Meet Erin Velardo of South OC

Today we’d like to introduce you to Erin Velardo.

Hi Erin, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Well long story long – I grew up in Yuma, Arizona. It is a blue collar, agriculture and military-focused border town (Cali, AZ, Mexico) on the lower-socioeconomic side. Early on my idea of a future career involved some sort of administrative/office job, trade school or working for the state because that is what I mostly saw around me. Work hard, live a simple life and don’t want too much.

Growing up and thinking about my future 2 things mainly came to mind – I knew I wanted to move to California / get out of Yuma as soon as possible, and I thought I’d be a teacher.

Yuma wasn’t a small town, but it was considered the big city in the region and it didn’t have any of the luxuries or benefits of bigger cities – we didn’t even have a bus system. I had been visiting my family in LA throughout my childhood. I loved how big it was, how one city melded into the next. How there was always so much to do – beaches, malls, Tower Records, Dodger games, Disneyland, museums, concerts – the possibilities were endless. and I knew that was where I wanted to be when I grew up!

I was always a pretty good student, especially at spelling and grammar and I LOVED to read. I got good grades, made honor roll, had a part-time job in high school, but I didn’t have any real direction (except West). Neither of my parents had a college degree, they got married and started a family at 18 years old. There were no conversations about college prep or planning. I just had this general idea that “I guess I have to go to college to be a teacher.”

My senior year of high school I took an elective class that was a teacher’s aide role at the nearby elementary school. I thought this will be a good experience for me to see what teaching is like. I was assigned to assist a kindergarten teacher; it seemed easy enough. Who wouldn’t want to work with a bunch of cute 5 year-olds a couple days a week? “How hard could this be? I got this!” I thought to myself.

I quickly learned that keeping 25 5-year-olds engaged is A LOT of work!

I was 17-18 years old, but the teacher assigned me meaningful exercises to do with the kids. One ongoing assignment was helping the students write one thing they did over the weekend – the idea being to help them work on spelling, pronunciation and grammar. So, many Mondays I’d take each student aside and I’d hear the funniest and cutest things, but 2 things became obvious quickly – 1. my witty responses and jokes were lost on this crowd and 2. these kids were literally just learning how to read and write, and I had a role in this. Overall it was a great experience. I enjoyed helping them sound out words and would be excited for them when they spelled a word correctly, but one day as I was considering my future it hit me: “If I were the teacher, it would be entirely my responsibility to ensure all of my students learn how to read and write!! That would be my job! What makes me think I have any business doing that? I’m not qualified!! What if I fail one of these kids and then they can’t read?!?! Maybe I’ll be a high school teacher…”

It’s important to understand that times were different then, there weren’t college support resources on every corner in a city like Yuma, and even if there were, I was very aware that my parents were not in the financial place to provide that for me. Also I don’t remember a college fair ever taking place for highschoolers, and I think I only met my high school guidance counselor once ever. I’m not making excuses, but rather painting a picture that my future was very much up to me. At the time, in my world, this felt pretty normal – I don’t remember any of my closest friends planning to go to university directly from high school. They either didn’t have the grades or didn’t have the means – I had to figure it out.

After graduation I moved to California and lived with the family I would visit as a kid. Being that my parents were not in a position to pay for my tuition and being from Arizona I would have to pay out-of-state tuition rates, I decided to delay college for a year to establish my residency. In the meantime I got a retail job and started making friends and exploring the LA night life.

At the time that my residency was established I was not really taking life seriously, I had a serious boyfriend, but generally I was just coasting and having a good time. I kept to my plan of registering for college, I was 19 years old and in my first semester of college when I found out I was pregnant. My first thought – well you can probably guess what my first thought was. But my next thought was an important catalyst in my professional journey: I have to get my sh*t together – someone else is going to be relying on me now and I can barely take care of myself.

