Tekeira Atkins start­ed learn­ing how to style hair at a very young age from her moth­er who is a hair­styl­ist. As­sist­ing her moth­er with her clients made it easy for Tekeira to learn dif­fer­ent braid styles. Dur­ing her sec­ondary school years she of­ten braid­ed her own hair, but lit­tle did she know, she was on her way to mak­ing a ca­reer out of it.

Tekeira al­ways loved fash­ion and mod­el­ling, so styling her own hair was sim­ply an at­tempt to com­plete the look. How­ev­er, in Sixth form she be­gan braid­ing her friends’ hair as a hob­by un­til she even­tu­al­ly made her busi­ness ac­count on In­sta­gram, not know­ing what the out­come would have been. She start­ed with rough­ly one client per week but over time that num­ber mul­ti­plied then tripled and the rest is his­to­ry.

Cur­rent­ly, Tekeira spe­cialis­es in braid­ing styles such as box braids, knot­less braids, Bo­ho/god­dess braids, pas­sion twist, spring twist, and dread­locks hair­styles where she in­ter­locks, twists and styles nat­ur­al locs and in­stalls loc ex­ten­sions. This young en­tre­pre­neur has proven that any­thing is pos­si­ble once you just get start­ed (with it). Check out our in­ter­view with Tekeira and what she had to share:

What is one thing your clients can re­al­ly count on you for and what are you best known for in your pro­fes­sion?

My clients can count on me for my pro­fes­sion­al­ism and con­sis­ten­cy in the hair­styles they get each time. I’m known for my fun and friend­ly per­son­al­i­ty. Al­so, they can be as­sured that af­ter get­ting their hair done, they will feel even more con­fi­dent and beau­ti­ful as be­fore.

Who or what are you in­spired by?

Steve Har­vey is one of my biggest in­spi­ra­tions. One thing he said, and it stayed with me was, “Your gift will make room for you”. This is a verse in the Bible and I al­ways re­mind my­self of it every day, to en­sure that I stay fo­cused on my dreams and goals and know that my gift will al­low me to en­ter rooms and reach places that I have not even dreamt about.

Tell us about three best achieve­ments in your life or pro­fes­sion.

I have grad­u­at­ed with ho­n­ours in Civ­il En­gi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies this year. While do­ing this de­gree, I styled hair part-time, which start­ed as a fi­nan­cial means to as­sist me through school but end­ed as a full-time busi­ness and some­thing I’m very pas­sion­ate about.

Two years ago, I reded­i­cat­ed my life to Je­sus Christ and this is where I have found my pur­pose and pas­sion. I am grate­ful for his mer­cy and grace over my life, and I am hap­py to share his love and word with my clients every day.

I had the plea­sure of work­ing with pub­lic fig­ures in Trinidad; one of Machel Mon­tano’s dancers, Marz and so­ca artistes, De­stra Gar­cia and Nailah Black­man.

What’s a 2019 hair­style you ab­solute­ly love and why?

I’ve ven­tured in­to two hair­styles for 2019 that I love dear­ly; Knot­less braids and Bo­ho braids. Knot­less braids are braids that have no loops or knots at the start of the braid which gives it a more nat­ur­al look, com­pared to the tra­di­tion­al box braids. The Bo­ho braids are box braids with curly ends. This look gives the per­son a very trop­i­cal and ex­ot­ic look which my clients loved for the Ju­ly/Au­gust va­ca­tion.

What is the biggest chal­lenge you have to face as a hair­styl­ist in the lo­cal beau­ty in­dus­try?

Cur­rent­ly, there are a lot of peo­ple start­ing their hair styling busi­ness­es at home and us­ing so­cial me­dia to ad­ver­tise, which makes the in­dus­try very sat­u­rat­ed. How­ev­er, this en­cour­ages me to be the best that I can be and to per­fect my craft.

What are the three to four hair care/style tips that you can give to us?

Af­ter re­mov­ing your braids, comb out your hair be­fore wash­ing it to pre­vent ex­ces­sive break­age and loss of hair.

When oil­ing your hair, en­sure that the hair is damp to main­tain the mois­ture of the oil.

For per­sons with dread­locks, do not twist your hair tight­ly. Tight main­te­nance of dread­locks will cause your hair­line to re­cede and dam­age your hair fol­li­cles.

In­sta­gram: @tekeirastyles