How Isabel Alysa Went From Foster Care to Building a Tanning Empire

In ELLE’s Office Hours series, we ask people in powerful positions to take us through their first jobs, worst jobs, and everything in between. Isabel Alysa is a tanning artist and founder of the self-tan brand Dolce Glow. Her journey looks different from those of many brand founders—she grew up in foster care and worked odd jobs to get by until finding her passion in spray tanning. From there, Alysa built Dolce Glow, an innovative self-tanning brand that just launched a first-of-its-kind self-tanning blush called Blush Me. She has loyal celebrity clients like Kylie Jenner, Alix Earle, and Kim Kardashian, and also just raised an $11 million Series A funding round to keep expanding her brand. Below, Alysa talks about working as a janitor, tanning celebrities for red carpet events, and how she wants to give back to kids growing up in situations similar to hers through her new nonprofit, Foster to Future.

My first job

I was a janitor. I started off cleaning dentists’ offices and private schools. It taught me a lot about cleanliness, but being a janitor at 16 years old was pretty insane.

My worst job

Definitely being a janitor. I will never forget those middle school boys’ bathrooms. Never ever forget. Now anytime we have a gathering at our house, there cannot even be a hair on the floor.

What my early life was like

My biological mom had five daughters, and at the age of 7, I was taken away and put into foster care with my twin sister. My parents had addiction problems. I had almost died from a bleeding ulcer; I ate dog food to survive. I remember hitting and kicking the social worker the day they removed me from school because I felt like, no matter what, love is love, and that’s my mom.

Unfortunately, my foster home ended up being the most abusive place that we had ever lived in, and we were there for 10 years. I left it at 17 and started renting a room at a stranger’s house for $300. I worked dead-end jobs at the time. I started college for psychology, got myself into a lot of therapy, and then my daughter was born.

How I got into tanning

I was super young when I got married, and I got a spray tan for the first time. I’ll never forget the way it made me feel. I immediately felt better. Everything looked better. This girl turned up at my house and charged me $65. I only had $20 a week for groceries, and so I put in that $20, and my sister put in the rest. I kept thinking about it.

My daughter was born with a soy and protein allergy. She needed to be on a specialized medication formula that you couldn’t just buy at any store because her allergy was so severe. It needed to be a medicated formula, and insurance denied it, although it was considered a medical necessity. The crazy thing is, the formula was called PurAmino DHA. DHA is the main ingredient in tanning that creates a brown effect on the skin.

I couldn’t afford baby formula and started buying it off of Craigslist. You don’t even know how safe that is, but that’s all I could do because it was $50 a can. I went through four of them a week. Imagine having nothing, and now you get hit with $800 a month. I decided to use my last $2,000 to take a spray tan class. I knew nothing about the formulations or how they worked, but I just went at it. I tanned my husband a million times a day, and my sister. They were [covered] in streaks. I perfected my craft, started spray tanning, and in my first year, I ended up making over $100,000.

My work ethic

I was working full time during the first year and spray tanning at night. My husband would drive me with my daughter in the back of the car, and they would wait for me until 2 A.M. I had no choice. I didn’t have mom and dad to help me. I couldn’t call to get my phone bill turned back on or get groceries. I ate Top Ramen straight for years. I don’t look at myself as a victim. I look at myself as a survivor. I want to use my platform to continue to show [foster kids like me], “Listen, you don’t have to become a statistic just because you come from a generation of addicts.”

How I decided to start my own nonprofit

We just launched Foster to Future, which is [meant] to give back to youth. Foster kids are the first priority, but any youth that needs help. I left my foster home with a trash bag, and I didn’t have anything. There are not a lot of programs for actual foster youth out there. They will never go on their dream vacation. They have hand-me-down clothes passed on from three different generations. Most foster kids don’t break the cycle and make it out to do something. We want to provide them with the tools they might need, like tuition, backpacks, clothes, shoes, a trip of a lifetime, and any additional mentorship.

What it’s like to tan celebrities for the red carpet

Every event is treated differently. There are some times when they’re like, “Hey, she’s going to be in a completely sheer dress, so she needs to be really dark.” Under stage lighting, we know if [the tan is] not dark enough, it’s going to look washed out. I’ll always check in with the stylist or the assistant and say, “What is the goal? Is it a glow, just a filter? Are we going deep? Are we going brown? Are we going warm? What’s the celebrity’s skin tone?”

How it feels to raise an $11 million Series A funding round

I wasn’t just handed a check. I didn’t take my first big check until 11 years [after I started]. We did a small friends-and-family round a few years ago just to buy inventory because my husband and I couldn’t take out any more credit cards. We had to fund everything. This is blood, sweat, and tears.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.