A black makeup toolkit is pulled from a suitcase and set on a desk.

Once it is opened, a colorful assortment of products organized in pockets such as brushes, face and eyeshadow primers, facial moisturizer and hair clips are ready to use.

An El Camino College student sits on a salon chair in the college’s cosmetology department. A black makeup cape is draped over her and a tissue is wrapped around her neck.

Yuika Nakai, 25, a cosmetology major, is asked if she is comfortable in her current position. She says “yes” and nods her head with glee.

She is now ready for a makeover.

Sofia Mera, 30, a cosmetology and psychology major, wears her custom-made black apron with “The hairapist is in” written on the front in gold and white letters, as she grabs her first product. She begins preparing Nakai’s face by applying skincare as a base and cleaning her skin.

This makeover session is Mera’s first time meeting Nakai. Mera uses treatment pads to exfoliate Nakai’s face and remove pore-clogging impurities.

“You have really good skin!” Mera said. Nakai is surprised by the compliment saying she feels her skin is too dry.

Mera reassures Nakai her skin is not dry at all as she applies skin tint and a thin base of foundation to maintain her natural skin before applying makeup.

Cream contour is applied to the hollows of Nakai’s cheeks, along her nose and jawline to accentuate her facial structure. Shimmery coral peach blush is put on for a flirty makeup finish and flicks of color are added to the front and arches of Nakai’s eyebrows to keep a natural density.

Mera brushes neutral bronze, brown and tan shades to Nakai’s eyelids along with creamy high pigment shadows with reflective chromatic flakes in a halo style.

Throughout the makeover process, Mera continues to make Nakai feel more at ease by having conversations about each other’s career ambitions and joking about both of their natural facial expressions.

After Mera finishes putting a natural flushed shade to Nakai’s lips, she locks in the applied makeup with a luminous setting spray to help seal in moisture and for the final look.

Nakai sees the end result in a mirror and is amazed. Her skin glows as light from the room bounces off her face, along with the shimmering shadow on her eyelids.

“You are really good!” Nakai said to Mera as she thanked her.

As Nakai left the chair and showed the makeover results to classmates in the room, she kept remarking on how well a job Mera did.

Mera’s interest in cosmetology became known to her family when she was 4 years old after opening a makeup kit she got for Christmas with excitement.

Leading up to her teenage years, Mera would practice her cosmetology skills by doing the hair and makeup for her mom and sister.

Mera has now been doing freelance cosmetology for over 15 years and continues to pursue her own career goals by incorporating aspects of psychology she is learning while double-majoring at El Camino, being a single mother and dealing with over 10 years of physical setbacks from cancer.

In high school, Mera began doing the makeup and hair for some family friends. Word later spread after people began to ask Mera to do their makeup after seeing the results of her work.

“Looking back, I don’t know who would let a 14-year-old do their makeup,” Mera said while laughing.

Working at that age and doing makeup for adults built Mera’s confidence. In usual settings around adults, Mera was timid and kept to herself.

However, when she was in her element while working on a client, Mera’s shyness went away.

“When I was doing makeup, I wasn’t overthinking [my interactions with people],” Mera said.

After having more experience with working on clients over the years, Mera recalls her work as a teenager with fond criticism.

“I’m like, why are you getting my advice? I was a child,” Mera said while laughing. “That [makeup application] didn’t look good, I would do that differently now.”

As she continued to work with clients at a young age while attending high school at Hope Chapel Academy in Hermosa Beach, she felt a fulfillment of being able to study and work in tandem.

All this personal momentum came to a halt when she faced a life-changing physiological problem after graduating from high school. When Mera was 19 years old and attending El Camino in 2014, she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer.

“When I’m hitting an age where my career and freelancing should take off, it all went down,” Mera said.

She began to feel unwell and experienced a physical decline. After going to the doctor, it was discovered that Mera had an abdominal cyst, 19 centimeters in diameter.

It was about the size of a small bowling ball.

Days later, she had emergency surgery to remove the cyst but still wasn’t feeling better.

“I just felt my energy [being] drained, what I thought an old lady would feel like,” Mera said.

Her family has had a history with cancer.

Mera’s mom, Veronica Mera, also has dealt with thyroid imbalances, so she recommended her daughter consult a family doctor.

Mera calls the doctor “Momma” because she diagnosed problems with her thyroid and recommended a biopsy. It was discovered that in order to remove any trace of cancer in her thyroid, it would have to be completely removed.

This was her first big decision as an adult. Instead of having it partially removed, Mera decided to have it all taken out.

She said fully removing her thyroid turned out to be a blessing and was the safest option. There were cancerous nodules hidden behind the thyroid, so a partial removal would have left cancerous residuals in the glands.

