2022 Temple 30 under 30 winner CherRaye Glenn-Flowers, FOX '15, has worn a lot of hats in the business, tech and sales industries, but her idea for Brownce, a haircare app, stemmed from a passion for empowering the Black and Brown community, her firsthand understanding of a barrier in the beauty industry and the skills she learned while attending Temple University that have helped her create a solution.
As a transfer student, Glenn-Flowers was excited to join a large university with an international presence, a fast pace and rich diversity that would allow her to thrive. She immediately fell in love with the culture and worked diligently to immerse herself in any way she could, while also balancing internships, work, school and on-campus activities. While attending Temple, Glenn-Flowers joined the American Marketing Association (AMA) and the Professional Sales Association while also becoming a leasing agent for on- and off-campus student housing. She credits these endeavors with ultimately helping her find her path.
After graduating with a business administration and marketing degree, Glenn-Flowers used her gift for building business relationships to become a Penske Truck Leasing inside sales representative. However, she continued to challenge herself by seeking a career where she could utilize her technology, marketing education and analytical skills. She attended graduate school, earning a Master of Art in communication technology in 2019. At this point, she began working at a consumer insights agency where she took on the role of data analyst, working with large global retail brands and traveling to different countries for research. This opportunity led her to a fruitful career as a global audience insights leader and analytics analyst for the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation. While working there, Glenn-Flowers led the company's first DEI-based brand awareness research and became a leader in the Black pan-African employee resource group. Currently, she's positioned at an agency where she manages audience strategy and a tech product.
During the span of her career, Glenn-Flowers always dreamed of creating an app. She had the technical savvy to create it, and the vision of using it to continue helping historically marginalized people, but she needed to reflect on the purpose or problem she wanted to solve. While traveling in 2018, she pulled out her phone to find a hairstylist when she noticed something. "When you type in hairstylists on Google, it usually doesn't prioritize hair stylists trained to work with afro-textured hair or thick, coarse or coily hair," she said. "For centuries, our beauty has been minimalized, and we had to assimilate to European beauty standards by using heat or chemicals to straighten our hair. That becomes a problem when it isn't your preference but forced on you by society. We need more actions to empower the Black and Brown community to take pride in our natural beauty and easily find the resources to do so." For this reason, the name "Brownce" derives from the web analysis term Bounce (to leave a webpage without clicking anything) and the color of melanated skin, Brown.
Glenn-Flowers spent months doing market research to figure out the pain points for both client and stylist users and designing a user experience to eliminate them. She then consulted a mobile app development agency, built a team of engineers and spent a year building the app from scratch and "working out the kinks." She put her Temple education into practice daily. Her marketing and research classes helped her establish her brand and even though she didn't initially understand the relevancy of her "more challenging business classes" like risk management, legal studies and finance, they provided her with firsthand knowledge to navigate entrepreneurship.
"I would say all the business classes in FOX were very relevant and necessary. It was difficult, but it was worth sticking it through. I even use the knowledge I've learned in my Gen Eds, such as Dr. Kimberly Wilson's course on the intersectionality of race and society. Her class helped me understand how people in marginalized communities are affected in so many different facets of society that we have been conditioned to ignore. It enabled me to say, 'It is ok to be Black and not assimilate into a culture that isn't yours.' My core classes built the foundational knowledge to build this app and brand, while my Gen Eds helped me find the mission and the purpose behind it," said Glenn-Flowers
By 2021, her dream was a reality, but there were still several obstacles she had to overcome. Strict security requirements needed to be met as well as continuous bug fixing, all while marketing and launching the app. Brownce now helps Black and Brown people access professional hairstylists that understand their unique beauty needs. Clients can take a hair type and curl pattern quiz to receive personalized stylist recommendations or browse products within the app's marketplace. Brownce also allows Black and Brown business owners the opportunity to grow.
"The beauty industry, specifically for hairstylists, is a multibillion-dollar industry. Corporations often capitalize on that, so a lot of that money gets taken away from these communities. I wanted to create an accessible community for hairstylists to make money and gain clientele while building their empires," said Glenn-Flowers. Most importantly, Brownce and its features such as "ShopTalk" serve as an engagement platform and safe space for the Black and Brown community to ask hair questions or have conversations.
Brownce is more than an app or a platform; it's a brand that symbolizes the representation of diverse beauty and is an emblem that inspires and impassions everyone it touches. "My logo shows a Brown-skinned woman with a huge afro, and when I wear my Brownce T-shirt, everyone comments on it, but it warms my heart most when a child notices. I was nearly moved to tears because this young Black girl pointed to my logo and said, 'That girl looks like me!' That's important to me because when we were young, our Barbies had straight, blonde hair. We didn't even see our hair texture on magazines or television until recently," Glenn-Flowers said.
Brownce is still growing as Glenn-Flowers continues improving and implementing new engagement features. Users can now share their profiles with others and like posts in ShopTalk. More recently, Brownce has expanded beyond hairstylists to nail technicians, estheticians and makeup artists. Glenn-Flowers is also working on a YouTube page called "Brownce with CherRaye" so supporters can see behind the scenes, what it's like being a tech entrepreneur and learn more about the tech industry. She plans to continue creating a space where Black and Brown people can feel represented in a myriad of categories and an iconic brand that extends beyond the app and into people's hearts and homes. Want to learn about more alumni-owned businesses? Check out our Alumni Business Directory.