I continued in school and working my retail job. I moved in with my daughter’s father and after my daughter was born I decided to pursue a more consistent “9-5” schedule and and got an inside-sales job. This was my first sales / administrative office job and it was primitive. But I took this experience and used it to get a sales coordinator position at the LA Daily News, newspaper. In this role I started to use some innate skills I hadn’t really used in a professional capacity – organization, project management, proofing, production.

I loved the job but during this time I was also going through some personal growth and changes – I was still in college, taking night and summer classes. I ended my relationship with my daughter’s father. I had to figure out how I would support myself and my daughter. It became clear quickly I wouldn’t be able to on the salary of a sales coordinator at the newspaper so I applied and was promoted to inside sales. I was able to use my proofreading and editing skills but I wasn’t happy or fulfilled.

During this time, I had started a new relationship with my now husband and we decided to move to Orange County.

I saw the perfect job posting in South OC – Production Coordinator for a trade magazine called The Aesthetic Guide. The role and responsibilities fit my skillset PERFECTLY. I understood publishing, I had experience in production, had proofreading skills, was organized and detail-oriented. I checked all of their boxes and the pay was generous, but upon calling about it, I learned that it was through a temp agency, AND the position had been filled. I wasn’t really interested in “temping” anyway so I continued on my job-hunt. A week or so went by and unexpectedly I got a call from the temp agency saying the position had become available again if I was still interested and available. Despite my hesitancy about temping I went in the next day for an interview and left feeling pretty confident. Later that day I was offered the opportunity for a temp to permanent placement starting immediately. That was in 2005! In October it will be 20 years since that life-changing opportunity was offered to me.

After just a month or so of temporary status the owners offered me a permanent position with the company with a comfortable salary and benefits. It put me in a position to be better able to support my daughter and myself if needed. After 9 months to a year with the company, it was decided that we needed a managing editor. I helped post the job, thinking I have some of these skills, I wonder if I could ever do this – “Nahhh, I probably need a college degree. I’ve never been an editor or a writer at all, what do I know about being a managing editor?” I thought to myself.

One day the owners asked me if I’d be interested in taking the position since I had all the skills they were looking for in a Managing Editor. It was a moment I still remember because it surprised me, and felt validating to be considered for this position with my limited higher education. The decision to accept that position was what really solidified the path that got me where I am today. It helped me see myself differently than I had before. It helped me realize that I possessed valuable skills and abilities on my own that could be further developed and harnessed for professional growth.

The parent company of The Aesthetic Guide also produced an industry event called The Aesthetic Show which was a conference and tradeshow. I was never really involved in planning or production of this event but I would work onsite in the Speaker Ready Room because I was familiar with the speakers, could recognize them and I was good at project management. It was a high-stress situation and I decided quickly that I was not a fan of live events!

In 2017 these businesses were acquired by UBM. By this time I was the Senior Editor of The Aesthetic Guide, but under the new management additional opportunities were presented that I had never considered – taking on the role of Publisher of the magazine, and developing an educational program for The Aesthetic Show.

Publisher was a bit easier to move into since I had 10+ years of experience producing The Aesthetic Guide by this point. I understood the ins and outs of our business model plus editorial planning and magazine production, but I had never developed conference programs!!!

Not one to shy away from a challenge, I gave it a try. I had an amazing editorial director at the time who helped turn some of my half-baked ideas into clearer, fully-developed conference sessions. The group manager and event team were impressed with what I submitted. However, very soon after we were acquired by UBM, UBM was acquired by Informa. This new company was focused primarily on live events and conferences. There was talk that the publications department, which included The Aesthetic Guide, would be divested.

My group manager came to me and offered me a position of developing the educational programming for all of our US events. My general attitude about live events at the time was still no thank you! But I wanted to stay with the team. At our next event I got the chance to attend sessions and listen to talks rather than be assigned to the Speaker Ready Room and I remember having a completely different outlook about live events. I was open to this new role, but I would not have my editorial director — she would be part of the publications business being divested, while The Aesthetic Guide would stay with The Aesthetic Show.

