Tracee Ellis Ross’ commitment to exalting Black beauty through her hair care brand, Pattern Beauty, is one she spent years ensuring wouldn’t wander away in translation. And it hasn’t. Here, the actor/entrepreneur discusses the facility of a story-backed product, and the worth of harnessing community as a core collaborator.

What has your trajectory been like in beauty?

It’s been an enormous growth curve. Pattern was 10 years within the making from once I first wrote the brand’s pitch to after we ended up on shelves, and the largest thing that happened in those 10 years was that I honed my vision; I got very specific about what I desired to do, and clear about find out how to articulate that. Since launching in 2019, it has been like being in business school — it’s been boots on the bottom, learning what it means to be the [chief executive officer] and founding father of an organization, find out how to stay true to my vision and the integrity of the brand inside an industry that doesn’t at all times receive and understand Black-owned businesses, particularly those which can be centered across the celebration of Black beauty.

What’s one thing about founding and constructing a female-led business no one tells you?

I actually have been a girl marching to my very own drum throughout my profession even prior to being a CEO and founder, so navigating that aspect of this journey and the way people reply to me as a girl isn’t any longer on the forefront of what I’m breaking through, because I feel like that, sadly, is just a part of being a girl on the planet. It’s not a simple thing to create a business that’s each lucrative and intentional; that a part of the journey has been very fulfilling, because I feel like with every step that I take, it opens up more real estate for a female-founded business, and for businesses that commemorate Black beauty.

What steps are you taking to make sure women’s voices are heard inside your organization?

The steps that I’m taking are that every one voices are heard, and that ladies have a seat on the table: Of the 17 designated employees of Pattern, we could be 90 percent women. It’s also about listening to the buyer; there’s form of a built-in exchange between them and the interior culture of the corporate; there’s a listening that happens, each to who we serve, and to the team that’s creating the products.

You once said you might be “learning each day to permit the space between where I’m and where I need to be to encourage me, and never terrify me.” What, for you, has been the magic of constructing Pattern Beauty? 

That we remained true to my original mission and vision, feels magical to me. Which you could, in actual fact, construct a beauty company that will not be nearly sales but in addition empowering, and celebrating, and bringing joy; that I actually have built a business that requires all of us to lean in with our hearts and never just our minds in service of the curly, coily and tight-textured community — that North Star is the magic of what we do.