Maisie and NAILS executive editor Hannah Lee chill out by the classic 1956 Chevy BelAir used for the photo. shoot.

Maisie and NAILS executive editor Hannah Lee chill out by the classic 1956
Chevy BelAir used for the photo. shoot.

 

Maisie Dunbar, owner of M&M Nails & Wellness Center in Silver Spring, Md., has been on my potential cover tech list for quite some time. (She last did the nails for the October 2000 cover.) She always calls when she’s going to be in the Los Angeles area to see if I have any shoots coming up. Fortunately, this last time she called, it was perfect timing because we needed to set up a shoot for this month’s cover and polish preview.

Cover tech Maisie Dunbar shaped and filed our model’s nails in the studio before we all moved to our outside location.

Cover tech Maisie Dunbar shaped
and filed our model’s nails in the
studio before we all moved to our outside
location.

Maisie is a busy lady — she was staying in Los Angeles between The Salon Association (TSA) Symposium in San Francisco and Creative Nail Design national educator training in San Jose. Besides owning, running, and working daily in her salon, she is also a Creative educator and still finds time to do nails for photo shoots and get involved in industry associations. (She regularly participates in the Professional Beauty Federation’s Welcome to Our World event where industry professionals volunteer on Capitol Hill to educate Congress members about the professional beauty industry.) Oh, and she’s also a full-time mom to her 16-year-old son.

Growing up in Liberia, West Africa with a family of entrepreneurs helped Maisie understand how she wanted to run her own business. A nail tech for 12 years, she worked in a salon for one year, before quickly realizing she needed to open her own business.. M&M Nails & Wellness focuses on total body wellness and holistic treatments. Maisie’s business is successful because she knows how she wants things done — down to how the towels are folded in the bathroom — and she takes the time to train and educate her employees. She often acts as a mentor and uses students apprentices in he

r salon.

For reprint and licensing requests for this article, Click here.

Read more about