Hi. This is Paul Zellizer, and welcome to the Awarepreneurs podcast. On this show, we dive deep into wisdom from some of the world's leading social entrepreneurs. Our goal is to help increase your positive impact, your profitability, and your quality of life. Before we get into today's topic, I have one request. If you could hit subscribe and do a review on your favorite podcast app, It helps more people hear the message of these amazing guests that give us their time. So please go hit subscribe and do a review. And today, I am thrilled to introduce you to Megan Young Gamble, and our topic is the intersection of beauty, packaging, and sustainability.

Let me tell you a little bit about Meghan. Meghan is a packaging and product management consultant with over 10 years of experience turning ideas into standout consumer products for top beauty, wellness, and personal care brands. Known as the Project ExecutionHER, I like that. That's awesome, Megan. Megan transforms your company's pain points into custom solutions, manages your project from start to finish, and brings a 360 degree perspective on packaging and product development. Megan Young Gamble, welcome to the show.

Paul, thank you so much for having me, and hello, Awarepreneur listeners. Glad to be here with you all today.

We we got some things to talk about. And and one of the things I wanted to check-in with you, Megan, we're gonna get into the sustainability part, but but why the beauty industry? Like, what's what's the sense of connection there for you?

Well, it's a funny story, to be honest. I did not go to school for beauty. I did not think that I would even be working in the beauty industry. My background was supposed to take me with a chemistry degree into pharmacy. And so, unfortunately, I did not go into pharmacy.

Linear pharmacy to beauty. Yeah. That makes total sense.

I know. Right? But it's it's been quite some detours, to be honest, Paul, in reference of how I got into the beauty industry. So since I decided not to go to pharmacy, go to pharmacy school, pursue that as a career and pursue in pharmacology research, it really had me go back to the drawing board. This was in 2009, graduated college, and this is also the time where we had the recession going on at that time. And full circle, we're back in and out again. But nevertheless, at that time, I was really assessing how I'm going to really use my undergrad degree in chemistry. And so thanks to some mentors and a lot of detours and such, at that time, my boyfriend, who's now my husband, referred me to work at Enterprise Rent A Car, went through various management programs, transitioning the company and hit a plateau of how I could really get to that point. And so I ended up becoming certified as a project management professional, PMP.

And from there, after I earned my PMP, I applied for a job at a local health and beauty company based in Atlanta. And ironically it was in the building right next door to where I was working.

So I

was like, you know what? This is a sign that I'm supposed, this is supposed to be for me. Well, when I went for the interview, for the beauty company, did 2 interviews hired on the spot from the CEO and did not realize all the various semantics and technicalities there were in the beauty space until I immersed myself in there working as a project manager. So talking about eyes wide open, it was just that. And so as I really immersed myself as a project manager for a beauty company, became senior project manager, went up the ranks in corporate. I decided to be bold and go independent January 23rd, 2020. Then we all know what happened in March, 2020.

You have an impeccable sense of timing, Megan.