Sharmadean Reid

Sharmadean Reid graduated from Central St Martins with a First Class degree in Communication and became a brand consultant and fashion stylist for Nike, Asos and Arena Homme +. She started WAH as a hip hop magazine for girls in 2006 while still at university. She then founded WAH Nails as a side project in 2009.

WAH completely changed the beauty landscape with its millennial voice, feminist attitude and innovative salon space. She then wrote two books, delivered global pop up nail salons for 100s of brands, created a product line with Walgreen Boots Alliance and was awarded an MBE from HRH Queen in 2015 for services to Beauty and Women.

Alongside all of this she shared her journey by organizing business events for young female entrepreneurs culminating in futuregirlcorp.com.

In 2016, she opened an innovative salon in Soho, London, showcasing a Virtual Reality Nail Design app in collaboration with DVTK and a booking chatbot with Bowtie.AI and was curious about ways to push the service experience further through technology. In 2018, she founded Beautystack with Dan Woodbury and Ken Lalobo becoming one of the first Black women in the UK raise venture capital funding, from Local Globe and Index Ventures. Beautystack used visual menus and social network mechanics to convert clients to book beauty and wellness treatments. With a proprietary database of beauty service images, we believed that marketplaces should be driven by the community, not by ads.

The pandemic halted the launch of Beautystack and during the year of 2020, Reid ran a campaign to increase awareness to the UK Government on the Beauty Pro experience. She also provided content for her growing userbase in the form of business and professional talks, mental health support and books and cultural recommendations.