“If I had opted to [partially remove] or try to save it, [the cancer] would have festered and spread, so it was a good decision in the long run,” she said.

Since the surgery, it has been a decade-long journey for Mera learning about what the thyroid does in the body, finding help and seeking answers.

Mera felt dramatic changes in her body and energy when her thyroid was removed. Over the years she has dealt with autoimmune disease, where the body mistakenly attacks healthy organs and tissues, leaving her with low energy.

She said despite becoming accustomed to having low energy along with muscle fatigue and joint pain, Mera continues pushing through her pain and making the effort to continue her education and caring for her 6-year-old daughter, Shiloh Mia.

Mera calls Mia her “miracle baby” after she was born in 2019. She said due to all of her health and hormonal imbalances, becoming pregnant and having a child when she was 24 was something that wasn’t supposed to be possible.

As she began caring for Mia, Mera said she didn’t see it as a hindrance to balance her responsibilities as a mother, busy schedule and education. It was motivation for her to work toward her career goals of getting her associates degree in psychology and cosmetology license.

In fall 2024, when Mera was taking a freshman cosmetology class, she was alerted to another issue. After getting the results of physical scans done in the summer of 2024, doctors found a growth in her ovary.

“My experiences have really been just like a two step forwards two steps back, kind of halt and go halt and go,” Mera said.

This growth in her ovary exacerbated her physical issues, causing her to pause taking in-person cosmetology courses. Despite this current setback, Mera has remained at El Camino, switching to online psychology classes in spring 2025 to help get her degree.

“I’m going to shift gears, I’m not going to lose momentum,” she said.

Catherine Morado, a cosmetology technician at El Camino, was first introduced to Mera when she was in the beginner cosmetology class. Morado said she has always been sweet, bubbly and helpful to others.

“[Mera] has a lot of passion in what she does and is able to connect with clients by seeing who they are on the inside,” Morado said. “She’s in her element, it’s art.”

Morado said Mera can greet her clients well in a manner that flows freely and is proud of the person she is because of her commitment to continue working on her career.

After Mera finished the beginner class, she took the advanced class taught by cosmetology professor Linda Finn Valentine.

Valentine observed Mera’s cosmetology skills and saw how experienced she was. She said Mera is able to advance her skillset faster than others because she has good organizational skills.

“[Mera] always stays on task, tries her hardest to get better and is open to suggestions on how she can do [certain cosmetology skills] better,” Valentine said.

Whenever Valentine gave Mera feedback about cutting hair or makeup application, Mera was receptive to her feedback. Oftentimes, people are not open to hearing criticism about their cosmetology skills, she said.

Valentine said it takes time for students who come out of the freshman class to be able to work on clients on the main floor of the cosmetology department. However, she did not have to check on Mera too much when she was with a client.

“Right away, I could see [Mera] was able to hold her own with a client,” Valentine said. “She was more experienced than most people coming out of the freshman room.”

When working with a client, Valentine said people feel closely interacted with and tell a lot of their personal issues. Valentine teaches her students to be engaged with a client but also detach themselves to finish their tasks.

With Mera, the cosmetology professor said she has the ability to be warm with a client and can keep on task.

“[Mera] does a really good job of being personable with [a client] so that right away they [build a connection],” Valentine said. “When her [cosmetology] skills talk, that’s another thing she has already going for her.”

As students take classes at ECC’s cosmetology department, Valentine said they are more prepared than students at other educational institutions.

She added that students have to show continuous skill progression to earn their degree and prepare to get their license by taking the California Cosmetology State Board licensing exam.

According to an El Camino Course Success & Completion Dashboard, over the last four fall terms, the cosmetology department has had an average 88% course success rate, the number of students who received a passing grade, and an average 98% course completion rate, the number of students who did not withdraw.

Valentine said cosmetology can be a luxury service, so your skills have to speak enough to people to make them come back to you. Being able to make a loyal customer is difficult in the beauty industry, she said.

In her freelance work, Mera has learned that the beauty industry is about networking and being able to interact well with other people. She said you should post your work on the internet, connect with groups and businesses and put yourself out there.

A long-term goal Mera has is to have a salon where she can combine both her cosmetology and psychology skills. Sessions for both beauty and therapy.

“You can have your package set up in a sense where you’re getting your makeover after you’ve had your talk therapy and processed it all,” Mera said.

Over time, Mera wants to build a beauty team where each person specializes in an aspect of cosmetology and they travel together to work on clients. After she has earned her psychology degree at El Camino, she wants to start solidifying clientele in the psychology field.

