Ep 53 Tomi Gbeleyi Founder of MFMG Cosmetics a.k.a Makeup For Melanin Girls

Meet Tomi Gbeleyi, the 27-year-old founder of Makeup For Melanin Girls. Winning headlines in Glamour Magazine, and Buzzfeed, MFMG Cosmetics was born out of a beauty blog that blossomed into a 170,000-strong online community, filling a void for women of colour. Just a year and a half in, the direct-to-consumer makeup line recently earned investment capital from the New Voices Fund – a Unilever-backed initiative designed to support women of colour entrepreneurs.

Tomi was driven to develop her line of beauty products at the behest of her loyal following. The best-selling liquid lipsticks boast “nudes” and “flesh” tones for every skin hue – and they haven’t gone unnoticed in Hollywood either. This fall, MFMG will enter the foundation category, with shades currently in development using never-before-used technology – which shouldn’t come as a surprise given her first life working as a woman in tech.

In this episode, Tomi recounts the reason she decided to leave that career to follow a completely different path. You’ll also learn about the young founder’s early life, emigrating to New Brunswick, Canada from Nigeria as a teenager (Jill and Tomi totally bonded over #eastcoastlife). Listen in to hear the deflating moment in Tomi’s modelling jobs that informed MFMG Cosmetics’s creation, and how she managed to create something so positive – and so needed.

Products mentioned in this episode: MFMG Glitter Palette; MFMG Liquid Lipstick in Flesh

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