WEBVTT - Victoria Jackson: From Makeup to Medicine 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:03.159 Welcome back to she Pivots and I'm Victoria Jackson. 0:00:13.440 --> 0:00:16.959 Welcome back to she Pivots, the podcast where we talk 0:00:17.000 --> 0:00:19.599 with women who dare to pivot out of one career 0:00:19.960 --> 0:00:24.239 and into something new and explore how their personal lives 0:00:24.320 --> 0:00:32.159 impacts these decisions. I'm your host Emily Tish Sussman today. 0:00:32.200 --> 0:00:35.440 I'm so excited to have on Victoria Jackson to talk 0:00:35.479 --> 0:00:38.720 about her many pivots and plot twists. Victoria is someone 0:00:38.760 --> 0:00:41.760 whose life embodies everything we talk about on she Pivots, 0:00:42.040 --> 0:00:45.640 the way our personal stories shape our professional paths, and 0:00:45.680 --> 0:00:49.040 how reinvention isn't a one time decision, it's a way 0:00:49.080 --> 0:00:52.000 of living. She may be best known as the woman 0:00:52.040 --> 0:00:55.760 who coined no Makeup makeup, the beauty pioneer who built 0:00:55.800 --> 0:01:00.920 a billion dollar empire by championing natural confidence's first beauty 0:01:01.000 --> 0:01:03.960 long before it was trending, but her story goes far 0:01:04.080 --> 0:01:08.119 beyond the surface. She launched Victoria Jackson Cosmetics from her 0:01:08.160 --> 0:01:11.360 garage in the nineteen eighties with a singular mission to 0:01:11.440 --> 0:01:14.959 help women feel like the best version of themselves. She 0:01:15.120 --> 0:01:20.120 was scrappy, bold, and entirely self taught, selling her products 0:01:20.120 --> 0:01:24.319 on infomercials and later on QBC, becoming a household name 0:01:24.400 --> 0:01:28.160 in the process. But in two thousand and eight, everything 0:01:28.280 --> 0:01:31.800 changed when her daughter Ali was diagnosed with a rare, 0:01:32.000 --> 0:01:37.000 life threatening disease called neuromya litis optica or NMO. Victoria 0:01:37.040 --> 0:01:40.240 didn't hesitate. She walked away from the business she had 0:01:40.240 --> 0:01:44.240 built and pivoted without question into a world she knew 0:01:44.280 --> 0:01:49.960 nothing about medicine. She taught herself the language of molecular immunology, 0:01:50.640 --> 0:01:55.639 founded the Guthy Jackson Charitable Foundation, and mobilized nearly eighty 0:01:55.800 --> 0:01:59.680 million dollars for research that helped fund the first ever 0:01:59.720 --> 0:02:04.000 ET approved treatments for the disease. She became an advocate, 0:02:04.200 --> 0:02:06.840 a fundraiser, a force in a space that she had 0:02:06.880 --> 0:02:10.280 never expected to enter. But never once did she doubt 0:02:10.280 --> 0:02:14.520 her decision to put love, purpose, and motherhood first. Now, 0:02:14.760 --> 0:02:19.800 at seventy years old, Victoria's pivoting again. She's returning to 0:02:19.840 --> 0:02:22.880 where it all began, with a new generation of no 0:02:23.000 --> 0:02:27.080 makeup makeup products, blending skin care and simplicity with the 0:02:27.080 --> 0:02:30.960 same mission that started it all, helping people feel confident 0:02:31.000 --> 0:02:34.200 in their own skin. She's not just reviving a brand, 0:02:34.560 --> 0:02:38.960 She's reimagining beauty for women who like her are still evolving. 0:02:39.680 --> 0:02:44.720 Victoria's story is raw, resilient, and deeply human. It's all 0:02:44.800 --> 0:02:50.040 about surviving trauma, building success from scratch, and walking away 0:02:50.040 --> 0:02:54.360 from an all for something even greater. And now, decades later, 0:02:54.880 --> 0:02:58.720 it's about choosing joy and creativity again on her own 0:02:58.840 --> 0:03:00.840 Termslet's get into. 0:03:00.639 --> 0:03:11.120 It, Victoria Jackson, and I do so many things. Philanthropist, entrepreneur, mother, 0:03:11.840 --> 0:03:17.720 makeup creator, really kind of an accentrist