Career opportunities in the beauty industry are becoming more available as the need to replace workers who retire or move to a new job increases.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, overall employment of barbers, hairstylists, and cosmetologists is projected to grow 7% from 649,400 in 2023 to 694,800 in 2033. Hairdressers, hairstylists and cosmetologists had about 571,100 jobs in 2023 and 48% of those positions were self-employed.

Mera has dealt with a lot of people in her freelance work and when she worked at Sephora for three years. She saw a distinct personality in customers depending on the location she would work, from Manhattan Village to Beverly Hills.

In Beverly Hills, she found people were not personable and lacked empathy; her experiences fed into her interest in psychology. When people were rude, Mera said she would counter with unwarranted kindness and compliments.

“I found a lot of times [clients] would boil down and kind of come back to Earth and meet me with a little bit more humanity,” Mera said. “People’s responses, how they react and the way things bug them, all of that stems from something.”

One location where Mera does occasional freelance work is in her room at home in Hawthorne.

The room is lit with ambient pink lights, a large mirror wall has enough space in front of it for a client, a desk along with drawers containing makeup products and a bunk bed where she sleeps with her 5-year-old daughter Shiloh Mia.

Mia often calls Mera “Miss Momma” because she is homeschooled and likes to learn math lessons from her. Mia said she likes going to the park with her mom and how she styles her hair in cornrows.

When Mia showed interest in ballet dancing, Mera enrolled her in classes at Legacy Dance Academy in El Segundo. Mera said Mia has participated in competitions and when on stage, she is not nervous about performing in front of people.

For Mera, life is all about time management and coordination. Her family helps take care of Mia whenever she is busy with freelance work or schoolwork.

Mera’s family is tight-knit and bonded together through creativity and art. Her two brothers Giorgio, 33, and Marco Mera, 24, like to play and write music together. Sounds from them playing an acoustic guitar can fill the whole house with instrumentals from songs such as “Blackbird” by The Beatles.

Giovanna Mera, 30, Sofia’s twin sister, is a freelance music instructor who teaches at various school music programs. Sofia’s mom, Veronica Mera, 56, attends ECC to study as part of the applied music program and is the owner of a family pastry business, Cristal’s Classics.

The business started in 2007 when Veronica made pastries as a way to give back to their community while attending church events. She would work with a professional chef she knew; he would make dinner meals and she would bake gourmet desserts.

Word spread of Veronica’s baked goods and people would ask her to bake for special occasions. The ingredients of knowing people in their community and networking helped the family baking business take off and grow.

At home Veronica bakes desserts such as eclairs, cupcakes, cookies and croquembouche for custom orders with help from the family.

Giorgio and Marco contribute to Cristal’s Classics by creating brand logo and webpage designs, and help set up tables for pop-up events. Sofia and Giovanna help decorate flowers and other designs on cakes, other pastries and with marketing on Instagram.

Veronica said working with her family on Cristal’s Classics has “created a lot of lifelong memories.”

From designing pastries to painting someone’s face with makeup, it’s all therapeutic to Sofia and contributes to honing her creative skills.

“It’s all the fine motor skills being able to work with my hands when I’m cutting hair, painting faces or puddle dusting cakes, it’s all my hands,” Mera said. “It all kind of overlaps in a weird way.”

Sofia’s family describes her as an inspiration to pursue their current goals and interests. Giorgio said seeing how Sofia has persevered through her cancer struggles over the years and continuing her education has motivated her siblings to continue their education.

“[Sofia] started [to go back to school] and we were like we should do this too, why not, let’s go get at it,” Giorgio said.

Veronica said seeing Sofia turn her childhood interest in cosmetology into a career is inspiring because she sees her behind the scenes when she is nauseous and in tears but keeps moving forward and not giving up.

“[Mia] may not know it right now, but someday she is going to hearken back on these moments and see where it’s going to inspire her to push forward too,” Veronica said.

While continuing her education and dealing with lingering physical issues from her cancer diagnosis, Mera continues to raise her miracle baby.

“I have learned that you can prioritize your children and prioritize your goals, there’s a balance,” Mera said. “I think you can’t do it all but you can’t do nothing.”

Part of the reason Mera wanted to go back to school after spending the last 10 years seeing medical specialists, working in freelance cosmetology and raising her daughter is to work on her own goals.

Mia is her motivation.

“I’m going to do this and that, I want her to look back and see I was able to do it and worked toward my goals,” Mera said.

Mera believes people should try out new things if they are motivated, just to see where it may lead them. She looks back at the start of her own career path when she was a teenager as an example.

“If it’s within your scope of challenging yourself, don’t say no, challenge yourself,” Mera said. “See what’s on the other side of saying yes, it might be growth and greatness or it might be redirection and failure that just reroutes you a little bit.”