About Us: Meet Wendy

		Wendy’s lifelong involvement in health care, aesthetic services, beauty, fashion, and style began when she was still in grade school in Los Angeles. At 11, she learned to sew, and, discovering her entrepreneurial skills, was soon running a small business designing and selling accessories and custom clothing for local women and girls. She pierced her own ears, and her class-mates’ interest soon spawned another business: Wendy’s ear-piercing service. She became so skilled at makeup application that people sought her help in this area as well.

As a child, Wendy also underwent minor cosmetic surgery that, by removing a birthmark she had hidden with embarrassment, changed her life, erasing a source of constraint and discomfort. That experience taught Wendy how powerfully aesthetic procedures can influence a person’s well-being and happiness. Fascinated by her hospital stay, she particularly admired the competent, kind nurses who cared for her. By 14, she was working as a volunteer candy striper (nursing assistant) at Northridge Hospital in Southern California. She loved the hospital, but was frustrated because only nurses were allowed in the operating room (OR). Wendy wanted to know what was happening behind the swinging doors.

At their end-of-service party, one of Wendy’s fellow candy stripers had a seizure. The registered nurses who were present quietly handled the attack calmly and skillfully. Wendy’s next career move was decided: After high school, she earned her RN degree at the LA County-USC Medical Center, where she then began work. She enrolled in OR training, and became an OR and emergency-room (ER) nurse at Santa Clara Kaiser Medical Center. Soon, the Sereno Surgery Center in Los Gatos employed Wendy as an OR and recovery-room (RR) supervisor.

It was now 1991, and the idea of cosmetic tattooing, micropigmentation, or permanent makeup was just being floated. A friend who knew of Wendy’s talents as a makeup artist suggested that Wendy would be perfectly suited to learn this skill at the border between style and medicine. Wendy agreed. One of the first people in the United States to be trained and certified in this technique , she founded her own practice, which quickly grew to be her full-time job. At that time, micropigmentation was used primarily to create lip and eye makeup for people who, due to disability, were unable to apply their own cosmetics; to create the illusion of eyebrows and eyelashes for people who suffered alopecia (hair loss); and to color and shade the nipple and areolae for women who had undergone breast reconstruction. Even as plastic surgeons, dermatologists, and ophthalmologists heard of Wendy’s skills and referred their patients to her, Wendy also began to work with women who simply wanted to look elegant and groomed at all times.

Other health-care workers who heard of Wendy’s knowledge of micropigmentation asked her to train them in the techniques. In 1994, these requests led Wendy to found the Derma-Medical Institute, an educational company that offered courses in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area. Wendy designed and led 20-hour courses for doctors and nurses in micropigmentation techniques . These courses were certified by the American Academy of Dermatology, and were awarded continuing medical education (CME) status.

Wendy maintained her own practice while running the Institute. In 1996, she heard about a new procedure: the injection of dermal filler to plump up depressions and to erase wrinkles. Once again, Wendy underwent formal training, apprenticed under a dermatologist, passed the requisite examination, and was certified by Collagen Corporation to perform cosmetic injections of their product.

In addition, Wendy attended a continuing-education course in dental anesthesia at UC San Francisco School of Dentistry, where she underwent thorough training in the use of the powerful anesthetics with which she continues to ensure her patients’ comfort.

Throughout these busy years, Wendy had maintained her interest in fashion. Even as she was pioneering aesthetic enhancements, she founded and directed a company that produced her designs in specialized bridal wear, clothing, and jewelry; her creations were sold by selective boutiques.

As other dermal fillers came onto the market, Wendy researched them, relying on her medical background and the specialized knowledge of the surgeons with whom she worked to judge which were safe and reliable. For those products that met her rigorous standards, Wendy was inevitably one of the first practitioners to receive training and to offer her clients increasingly varied choices. She was an “early adopter” of aesthetic application of botulinum toxin (Botox). She trained to use laser equipment to perform gentle dermal resurfacing. She also received special training in Thermage, an application of radio-frequency (RF) waves to tighten skin and stimulate collagen renewal; the results of these treatments were very successful, and Wendy began offering the procedure in her practice. She also was one of the first to offer Gentle Waves, in which a bank of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) performs fast, painless photo-rejuvenation of collagen. Wendy keeps her knowledge up to date by reading, attending medical conferences and inservice education events, as well as consulting with physicians and other nurse specialists in various fields. Along with her skills and experience, Wendy brings valuable knowledge to her patients, giving them all they need to attain their personal best.

Wendy conducts her clinics in her own offices on the premises of various surgeons. All equipment and protocols are rigorously maintained for client safety and comfort.

Wendy uses her years of experience to develop personal, custom beauty routines and services with her clients. Women soon recognize her mastery, and trust her to weed out the “trendy” from the genuinely sensible novel procedures, to train to perform as required, and to advise her clients with honesty and knowledge regarding what she can do to help them meet their goals. That is why Wendy’s clients return year after year, even as new clients arrive.