ABOUT JENNIFER WALSH

Jennifer Walsh is a true visionary and architect of the beauty, wellness and retail landscape as the creator of Beauty Bar in 1998, the very first omni-channel beauty brand in the United States. She changed the way people shopped for beauty and wellness by creating a first retail powerhouse that allowed beauty and wellness shoppers to see and experience niche and independent beauty products in her brick and mortar stores, on her e-commerce website, and a weekly TV show. It was a first to market fully interactive experience in an open sell environment (not in glass enclosures).

Jennifer was thrown in front of a TV camera in ealry 1997. At the time, Jennifer was a sought after celebrity make-up artist and had worked on many of the most famous faces. She was told to just talk about what she was using on the stars. This one television segment led to another, and another, and it quickly turned into a weekly program. She began showcasing products that people hadn’t of heard outside of magazines, since department stores dominated the retail landscape for make-up and beauty with a limited assortment of brands. Jennifer quickly realized that her weekly show was garnering a lot of attention around these unheard of at the time, independent brands such as Bobbi Brown, Philosophy, Kiehl’s, Stila, Fresh, Mario Badescu, La Mer, etc. After a few months on-air, her producer didn’t know what to call her, so they came up with the title of, “On Air Beauty Expert” and this was Jennifer’s lightbulb moment.

She very quickly recognized that there was a huge opportunity to provide access to these now in demand niche beauty brands. She had an educational, sales tool that no one else had, TV. Jennifer already had relationships with all of the above mentioned beauty start ups, yet the viewers were getting frustrated, as why would Jennifer talk about these incredible new brands that people couldn’t buy anywhere. Suddenly, the Beauty Bar concept was born. She would go on to make use of the TV platform to educate thousands of people each week about these new exciting brands and provide a unique shopping outlet for those viewers, Beauty Bar.

Jennifer grew Beauty Bar over the next 12 years until she sold the company in 2010 to Quidsi, the same year it was acquired by Amazon. Since selling off this first business, Jennifer has gone on to create multiple beauty and wellness brands, and has worked with corporations to roll out products, help open stores and create a footprint for global brands in the US market.

Jennifer intuitively knew that her relationship with the beauty industry was deeply rooted in the natural world and how we connect to nature. Jennifer, always curious about how nature affected our wellbeing, began spending time with neuroscientists around the country to learn more about this link to nature and its effects on the brain.  She began working with companies that wanted to infuse nature into their corporate wellness programs, into their business practices, and as part of employee education. This not only meant creating the now sought after Wellness Walks with Walsh program and educating on the impact and importance of integrating biophilic, nature based solutions into cities, corporate campuses, retailers and homes.

The Walk with Walsh video series was created after her 20 years in front of the camera, where Jennifer tells stories not only in a new way (by hosting walking interviews) but to drive home the importance of what makes healthy leaders. She knew that by interviewing national leaders who are making impact, while walking in nature, those leaders would open up more, feel better and take back the importance of being in nature to their teams and their communities.

You can find Jennifer walking or running, she’s a longtime triathlete, in Central Park every day. You will also find her snapping pics of nature everywhere she travels, don’t miss her Instagram to see what landscapes are inspiring her today. As a consumate serial entrepreneur and lover of nature, there is a lot more to come.