This is my fifth Gemstones piece, a blog post featuring people who lead with an open heart and work to uplift others. I’m honored to have the chance to introduce you to the work of Balandra Fregoso.

You are the Executive Director of Parent Services Project, a social worker, and a mother of two boys.  And in your parallel life, you are a consultant with Beautycounter doing work around safe cosmetics. Tell me about your decision to add that to your already full plate?

I started a side business with Beautycounter in November 2019, a company based in Los Angeles, whose mission is to get safer products into the hands of everyone.  Before I started working as a consultant, I’d been using their products for three years. I’ve really loved working with Beautycounter because they are not just about selling personal care products, they are about health and education. 

The Beautycounter mission has three parts:

• Education
• Advocacy
• High quality, high performing products

Because of my social work background and interest in health and well-being I’ve found this very satisfying because I get to educate folks and make real change.  Just today I got an email that the California Toxic Fragrance Chemicals Right to Know Act has been unanimously passed and that happened in large part because of Beautycounter and the 50,000 consultants all over the U.S and Canada.

What do you want folks to know about this work?

Part of the way I reach out and focus on the education piece, is to let people know that the U.S. had not (until August 2020) passed a bill re: the safety of beauty products since 1938.  When I first learned this, I was horrified.  

Companies have over 80,000 ingredients they can use in creating their products.  The Safer Fragrance Bill is so important because fragrance is really tricky.  If you look at your hand soap or body wash and read the ingredients, you’ll see the word “fragrance.” Fragrance is a trade secret and that means that companies don’t have to disclose the ingredients in fragrance, which could include things like lead and formaldehyde, which if we knew about, we would not put on our body.  

One of the many things that sets Beautycounter apart as a company is that we’ve banned more than 1,800 harmful or questionable ingredients from our products.  That’s important because there are many studies that link heavy metals and toxic chemicals to various diseases and not a day goes by when you don’t hear of someone having cancer or an auto immune diseases where the diagnosis about the root cause remains undetermined or inconclusive.

My interest in food and health is connected to this work because if I am going to be aware of not eating gluten, sugar, or other potentially damaging things I put in my body, I also have to be aware of what I put on my body.

What are some ways you recommend for people to learn more about safe products and how to assess whether they are using them?

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) has a skin deep database and they evaluate over 10,000 products for health and safety.  

You can download the free EWG Healthy Living app, a great resource that you can use at home or in the store to scan products and find out more about their safety rating.  If a product is not in the database, that could mean the company has not given permission for its ingredients to be listed.  That is a cause for concern.

On the app there are three color ratings:  green/yellow/red, each of which contains more data on each ingredient listed on the product.

You can also download the Social Mission Report published by Beautycounter

Beautycounter is conscious about not using child or slave labor, thinking about the environment, putting everything into glass, and offering more refillable products.

Tell me what you love about working as a Beautycounter Consultant and how readers can contact you.

Beautycounter gives me the education and information I need to talk more about this issue.  I think of myself as a “promotora” (Latina peer health educator).  I tell folks, “you might want to think twice about that sunscreen…”, b/c sunscreen is a widely used product that people often don’t think about as something that could be harmful.

Working with Beautycounter is another fun way I feel I can make an impact in improving the health and well-being of people’s lives.

People can look on my website and get more information.

I also do pop-ups.  Kind of like a modern-day Tupperware party, but more fun.  Before Covid-19, they were in-person gatherings and friends would host and invite friends.  I’m now hosting ZOOM pop-ups.  It’s fun.  You can invite friends and family who don’t live in the area and the hostess gets a few thank you products.  

I also post on Instagram (abfregoso) and Facebook.

What’s the biggest change you have made in your life as a result of getting involved in this work?

One thing that being involved in Beautycounter has done is bring more self-care into my life.  Through this work I’ve connected to other women who are committed to getting these products into the hands of other people.  I now take pride and enjoy my morning self-care ritual and that self-care piece was really missing in my life, especially as the mom to two young boys. 

Also, the advocacy is a big piece of the work and companies are having to step up their game as they see people responding to Beautycounter’s mission and consumers demanding more transparency.  

As a social worker I’ve always been involved in community organizing and social justice work and this is another way I can use my voice and skills to help people take care of their work.  Studies have shown that some of the cosmetic products marketed to women of color, such as skin lighteners, dyes, hair relaxers, and nail polish, contain some of the most concerning chemicals used in cosmetics, including known hormone disruptors and carcinogens. 

