event. People just take their shoes off and they're putting their feet on the ground. And I'm like, yeah, I don't know. And it's just this beautiful way of really honoring things that come from nature.

Jenn Harper:
And I just feel like there are so many things that western culture could learn in terms of how can we think more regeneratively? And even I'm talking about, we have so many beautiful, organic, natural brands, but are we over extracting and are we replacing the things we're taking? Are we just making roses because somebody wants rose water? Right? In the beauty space in particular, how are we doing this and why are we doing these things? And don't get me started on the essential oil industry, like how many lemons it takes to get 15 mils of. That's a little bit insane, right? And why in industries like that, in these multinationals, they create the more need and supply and demand and all of those things that now we're overusing and extracting all of these things for human consumption. And so I don't think it's easy, and it will never be easy to try to figure this out. Is there a way to think about things differently where it is actually less greedy? And that's the problem, because you mentioned it, it was like capitalism. It's money. And those are a lot of times who people have to answer to, to.

Jennifer Norman:
The point of business and conscious capitalism. I mean, I know that a lot of people are like, oh, you're being communist when you talk about anti capitalism. And it's really not that. I mean, I think that what it is is that we recognize and understand that money is important. It's energy and it's a tool, and it can be used as a force of good, but it can very easily cause dysfunction when it is prioritized over all, when growth happens at any cost. And a lot of dysfunctional. I've seen it so many times. I mean, I talk about it a lot on this podcast because I've worked for lots and lots and lots of beauty companies.

Jennifer Norman:
And it's like, without question, it always happens. You get to a certain point where it's kind of like, what are we going to do to grow year over year, quarter over quarter? What are we going to launch? How are we going to get people to buy more per basket? What are we going to do? And so it creates a culture of addiction.

Jenn Harper:
The newness thing in our industry is insane. The expectations are overwhelming.

Jennifer Norman:
The amount of waste, the amount of overproduction, the amount it goes on and on and on. And it's not just the beauty industry. The beauty industry is rampant. Fashion industry is rampant. And I know that a lot of consumers are waking up to this and know about conserving and doing more with less and whatnot. And I think that with your company, you are instilling all of those values that you know of because it's just like you wouldn't see it any other way. It would be going against you and everything that you stand for if you were to make something that wasn't regenerative or that had ingredients that were questionable. I love that you're able to really infuse all of the values of your heritage and of your mindfulness into your brand.

Jenn Harper:
Thank you. And we are really transparent in the sense that there's no perfect solution to this because I've sat heavy with, like, you're just making more products that are we a part of the problem? And then we talk about it as a team sometimes. Like, no, maybe we're forcing, because it's going to be the consumer that changes us, not any business, essentially, right? It's the group of consumers that are going to colomb and demand different things from the conglomerates, if you will, because we know they're the ones with all the control and all the power. So if smaller brands, and if that's the brand of the indie beauty, if it's our job to hopefully transform the big players, then I feel like that is change, right? Like it is change. It is slow, but it is happening. And when we don't get things correct. And as mentioned, I feel like there's just, I get to be a part of a lot of, and be in spaces where you're hearing a lot about innovation. And one of the projects that chiefone has been able to work on, it's really cool.

Jenn Harper:
It's extracting active ingredients from grape waste from the Niagara region where we're headquartered. But because of that, we're in some innovation circles. And I'm inspired and hopeful because these young people in these next generations, they really are really smart and they really care about things that matter, which as a Gen X. We were such just, like, terror. When I think about it sometimes, what a generation that was just so. Just overworked and just didn't think about any of these. It's kind of nutty, right? When I look back and think about our parents weren't even ever. we're latchkey kids.

Jenn Harper:
It was just such an odd place to grow up. But I love listening to my own children who are 18 and 21. And then I love hearing even high school students. They know so much more. And I'm very excited about what they're making. And because of our Cheekbone Beauty scholarship fund, we read through 350 applications. We're only able to give out ten this year. And I would love to give all of those kids a scholarship because they're all so deserving.

Jenn Harper:
But what they're working on, like PhDs, masters, careers in environmental justice and social justice. And our first scholarship, the young lady, Jody, is now a lawyer and practicing. And she wrote in her initial application she was moving back to community after getting her law degree. And she has, and I'm like, wow, that was the first year we gave it. So just seeing the potential of our community and the power of these really fueled educated minds is super hopeful.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. And speaking of the next generation, I thought that you could talk for a moment about breaking the cycle of intergenerational trauma, because I know that that had a deep impact on you when you researched your grandmother's experience in school. And I'm sure that a lot of people outside of the community aren't aware of what happened in terms of schooling back then, and then how that gets passed down into generations, and then how you were able to really just say, you know what? It's going to stop here. It's going to stop with me.