In the short time I had worked with my editorial director she had become a mentor to me. She opened my eyes to new ways of doing things, and renewed my drive in content planning and story development, and introduced me to the concept of content marketing. With the thought of losing her in mind, I had all those same kinds of thoughts again: “I’ve only built one program and I had my director’s support. I don’t really know anything about developing educational programs for conferences, this requires someone with way more experience. Why am I considering this???”

I remember talking to my group director and expressing my concern about being the right person for this. She responded with something so simple but impactful. She asked if I had always known how to be an editor. Of course my answer was “No!?” But I understood the implication. Once again someone else saw something in me that I wasn’t seeing in myself. It reminded me that I had a solid foundation of knowledge and experience related to the industry and key players from working on The Aesthetic Guide for all those years. And while developing the educational program was challenging I found I enjoyed it!

That brings me to today, in 2024 I made the very difficult decision to step away from The Aesthetic Guide to focus 100% of my time on developing educational programs and producing three leading US-based medical aesthetic conferences – The Aesthetic Show (TAS), the Aesthetic and Anti-Aging Medicine World Congress-Americas (AMWC Americas), and Vegas Cosmetic Surgery and Aesthetic Dermatology (VCS). The programs are intended to educate medical aesthetic professionals – from plastic surgeons and dermatologists to PAs, RNs, NPs, and other practitioners entering the world of aesthetic medicine. We even educate on the business side of running an aesthetic practice or medspa. The work we do helps improve the safety of aesthetic medicine and shape the direction of the industry.

While I haven’t finished college, I have benefitted from years of on the job training under visionary leaders and mentors. I have been lucky that they saw in me what I didn’t always see in myself. When I was given an opportunity I never said no and I didn’t waste it. To this day, I do everything I can to rise to any occasion and prove that a bet on me will pay off. When a challenge is presented I will find a solution. And I give my all to everything I do. And at the end of the day, I may not be a teacher, but I am still involved in education – continuing education – and best of all, they get my sense of humor.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
My professional and personal career paths have been far from smooth. It has been marked with challenges and difficult choices, but I wouldn’t be who or where I am today without these experiences.

Becoming a mother unexpectedly obviously threw a wrench in things. It slowed down my progress in college and affected all of my decisions. But when I think back I was never the person that knew what they wanted to do career wise. Choosing teaching as my future was more like settling on something rather than having this headstrong passion that I wanted to be a teacher!

I was both jealous of, and admired, people who knew exactly what they wanted and had a clear vision and plan on how they would get there. My husband is this person. Since the day I met him he’s always had a very clear idea of the career path he was on and the positions he wanted to hold. It was mystifying to me that he could so clearly layout his career path like that with such certainty that that’s what he wanted.

I always hated this about myself, and would wonder what is wrong with me. But over the years I’ve come to realize that maybe my not knowing, combined with unexpected motherhood at a young age, is what allowed my path to present itself.

However, as a young mother – and for a period a single mother – the weight of being the primary provider drove many of my professional decisions, sometimes at great personal cost to me and my family. I missed moments and events because I prioritized work. The choice wasn’t made lightly, I felt an unrelenting responsibility to be a provider. I realize now that because I didn’t have a college degree, I felt compelled to validate my professional worth through extra effort. I worked longer hours, took on more responsibility and didn’t speak up or stand up for myself at times I should have, believing that I was justifying my position and demonstrating my value. I didn’t realize the full impact of some of these decisions until later.

When I started working on The Aesthetic Guide, I had to learn a lot, but it required and utilized all of my best skills. It felt great to be naturally good at something. But the culture and management style of my leaders wasn’t really conducive to growth and development, or maybe I misread the room. Whatever it was, it always just felt to me like “just do what we ask.”

