Lorraine
“You don’t have to choose one thing to do or be in life. You will be able to reinvent yourself and your career many times. Stop listening to people tell you that you’re going to put yourself on one career path which you’ll never deviate from. You have the ability and power to choose who you are and what you do.”
Lorraine is a confident leader, strategic thinker, and passionate entrepreneur. As CEO of Formula Botanica, she has channeled her science background into bettering the beauty community and the ways in which women consume beauty products. Through a lens that emphasizes the use of natural ingredients and sustainability, she helps empower and educate women to formulate their own natural skincare and haircare solutions. Meet Lorraine. This is her story.
K: Please introduce yourself!
L: Hi, I’m Lorraine Dallmeier, mother of 2 lovely boys, biologist, Chartered Environmentalist and CEO of Formula Botanica, the award-winning online organic cosmetic formulation school. My accredited school teaches people how to formulate their own natural skincare and haircare products using botanicals. Not only is formulation fun and easy, but it’s also empowering. By learning how to formulate, we can reclaim the power that the beauty industry has had over us for 150 years when they tell us that we need to look, smell or feel a certain way by buying their products - and formulation is a lot more sustainable than buying dozens of beauty products that clutter the bathroom shelves but never get used!
K: Describe yourself in your own words
L: The words that define me most are: mother, Dutch, determined, feminist and environmentalist.
K: What is your favourite thing about yourself?
L: My drive and determination. I generally know exactly what I want and I know how I’m going to get it. It feels empowering and liberating to go into situations with complete confidence. After many years of working for others and being put in a corner for being too young, too inexperienced, too outspoken, too intimidating, I no longer have to put up with other people telling me what to do now that I have been the CEO of my own successful business for the last decade.
K: Tell us a story. Have you had an experience that’s defined you or made you stronger?
L: I grew up in a bilingual household in the Netherlands, where I spoke at English at home with my parents and Dutch at school in class. I was top of the class, I wore whatever I wanted and I was comfortable with who I was. All those things combined were enough to make me stand out and be viewed as different, which meant that I was a prime target for bullying at primary school. As a result, I had to endure the kids in my class picking on me for who I was for many years. When I finished primary school and moved to high school, I decided I’d had enough and it wasn’t going to happen to me again. I remember looking at my bullies in the first weeks of high school… they looked tiny surrounded by all the big kids. I vividly remember making the decision for myself at that point that they were never going to bully me again - and they didn’t.
K: What is one piece of advice you’d give to your younger self?
L: You don’t have to choose one thing to do or be in life. You will be able to reinvent yourself and your career many times. Stop listening to people tell you that you’re going to put yourself on one career path which you’ll never deviate from. You have the ability and power to choose who you are and what you do.
K: What does being a woman mean to you?
L: To me, being a woman means being a force for good in the world. I can create, grow and birth new life. I can run a successful business as a CEO. I can speak up for what’s right and speak out against what’s wrong. I can change thousands of people’s lives. And I can do so while standing up for the values that I hold.
K: Who is one woman that inspires you? What would you say to her if she were here now?
L: Rather than choose one woman, I would hold up every woman involved in the women’s suffrage movement. It’s easy to highlight the names we all know, such as Emmeline Pankhurst, but the suffragette movement involved hundreds of women around the world - many of whom are unknown to us today - who fought for our right to vote in public elections. If they were here today, I would thank them for their fight and tell them that we continue their work today in a myriad of other ways.