Meet the Skin Experts Behind Viriditas Beauty

 

I know what it feels like to want your skin to disappear from the conversation.

My acne started in fourth grade. I was nine.

I still remember standing by the door at my Catholic school waiting to go outside for recess when Sister Bonaventure looked closely at my face and asked,

“What's this? What's this all over your face? Don't you wash?”

 

If the floor could have opened up and swallowed me, I would have considered that an excellent option.

By my teens, a good skin day still meant three or four conspicuous, angry pimples. Like most people with acne, I tried everything I could get my hands on: Clearasil paste, coal tar soap, toothpaste, Oxy 10, Clean & Clear, gallons of Sea Breeze. I thought that medicinal smell and stripped, squeaky feeling meant something must be working.

It wasn't.

 

I even wore Band-Aids over blemishes I had picked before going to school.

No, I wasn't fooling anyone.

I assumed I would eventually grow out of acne, but at 27 I was still breaking out.

 

Around the same time, two interests that had followed me for years began coming together.

I had always been fascinated by herbal medicine and holistic health, and while working at The Body Shop, I discovered how much I loved skincare.

I became a licensed esthetician in 1997 and opened Viriditas a decade later.

Over the years—and after working with more products, treatments, and complex skin than I could possibly count—I came to understand something I desperately wish I'd known when I was younger:

Acne isn't usually solved by finding one magical product.

Skin is influenced by inflammation, oil production, cellular turnover, hormones, stress, environment, the products touching it, and the condition of its protective barrier. Two people can have breakouts that look almost identical and need very different support.

That realization changed the way I practiced esthetics.

Instead of trying to attack skin into behaving, I became more interested in understanding what it was responding to.

That philosophy eventually became the foundation of what we now call the Viriditas Method: look at the skin as a living system, pay attention to patterns, protect the barrier, and make thoughtful changes based on what the skin actually needs.

My own skin is still acne-prone. That's part of acne that isn't discussed nearly enough. For many of us, “clear” doesn't mean permanently cured. It means understanding our skin well enough to keep it healthy and under control.

And perhaps that's why education matters so much to me.

I don't want anyone leaving Viriditas with a shelf full of products and no idea why they're using them.

I want you to understand your skin.

Because once you understand what it's telling you, caring for it becomes a whole lot less mysterious.