Aruna Ma­haraj, grand­daugh­ter of the first cos­me­tol­o­gist in Trinidad and Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of the Madame Ma­haraj Cos­me­tol­ogy School, holds her de­gree in Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Span­ish. She not on­ly spear­heads the school’s In­ter­na­tion­al­ly Ac­cred­it­ed Cos­me­tol­ogy Pro­gramme but is al­so a Make-up Artist and Hair Styl­ist. Aruna’s and the Madame Ma­haraj brand has at­tract­ed a fol­low­ing of over 70,000 beau­ty en­thu­si­asts on var­i­ous plat­forms. Af­ter 60 years of the school be­ing lo­cat­ed in south Trinidad, the Madame Ma­haraj School opened its doors in Wood­brook in late 2017.

In keep­ing with the theme of En­tre­pre­neur­ship and In­no­va­tion, Aruna has un­der­stood the im­por­tance of holis­tic health of mind, body and spir­it and its role in the suc­cess of a busi­ness. Aruna Ma­haraj has found­ed the re­gion’s first ever Beau­ty Awards Cer­e­mo­ny. This non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion’s mis­sion is to recog­nise ex­cel­lence and el­e­vate stan­dards in the beau­ty in­dus­try. The WE Mag team met up with the beau­ty gu­ru to find out more about her jour­ney in the beau­ty in­dus­try. Here’s her sto­ry:

In your ex­pe­ri­ence in the lo­cal beau­ty in­dus­try, what would you say is your biggest take­away?

The biggest take­away is that a cos­me­tol­ogy school gives young women a pos­i­tive ca­reer choice and an op­por­tu­ni­ty to put their en­er­gies to­wards some­thing up­lift­ing. I know the joy it brings when we see women look­ing and feel­ing con­fi­dent and noth­ing brings me more hap­pi­ness than to teach oth­ers how to ex­pe­ri­ence that joy al­so. We have in­clud­ed a mod­ule called ‘Life Skills’ in our Diplo­ma cur­ricu­lum which in­cludes train­ing on In­tra and In­ter-Per­son­al De­vel­op­ment, Goal Set­ting, Fi­nance Man­age­ment, Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Skills, Cus­tomer Ser­vice and oth­er soft skills need­ed in the world of work to­day. This to me, is equal­ly im­por­tant as hav­ing the tech­ni­cal skills or tal­ent to do hair and make-up, nails, etcetera. You can have all the tal­ent in the world, but if you don’t know how to deal with peo­ple, and un­der­stand your­self, then it can be wast­ed, and that breaks my heart.

What are you work­ing on at present, what is keep­ing you ex­cit­ed?

Present­ly, I’m work­ing on how to mar­ry In­ner Beau­ty with Out­er Beau­ty. For far too long the Beau­ty In­dus­try, both lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, has placed much em­pha­sis on the out­er as­pect of beau­ty, but I be­lieve that with­out in­ner beau­ty, out­er beau­ty will not shine no mat­ter how many lay­ers or colours we ap­ply.

What are some of your trea­sured mile­stones thus far?

Trea­sured mile­stones would be get­ting our Cos­me­tol­ogy Diplo­ma In­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised, open­ing the north branch af­ter 60 years of be­ing in south Trinidad, es­tab­lish­ing Caribbean Beau­ty Awards and hav­ing our very own Pro­fes­sion­al Make­up Brush Set and on a per­son­al lev­el, find­ing in­ner peace.

What is your biggest dream for your fu­ture?

I hon­est­ly have no dreams any­more and I know that sounds odd, but al­low me to ex­plain. I feel very blessed and con­tent­ed in my pro­fes­sion­al ca­reer (this does not mean new goals and new projects will not take place) but I would say my new dream now, will be to see oth­er young men and women achieve their dreams of be­ing suc­cess­ful in the beau­ty in­dus­try, whether they have passed through our cos­me­tol­ogy school or not, I just wish for every­one to learn how to har­ness their tal­ents and achieve their high­est po­ten­tial.

What’s your biggest in­dus­try se­cret you can share with us?

The biggest in­dus­try se­cret, on a pro­fes­sion­al lev­el — be open to con­struc­tive crit­i­cism. Too many of us are sen­si­tive when it comes to peo­ple cri­tiquing our work, but this is some­thing we need to train our­selves to be grate­ful for. We should not let our ego get in the way of re­ceiv­ing feed­back. This is CRIT­I­CAL to per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al growth.

What’s your best ad­vice to young beau­ti­cians that are up­com­ing in the in­dus­try?

I wish every­one knew how much pow­er they had with­in them­selves. I wish every­one knew that with 100 per cent fo­cus and ded­i­ca­tion, they can lit­er­al­ly achieve ANY­THING. And al­so not to com­pare. Com­par­ing your work and ul­ti­mate­ly your­self, with oth­ers (con­scious­ly or not) can hin­der your own cre­ativ­i­ty and growth. Just fo­cus on your­self.

Why do you do what you do?

I can­not ex­plain why I do what I do but I know the ben­e­fits of it, I know the con­tri­bu­tion it makes to so­ci­ety, I know the beau­ty it spreads and that makes me wake up every morn­ing, but why or where does this pas­sion come from? I can­not find it, it comes from so deep; I guess when God gives you some­thing, it’s al­most as if you have no choice but to use it and ex­e­cute to the best of your abil­i­ty. I can tell you one thing though, I have my grand­moth­er’s blood run­ning through my veins. This was writ­ten in our DNA be­fore we were even born.