At the time I thought that’s easy enough – I don’t have to think, just do. But being a perfectionist by nature, when every mistake you make is not only pointed out but magnified it’s mentally exhausting! This, plus lack of any mental growth or stimulation diminished my drive and motivation to continue in a role that was “perfect” for me. I made a plan to leave, but I never saw it through because new management took over under the company’s acquisition.

As corny as it sounds, once management changed it was like my mind was a flower blooming. I remember my new editorial director saying to me, “Erin, if there is an error in the magazine no one is going to die.” It was an attitude I had not experienced. She wasn’t flippant about quality control, she just wanted me to understand that in the big picture this was not more important than all the great things we were producing and achieving.

I was asked to take on new roles and responsibilities, which came with a lot of fear of the unknown and fear of failure, but abilities and talent I didn’t know I had came out. Of course I had to learn new things, I’m still learning new things every day, but I felt like I was getting to spread my wings.

I also suffered from professional insecurity working alongside highly accomplished doctors. I remember being so afraid to be my authentic self because these were doctors, some of the most learned professionals educated at ivy-league universities and from some of the biggest and most glamorous cities in the world, and here is me, a rural-town girl at heart with no college degree.

I remember learning the term Imposter Syndrome and thought AHA! Now that resonates with me!! I’d question my legitimacy: “Why should these highly educated professionals listen to me?” When they’d talk to me about things I didn’t know I felt intimidated to say “I don’t know what you mean” or look “dumb”. I once shared this with a leadership coach and I remember her asking so sincerely: “What’s the worst that would happen if you said, ‘I don’t know what you mean.’?” It was another moment of realization that it’s ok to be human.

Our own internal dialogue can be so EXHAUSTING! But in my case, having people remind me we are all just humans trying to figure it all out, every single day, helps me to adjust my self-expectations and harness my self doubts and internal dialogue into a positive motivator that helps me prove my value through results rather than credentials.

Lastly, being in this industry for 20 years I have seen a lot of change. One of the biggest is the influx of live conferences and training events. The US market for aesthetic medicine training and education is SO SATURATED. Between association- or society-based national and regional meetings, international conferences, individual manufacturer training events, other non-association events and KOL-owned training events, if you really wanted to you could probably attend a conference or symposium every weekend. Creating cutting-edge conference programs in this saturated market brings its own challenges. There is a constant pressure to develop unique, high-value content. And despite my and my team’s significant dedication to creating the best educational experience in the industry you will always fail someone. We’ve taken risks – some of which didn’t fully “land” as intended. And every misstep, while it is a learning experience, still requires me to quiet that voice of doubt in my head about about my capabilities and approach.

Despite these challenges – or maybe because of them – I’ve discovered I actually like a challenge and I’m more resilient than I sometimes give myself credit for. I’ve learned to be more forgiving of myself and others and I’ve developed a passion for educational programming that I never knew I had. I found something that I actually like doing and my evolving perspective informs my work every day. The bumpy road has shaped not just my career, but who I am as a person.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I’ve covered a lot already, but my job is to develop and produce educational curriculums for conferences focused on aesthetic medicine.

Our job is to provide continuing education to medical aesthetic practitioners – plastic surgeons, dermatologists, cosmetic surgeons, nurse injectors, NPs, PAs even the practice managers and staff.

We work with some of the most respected and renowned key opinion leaders in the country and around the world.

Globally our group organizes about 13 conferences with B2B expo. I oversee the conference programming for 3 of the leading medical aesthetic conferences in the U.S. – the Aesthetic & Anti-Aging Medicine World Congress-Americas (AMWC-Americas), Vegas Cosmetic Surgery and Aesthetic Dermatology (VCS) and The Aesthetic Show (TAS) .

Our conferences are unique because they are not tied to any single specialty’s association or society. VCS and TAS were the first of their kind in the US. VCS provided the first cross-collaborative conference of plastic surgeons and dermatologists.

