Her Story
About Marina
I've been in my current field of health and wellness for about two and a half years, but I've been in management leading teams for close to 8 years. Currently, I work at the Joint Chiropractic, where my role is primarily over our front desk wellness coordinators. Aside from back office administrative duties, my role is to coach the wellness coordinators, particularly in sales, though customer service is number one. But really, my focus is on having the influence over my team to be stellar employees and good humans all around. For me, it's about if you are a decent human, you can do just about any kind of role, because that good energy and the positivity and the willingness to do good work and help people, because that is what our job is about, that's what our company is all about, is helping others. When they're willing to do that, that's when they really thrive in that position. Before the Joint Chiropractic, I was at Closet Factory as a design consultant, but most relevant to my current work, I was at European Wax Center as a district manager for well over 4 years. During my time there, I had two locations that won national awards within European Wax Center for year-over-year growth, and out of about 800 locations at the time, they were number 1 and number 3 on a particular KPI growth. It was accomplished because of the teamwork, because they came together, they really pushed themselves to do better and work hard for them to reach number 1 and number 3. I am a licensed esthetician, which is how I got into the beauty industry. My main passion has been skincare, and I wanted to help people feel good in their skin, because I had acne myself in junior high and high school, and I know the struggle through it, and I know what it means to go from a struggling skin barrier to perfection, or near it. So I wanted to be that person that helped guide somebody into their best skin.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Marina
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to hard work, which my mom taught me. My mom is a single mom who raised two teenage girls, and child support was fairly minimal. Looking back at it, my sister and I, and my mom, we laugh because $125 a month was insane to receive as child support when we hear people get 800 plus or even more. So my mom constantly worked 2, 3, sometimes 4 jobs at a time. Partly, it was because I work hard because I don't want to be in that situation where I have to work 2 or 3 jobs. But also, because I saw how hard my mom worked, it was perfectly doable. She is my inspiration, my mother.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I've received is doing what you love. I'm not gonna say doing what you love and you never work a day in your life, that's not true. But doing what you love, you're going to be excited to do the work every day.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
My best advice would be to shape the person, not the employee, because our employees are people. They have emotions, and they're not robots. Yes, we have work to do, and they were hired to do a specific job, but there's a bigger picture to it. In leadership and development, it's not about developing a better employee, it's about developing a better human.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The biggest challenges are people seeing the value in their own health and wellness. This can go for beauty or medical services. I think not enough people are willing to do what it takes to take care of their own body. Part of it's beauty, no matter how you see it, it could be just simply taking care of your hair, it could be doing a facial, waxing, what have you, because it's not just about the outward of your body, it's also about the inward. Your inner self-work has to do with what you do with your outer self. I've been a huge fan of chiropractic care since 2017, and I just happened to end up in the chiropractic field. I say this to all of our new patients: you don't realize how much pain you're in until you're coming out of it. That was the moment I realized the value in chiropractic care. Mentally, I was able to be better for myself. I was more willing to take care of myself, because I was no longer limited by the things I didn't realize were even happening. Another challenge is AI and Dr. Google. I think it's hindering, because AI is not 100% accurate. Every medical professional will say that Dr. Google hinders us, because people will start off telling us they were Googling or asked ChatGPT, and I have to hope that they trust our doctors here who are definitely gonna tell them some different information.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
The values most important to me are respect, integrity, accountability, and empathy.
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