Beauty Is More Than Just Doing Nails

WHO SHE IS

Iuliia Andreeva is the President and co-founder of IBPA, a 501(c)(6) professional organization registered in California. Before moving to the U.S., she ran her own beauty school and studio in Moscow. Alongside her industry work, she leads Andreeva Life, an immigration practice specializing in talent visas for beauty professionals, entrepreneurs, and creative practitioners.

What she found in the U.S. surprised her — not because of the market’s size, but its structure. A massive industry, yet almost entirely missing what professionals from Eastern Europe take for granted: a dense, active community, intimate networking formats, regular forums and business breakfasts, peer-to-peer support. Her immigration casework added a second layer of insight: between a talented practitioner and meaningful professional recognition in America sits a structural void and that void has a cost. For skilled professionals arriving from abroad, it can mean years of invisibility. IBPA was built to fill it.

How does a studio owner from Moscow end up as the president of an association in California?
I started as a beauty professional school and studio in Moscow. When I got to the U.S., the first thing I felt was the absence of community. Not that nothing exists here, but the kind of community I knew back home warm, alive, full of exchange between peers and mentors just wasn’t there. I started organizing beauty business forums because people clearly needed them. Then it became obvious: one event a year doesn’t fix a systemic gap. And through my visa work, it became clear there was no real infrastructure for professional recognition, no matter how skilled someone was. The association was the next, more serious answer.
You say there are few good associations in beauty. What’s missing?
I won’t name names. But consider a typical example: an association focused narrowly on lash technicians. A member joins and starts looking for ways to grow inside the organization. No webinars. No masterclasses. There’s a blog with a handful of articles you post a question, no one ever answers. And membership is charged monthly, quietly auto-renewing like a forgotten streaming subscription. The actual value delivered? Close to zero. The association becomes just another line item on the expense sheet, not a tool for growth. That’s a fundamental problem in this industry and it explains exactly why so many professionals are skeptical the moment we approach them. They’ve already been burned. Our job every day is to show that IBPA is built differently.
[6/30/2026 2:06 PM] Сергей Andreev: “We are a business. Even in beauty, professionals are entrepreneurs. An annual membership pays for itself with a single new student who came through our network.” Why a 501(c)(6) and not a charity?
It was intentional. Professionals are entrepreneurs they’re willing to invest in their growth, and we channel what comes in directly back into theirs. An annual membership pays for itself with a single new student found through the association’s network, because inside IBPA you’re reaching the most engaged, loyal audience available.
That said, we’re also building a 501(c)(3) alongside it focused on financial support for education, licensing, and business development. Long-term, IBPA will operate as two organizations in tandem: a professional trade association and a charitable foundation.
IBPA operates across several audiences Russian-speaking professionals in the U.S., the broader post-Soviet market, and the American mainstream. How do you prioritize?
The core is Russian-speaking professionals in the U.S. Without a strong foundation, any international expansion is superficial it spreads thin before it can hold weight. When the core is solid enough to maintain a quality standard, we scale multilingual programming, interpreters, full international structure. We’re not building fast. We’re building to last.
IBPA has membership, a competition, a magazine, forums, training programs. From the outside they look unrelated. How do they connect?
They’re one system. A member can enter as a student and grow, with our support, into owning a salon or a brand. The annual awards drive motivation. Writing for the magazine builds the ability to articulate and position yourself. The forum teaches you to present on stage and we’re building an internal prep program for exactly that. All of it together is development. The association as a trajectory, not a bundle of services.
It’s 2029, IBPA is three years old. What tells you it worked?
A large conference venue Dubai, Miami, or Barcelona. Five hundred people minimum. Beauty professionals and business owners from around the world, all in one room. A real awards ceremony. Letters of recognition from U.S. senators and members of Congress institutional credibility that carries genuine weight in this country. A strong sponsorship economy around the event, meaningful long-term partnerships.
And what matters most to me personally members who joined as practitioners in year one and by year three have grown to the point where they become part of the leadership team. Vertical growth within the organization. An association known globally. But more importantly: one that produces strong people, not just collects them.
What surprised you most in these first months?
Two things and they’re opposites. The uncomfortable one first: many professionals don’t know what a professional association even is. They show up only when pursuing an O-1 or EB-1A visa, where membership is a qualifying criterion. They come to check a box. We’ve built far more than

that certification, bylaws, a membership review committee, programming that lets people genuinely grow, not just meet a bureaucratic requirement. No association had done this for beauty before us. Getting past that initial skepticism is the challenge we face every single day.
But the other side is remarkable. The moment someone actually sees the value sees their own potential they switch instantly. Offers pour in: to give a talk, to collaborate, to write. And that’s the most beautiful thing in this work. Because beauty is more than just doing nails. It’s so much more.
What would you say to an experienced professional with a full client book? Why does she need IBPA?
One question: how long are you going to earn only from clients? Until your back gives out? Hands-on work is a finite resource capped by your body, your hours, and one city. That’s not a judgment, it’s math.
[6/30/2026 2:06 PM] Сергей Andreev: To grow beyond that ceiling, you need to surround yourself with people who are further along than you are right now. Alone, you’re moving in the dark going somewhere, but with no visibility. In the right environment, with the right people, growth happens dramatically faster. You look up and you’re the owner of your own cosmetics line. Or your own salon. Or you’re on stage sharing something genuinely valuable because you could. Because you didn’t stay stuck at the level where everything was already fine.
If a reader remembered only one line from this interview, what would you want it to be?
Act now. There may not be another chance. You have to leave your mark on this world.

Interview conducted by the Beauty Professional editorial team. The first in person IBPA International Forum will be held in California in 2026. For details and membership information, visit https://ibpassociations.org