One of my personal missions is to focus my efforts and outreach to women of color because it’s important.

If someone is reading this and thinking, they want to get more involved, how can they do so?

One of the best ways to advance the mission is to join Beautycounter as a consultant.  For anyone that feels compelled to get more involved, I’d be happy to have that discussion.  Just reach out to me at bfregoso@gmail.com

What else are you doing these days?

I am the Executive Director of Parent Services Project and we’re celebrating our 40th anniversary, which is a big deal because the founder Ethel Seiderman’s vision is stronger than ever and I’m trying to move it forward in this COVID world.  I’ve been at Parent Services Project for five years.  I am also a mom of two boys doing distance learning and still trying to hold on to self-care by making time for myself.  

I’m writing this post between Labor Day and Mexican Independence Day , two holidays that oddly converged in my life in 1988.  

Labor Day makes sense to me.  I’ve always worked.  I got my first job delivering papers a few years after my parents’ divorce, sometime around 12 years old.  It was clear to me then, as it is now, that if I wanted money, which was in short supply in my house, I’d have to get a job.  After that, I worked as a waitress at the Purple Pickle, behind the counter at Dunkin Doughnuts, giving out free samples at Yogurt Delight, as a hostess at Villa Roma Pizzeria, selling men’s French and Italian clothing at Papillion, as a camp counselor for developmentally disabled adolescents, selling women’s high-end lingerie at Le Printemps, and a cocktail waitress at Kutchers in the Borscht Belt.  That was all before college.  I then worked every semester and summer during undergrad and two out of my three years at law school. Given all this, it was odd for me to move to Mill Valley later in life and have moms ask, “Do you work?”  I sincerely had no idea what the alternative was.

Despite having had many jobs, leaving each job was unremarkable, with one exception.  

It was my first job after graduating law school, $60K in debt from the loans I’d taken out to pay tuition.  I figured I could work making the big bucks for two years and then find my dream job in the social justice world.  I remember sharing my deep reservations about working at a corporate law firm with a college friend.  

 “What are you scared of?” he asked.

“That I’ll lose myself.”

“Don’t worry about that.  If you lose yourself, you’re not who you think you are, so it won’t matter.”

I accepted an Associate position at a corporate law firm located on San Francisco’s Embarcadero.  

The experience was mind-numbing.  My daily bookends became a morning Cinnabon and an evening vodka grapefruit. Nestled in between were cookies and sandwiches from Specialty bought to feed the new Associates at our weekly gatherings.  I worked on construction defense, tobacco litigation, and failed Savings and Loan cases.  My output was unimpressive, I was uninspired.  After a mere forty-five weeks there, my spirit dulled, I knew I could not last a full year.  

I gave a month’s notice mid-August. My last day would be Friday, September 16, 1988.  I had no idea where I’d go or how I’d make a living.  People began to ask about my plans.  When I shared I had none, they balked. 

Clarity is a beautiful thing when you have it.  I was steadfast in my vision that my only goal in life was to extricate myself from the hell of representing tobacco companies in wrongful death litigation while sitting at a long table with colleagues chain-smoking cigarettes.  (Yes, in 1987 and 1988, that was legal).  Beyond exiting, nothing mattered.  

On my last day, as I walked the halls at 5 pm to say meager goodbyes, I passed an office where several men were sitting around in a somewhat festive spirit.  I poked my head in to bid adieu and they waved me in.  

“Come have a shot of tequila. It’s Mexican Independence Day!”

Had I any fears about my future, that moment erased them all.  Even though I sadly did not know much about the history of Mexican Independence, I was sure that the Mexican people who fought and died in battle weren’t imagining a group of white corporate lawyers sitting around doing shots of tequila to commemorate the blood and sacrifice of their struggle.  

I declined the offer.  They insisted.  I insisted they not insist.  I hadn’t lost the me I thought I would:  she was here taking me by the hand to the elevator to descend to the ground floor.  

Ciao, Adios, See Ya! I left.  To this day, that is one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.  

Here’s one site to learn more about Mexican Independence Day.  The fact that their struggle parallels with today’s battles for equity won’t be lost on you, and may you never be lost on you either.

Photo credit: rawpixel.Fotolia