Jenn Harper:
Yeah. So in 2015, they released what was in Canada. They, specifically the government and people that had survived, residential schools. So residential and boarding school was a school system set up by church and state in North America. So in Canada and the United States, where these schools were created to get Native Canadians, Native Americans from all tribal and nations, to assimilate into a more European way of living and lifestyle. And what happened, and we've learned since then, is these were atrocities, really, like, horrific experiences for many First People, including death, which in many cases, I believe to be called murder, as they've dug up bodies of children around these schools all across North America. The last time I checked, there was, I think, well over 7000 bodies that were found in the last couple of years. And what that did is actually wake up, I guess, the world and North Americans to really understand that what happened to our families was really traumatic.

Jenn Harper:
And when I was learning about this, I learned this term, generational or transgenerational trauma. So recognizing my grandparents survived that, and now thinking back, I'm like, my grandmother was taken from her family at six, forced to live in one of these schools till she was 16. But what we know now as family members is that our families that lived through that knew that children were getting murdered. So can you imagine the fear you live in? So not only you're being physically abused, you'd be beaten if you tried to speak your language. And we know there was rampant sexual abuse in these situations as well. And so the trauma and that is then passed on. We know trauma can be passed on now. It's, like, in our DNA.

Jenn Harper:
And so I learned that it was passed on to my dad, my aunties, my uncles, and ultimately passed on to me and my brother. And the symptoms of this are negative. One, my alcoholism addiction, and my brother's suicide. Like, these become symptoms of trauma. Right. And violence in communities. And so when I learned all that, I realized as I was getting sober that, okay. And had this idea for this business.

Jenn Harper:
I was literally just thinking, like, okay, we have this thing. We can pass on generational trauma, but what about generational healing? Could that be possible? We're the ones. Okay, let's change the story. Let's change the narrative. And again, I had my career in food, and I thought if I could sell seafood, surely I could figure out how to sell lip gloss, right? And that was, like, the birthing of the idea and how I've been able to. Thankfully, I've transformed myself. Like, I was a really broken person for so many years. And I'm just so, so grateful because I feel like this has definitely been a second chance at life.

Jenn Harper:
I feel lucky to be alive because I was a functioning alcoholic, but I had a serious problem. So in many cases, I know people that don't survive those situations. And I'm grateful for a loving family, husband, children, and community. And now I'm grateful to be an example to my own family and my nieces and my nephews. And I'm watching around our communities, and I feel like people are recognizing the power of sobriety and making choices to choose a healthy lifestyle that doesn't include that. And what we're learning is what we can do when we don't have those things or those distractions. And so it's a really interesting time to be alive and I feel like for me, it's a privilege that I get to do the work I do. I get to wake up now every day and feel really good about who I am and the work I'm doing with the brand, but also especially the work within community, whether it's mentorship.

Jenn Harper:
Right. For me and other indigenous entrepreneurs or any of the work we get to do with youth and especially our scholarship end.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. And similarly, I feel the same way because you talked so boldly about helping to shine a light on things that happened in the past, and the world wakes up to it and realizes, oh my gosh, this is why. This is what happened. And there's empathy there, rather than saying, oh, that person's an alcoholic, and criticizing the symptom and that cry for help, frankly, or that embodiment of pain and anguish and suffering that you've endured. And it is not easy to lift yourself out of that and rise out of that and find a better way and choose a different way of life. And so my heart goes out. And I just congratulate you for recognizing that, for honoring us with your story and for really helping to create this path of intergenerational healing. And I know that it's going to help inspire so many others from here on out.

Jennifer Norman:
Jenn, I just want to thank you so much for being on the show today, everybody. I will put your information in the show notes. Take a look at Cheekbonebeauty.com. As well as all of the wonderful organizations and scholarship funds that Jenn is part of. Thank you for being part of The Human Beauty Movement. Jenn.

Jenn Harper:
Thank you, Jennnifer, this was a pleasure speaking with you.

Jennifer Norman:
Thank you for listening to The Human Beauty Movement Podcast. Be sure to follow, rate and review us wherever you stream podcasts. The Human Beauty Movement is a community-based platform that cultivates the beauty of humankind. Check out our workshops, find us on social media, and share our inspiration with all the beautiful humans in your life. Learn more at thehumanbeautymovement.com. Thank you so much for being a beautiful human.