I want to tell you something I have never said out loud in quite this way before. I am autistic. And for a long time, I let the weight of that — the fear of judgment, the terror of public speaking, my nervous twitching, the impossibility of eye contact — quietly convince me that I did not belong in spaces where people were watching. Spaces like The Skin Games.
In 2021, I entered The Skin Games for the first time. I placed in the top 10 in three categories. On paper, that sounds like a win. And it was — but I could not feel it that way. I had not earned a trophy. I had not placed in the top three. And when you are wired the way I am, when your nervous system already works overtime processing every social cue, every perceived slight, every imagined look of disappointment — not reaching that stage does not just sting. It echoes.
I left that season carrying something heavy. Not just the disappointment of competition, but the specific kind of grief that comes when you have put your whole self into something and the world does not hand back what you hoped for. I could have walked away. A lot of people would have. Instead, I dove deeper into ingredients.
What I Did With the Hard Feelings
Here is the thing about being autistic that not everyone talks about: when we lock onto something, we go all the way in. There is no casual interest. There is no skimming the surface. When I turned my focus to ingredient science after 2021, I did not just study — I immersed. Maybe I even drowned myself in the knowledge pool. I learned how molecules interact with the lipid bilayer. I studied cell permeability, transdermal delivery, and how active compounds communicate with skin receptors. I learned the language that skin speaks at a cellular level, and I learned to speak it back fluently.
For two years, I studied. Not because I was certain I would ever compete again, but because the knowledge itself felt like solid ground when everything else felt unsteady.
In 2024, I returned to The Skin Games. Top 10 finalist in three categories again. Still no trophy. I will be honest with you — that was hard. Two attempts. Six top-10 finishes. And still standing off the stage. There is a specific kind of resilience that gets tested when you keep showing up and the result does not change. When the voice in your head — already loud, already critical — starts asking whether showing up is even worth it.
But something had shifted in me between 2021 and 2024. I was not just competing with techniques anymore. I was competing with understanding me. The ingredient knowledge I had built was not decorative. It was the architecture underneath everything I did with a client. And I knew it. Even if no one else did yet. I was tailoring my written case studies to what I thought the judges wanted….rather than putting my true self into each case study.
I need to talk about this directly, because I think it matters — especially for any esthetician reading this who has ever felt like the way their brain works is different than others. Guess what..that is YOUR super-power. You aren’t like everyone else for a reason, but you have to embrace the differences with self-love and compassion. By honoring yourself, your voice, your vision….your future can change in ways you never knew possible. That mold you have been keeping yourself in (or comparing against) is actually holding you back from your own greatness and destiny.
Autism comes with real challenges. The fear of judgment is not a personality quirk — it is visceral and exhausting. Eye contact can feel physically overwhelming. Navigating social spaces where everyone else seems to have an unspoken rulebook you never received is genuinely hard. I do not want to romanticize any of that. But autism also came with gifts I did not fully recognize until I stopped trying to hide them.
The same brain that struggles in a crowded room is the brain that memorized thousands of INCI names, understood the nuance between a 10% L-ascorbic acid formulation and a stabilized ascorbyl glucoside, and could trace the pathway of a peptide from the stratum corneum to the dermal fibroblast. The hyperfocus that sometimes makes daily life complicated is the same hyperfocus that makes me an exceptional esthetician.
I had spent years treating my differences as something to manage or hide. What changed in 2025 was that I started treating them as something to embrace.
That same year, I launched SkinNerd Training. It was not just a business decision — it was a deliberate act of stepping out of my shell and into my power. Teaching other estheticians about ingredients, formulations, and skin science meant doing the very thing that terrified me most: being seen, being heard, taking up space. But I had finally understood that the knowledge I had spent years building in private was not meant to stay there. Sharing it was not just an act of generosity — it was an act of courage. And for the first time, I let my autism lead. The deep memorization, the pattern recognition, the ability to break down complex biochemistry into something teachable — those were not quirks to apologize for. They were exactly what made SkinNerd Training worth building.
The Season Everything Changed
For the 2025–2026 Skin Games season, I entered with a completely different approach. Not louder. Not more performative. Just more “me” than I had ever been willing to be. I tell people that “I let my nerd flag fly”….and it took me on a whole new journey.
I placed in the top 10 in all four categories I entered. At the awards show, I earned 1st place in Pigmentation, 2nd place in Open Medical, 3rd place in Age Management, I was named a Skin Games Legend and stood beside my peers on the same stage that had broken my heart twice before. I also received a Spirit Award. I am still sitting with all of that. Not because I do not believe it happened, but because the version of me who walked out of 2021 (with nothing but a bruised heart) could not have imagined it.
If you are an esthetician reading this — whether you have competed in The Skin Games before or you are thinking about it for the first time — I want to say this to you directly: The thing that makes you different is not your obstacle. It is your edge! The way your brain works, the way you see your clients, the obsessive rabbit holes you fall down when you find an ingredient that fascinates you — that is not too much. That is exactly enough. That is, in fact, everything. Fear of judgment will always be there. I have not found a way to outrun it. I have simply decided that what I have to offer is more important than the fear of being seen.
We spend so much energy in this industry trying to fit a mold — the polished presenter, the effortlessly confident competitor, the person who makes small talk easily and holds eye contact without flinching. And in doing so, we sometimes hide the very things that make us extraordinary practitioners…. Our brain!
I am not asking you to be fearless. I am asking you to show up anyway. Face the fear head-on, but be your most authentic self throughout the process. This industry needs your specific kind of brilliance. Your clients need it. And honestly? The Skin Games stage is big enough for all of it.
GAME ON!!!!