We've been pulling up!

Something important is happening in the beauty industry and it's about time. As we have mentioned, it's important to keep corporate companies accountable for supporting the communities they profit from and we're not the only ones speaking about it. Founder of Uoma Beauty, Sharon Churter, has started an initiative called Pull Up or Shut Up, calling out big beauty brands to not only publish PR statements and policies about being equal opportunity employers for the Black community but to also show proof of their efforts with hiring Black and diverse employees. Brands have been coming forward with disappointing figures and, honestly, this is NOTHING to be surprised about.

When starting our brand in 2016, we realized there was a problem. While Latinas and WOC contributed and continue to contribute unparalleled economic power to the cosmetics industry, we realized there continued to be a huge gap of the Latinx and POC representation in product development, decision-making and overall company structure and culture.

While our brand is completely operated by two non-Black Latinas, and we don’t have any employees (YET), our mission has also been to create MEANINGFUL REPRESENTATION in the beauty space for Latinas/xs and POC community. And how does that look like? It's by hiring the communities we serve. ⠀

Since day one, we made it very intentional to work with only Latina/x, WOC and people of color-owned companies and freelance creatives to meet the needs of our company - this includes makeup artists, photographers, printing vendors, designers and more. We're proud of our numbers, as the industry average is 8% for Black employees, but the work does not stop here.

Lastly, as consumers, we need to be intentional about how we use our money. We need to consider which companies we support and know are helping create more equitable communities their actions and not wishful statements online. We hope this initiative brings industry-wide changes moving forward and we commit to continuing to work with diverse people to create a more inclusive industry, starting with our company.

We've been pulling up!

Reading next