TAS was also “non-denominational” when it came to specialties, but we expanded the net to include RNs, NPs, PAs. It was also seen as a “show” or spectacle. It was completely out of the box! It was the first conference to feature transgender performers, welcome people like the Human Ken and Barbie Dolls, mainstream vaginal rejuvenation education and demonstrate vaginal rejuvenation treatment live, introduce The Aesthetic Awards ceremony, give unknown professionals a chance to be thought leaders – like I said it was a spectacle! But it was also blacklisted by some of the biggest KOLs in the industry and wasn’t really respected as a serious educational event. Since 2017 I’ve worked on reinventing the programming and a lot of those who boycotted TAS or spoke out against it in the past are now attending or speaking at the event.

Between my past role as guiding the editorial direction of The Aesthetic Guide and current role of developing educational programs, I am helping to shape the direction of the industry. Ensuring medical aesthetic practitioners are aware of current affairs in the industry – the trends, treatments and technologies that will propel the industry forward.

One of the emerging areas that I’ve been most passionate about is the idea of functional medicine within aesthetics. Looking at longevity of wellness, how internal health manifests externally for enhanced skin health, improved outcomes and prolonged results; feeling as good as you look.

While this collaborative approach was popular internationally I have taken an active approach to introducing it to medical aesthetic practitioners here. Known generally as “anti-aging,” and having this separateness from aesthetics, I wanted to educate our readers and attendees on the idea of combining anti-aging with aesthetics from the first time I really understood it. I am not sure if I really invented the term, but I thought “Integrative Aesthetics” as a segment and a term, captured the idea of an integrated approach that combined key concepts of anti-aging and functional medicine with traditional aesthetics to deliver a more complete, comprehensive care approach to patients.

We started introducing articles on the subject in The Aesthetic Guide and we were able to dedicate a generous amount of time to the subject when we introduced the AMWC brand to North America with the AMWC Americas conference. Introducing the wellness aspect has helped a broader audience realize it’s not just about “looking pretty”; it’s about starting with the best “canvas” that we can. Sure they can inject some Botox or filler but it’s not dealing with the real issues that may be going on beneath the surface. The topic and content have really taken off, becoming one of the most popular subject areas at our conferences with attendees asking for more information and education related to the subject.

There is also the ongoing issue among specialties about who is and should be performing medical aesthetic treatments. While there will always be a debate, one thing we all can agree on is that whichever specialty or type of practitioner is performing the procedures, they need to be well-qualified in the procedure or treatment they are performing.

And in the current environment it’s not realistic to just ignore an entire subset of non plastic surgeons or dermatologists. The reality is that many doctors are tired of the healthcare reimbursement game and are looking for a better work-life balance. Cash-pay, elective services like aesthetics is very appealing. So more and more practitioners are entering the space. If we don’t give them a place to learn and become skilled in these treatments and procedures we are doing a disservice to the community as a whole.

As easy as it looks on social media or television, these treatments and procedures all have potential risk and adverse effects. That’s why there is an entire show dedicated to the mistakes that can happen – Botched. And I take it very seriously. When a friend or loved one asks me about a treatment they want to get done or do, the first thing I think about is what can go wrong – even as unlikely as it may be. Sometimes we can become complacent because adverse outcomes can be so rare, but consumers and especially those performing the treatments should understand that nothing is without risk so it is a duty to be as skilled on responding to a complication as performing the original treatment.

I have access to the biggest and best providers in the industry and even I experienced a pretty bad complication from a very popular and seemingly safe aesthetic treatment. So I am extremely sensitive to informing on complications throughout the educational programs.

Bad work, or worse, serious adverse events reflects poorly on the entire industry and I feel I have a responsibility to provide the opportunity to anyone willing and wanting to learn, grow, develop and advance for the betterment of our industry as a whole and to improve safety in aesthetic medicine.

Alright, so to wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
Not that I can think of.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aestheticshow/# – www.instagram.com/vegascosmetic surgery/# – www.instagram.com/amwcamericas/#
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erin-patane-velardo-40263814/

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