Meet Susan Peterkin

FROM Kingston to the United States, Susan Peterkin has spent more than 40 years building a career around natural hair, professional education and, increasingly, the health of the scalp and hair. When she left Jamaica at 16, she did not expect hair to become the focus of her professional life. She arrived in 1981 with ambitions that had little to do with the beauty industry, imagining that she might eventually work in marketing for one of the major hair companies whose products were familiar to black women at the time. Instead, she found herself drawn to the relationship between a cosmetologist and her clients, beginning a career that would span more than four decades. “There was something about the immediate gratification of being able to make a difference in someone’s life and see that difference right in front of you,” Peterkin recalled. Today, Peterkin is based in Maryland and is the co-founder of PeterKINdred Hair & Scalp Wellness Center and S.T.R.A.N.D. (Stylists Training, Researching, and Networking with Dermatologists), an initiative that educates cosmetologists about hair and scalp concerns and strengthens collaboration between hair professionals and dermatologists. Her path to this work began in the salon. Peterkin opened Jaha Hair Studio in 1996, building a natural hair business that eventually grew to a team of 10 stylists and served more than 20,000 clients. In 2003, she founded Jaha Natural Hair Academy to provide professional education in natural hair care. Her work expanded into consumer education and industry advocacy, including creating My Hair, My Way and co-founding the Natural Hair Industry Convention. But her own experience with hair loss changed the direction of her career. Peterkin began noticing her own changes while also encountering scalp and hair loss concerns among her clients. “Looking back, that experience is important to me because it reminds me what it’s like to be a very experienced cosmetologist and still not have the education to understand everything you’re observing on the scalp,” she said. Her search for answers led to a professional relationship with dermatologist Dr Chesahna Kindred. Peterkin eventually became Kindred’s patient and was diagnosed with central centrifugal cicatricial alopaecia (CCCA) and female pattern hair loss. The experience changed how she approached her clients. That relationship eventually led to PeterKINdred Hair & Scalp Wellness Center, bringing natural hair care and dermatological expertise together. The idea came from a problem Peterkin and Kindred were seeing from different sides. “Dr Kindred would talk about patients sometimes falling through the cracks after leaving the dermatologist’s office because they didn’t know where to go for knowledgeable and appropriate hair care,” Peterkin explained. “And on my side, I knew hair professionals were seeing things every day that they didn’t necessarily understand required medical attention.” The answer was collaboration. “Neither profession needed to become the other,” Peterkin said. “We simply needed to learn how to work together.” That philosophy became the foundation for S.T.R.A.N.D., which Peterkin and Kindred co-founded in 2024. The initiative provides cosmetologists with education about hair and scalp disorders, alopecia, medical treatments and when a client should be referred to a dermatologist. S.T.R.A.N.D. has trained and certified more than 100 cosmetologists and developed relationships with more than 20 dermatologists. Peterkin believes hairstylists can play an important role in early recognition because of the relationships they develop with their clients. She urges black women to learn what is normal for their own hair so that they can recognise when something changes. “You simply need to know what normal looks like for you,” Peterkin said. “Because when you know your baseline, you’re much more likely to recognise change early.”