and alchemist, you 0:03:17.840 --> 0:03:20.040 name it. That's just sort of who I am. 0:03:20.639 --> 0:03:23.960 Okay, we're rewinding, we're going all the way back. So 0:03:24.480 --> 0:03:27.120 little Victoria, when you were growing up, what did you 0:03:27.160 --> 0:03:28.560 think you wanted to be when you grew up? 0:03:29.240 --> 0:03:32.240 You know, I always say I was born prematurely. I 0:03:32.280 --> 0:03:34.399 was born in the six and a half month, so 0:03:34.720 --> 0:03:37.600 I think. And I was born I think early on 0:03:37.800 --> 0:03:41.760 I had that little worry gene and worried about everything. 0:03:41.960 --> 0:03:46.120 So probably I was just worried about the stability of 0:03:46.160 --> 0:03:48.440 my parents. And you know, how did I get into 0:03:48.640 --> 0:03:52.880 a situation where I never quite knew what was coming next? 0:03:53.400 --> 0:03:56.120 So I don't even know that. It was very much 0:03:56.200 --> 0:03:58.440 later in life that I started thinking about what I 0:03:58.480 --> 0:04:03.160 wanted to do and that question bothered me more than anything, 0:04:03.240 --> 0:04:05.160 not the way you've just asked it, but the way 0:04:05.200 --> 0:04:07.440 people in my life did at the time, which is 0:04:07.480 --> 0:04:09.520 probably for a lot of young people when they say, well, 0:04:09.560 --> 0:04:10.880 what do you want to do or what do you 0:04:11.120 --> 0:04:13.760 and I had no sense. I was always a person 0:04:13.880 --> 0:04:15.880 that was just trying to figure out who I was, 0:04:16.720 --> 0:04:19.560 let alone where I was going or you know, what 0:04:20.080 --> 0:04:23.000 my career might look like. Things seemed to evolve in 0:04:23.040 --> 0:04:26.760 a different way for me as I was always struggling 0:04:27.000 --> 0:04:31.599 and fighting and dealing with much bigger inner demons. You know, 0:04:31.640 --> 0:04:34.279 I was always in survival mode. Is one thing that 0:04:34.360 --> 0:04:37.680 I realized, having come from a childhood that was, you know, 0:04:37.760 --> 0:04:40.919 filled with a lot of uncertainty. And then you know, 0:04:41.160 --> 0:04:44.680 the episode that happened when we'll call it beyond an 0:04:44.720 --> 0:04:47.359 episode of what happened in my life, the incident with 0:04:47.440 --> 0:04:51.840 pillowcase rapist when I was seventeen. So I've always really 0:04:51.880 --> 0:04:55.800 struggled with trying to figure things out and not knowing 0:04:55.800 --> 0:04:58.479 where my place was, not coming from a family that, 0:04:58.520 --> 0:05:01.039 I said, a lot of instability, there wasn't a lot 0:05:01.080 --> 0:05:05.279 of money, just sort of you know, I wasn't great 0:05:05.440 --> 0:05:08.679 going to school. I was ditching school all the time. 0:05:08.960 --> 0:05:11.400 So yeah, it's just a lot. I was always dealing 0:05:11.400 --> 0:05:12.480 with a lot internally. 0:05:14.040 --> 0:05:16.840 One of the first moments that forced Victoria to pivot 0:05:17.279 --> 0:05:19.880 was once she just touched on one of the most 0:05:19.920 --> 0:05:23.120 horrific moments of her life. When she was just seventeen, 0:05:23.200 --> 0:05:25.359 she was the victim of a violent attack from a 0:05:25.400 --> 0:05:29.000 man known as the Pillowcase rapist, and it changed her 0:05:29.040 --> 0:05:29.720 life forever. 0:05:31.120 --> 0:05:32.760 You know, I always felt, I don't know if a 0:05:32.839 --> 0:05:34.719 lot of the people that are listening to this, they 0:05:34.760 --> 0:05:37.360 always feel like, you know, there's a sense of foreboding 0:05:37.360 --> 0:05:40.560 about maybe something in their life and then it happens. 0:05:40.800 --> 0:05:43.200 For me, it was always I felt like somebody was 0:05:43.560 --> 0:05:47.440 out to get me, and that was always, you know, 0:05:47.480 --> 0:05:49.359 and I would be teased about it in the family, 0:05:49.440 --> 0:05:51.800 like Who's going to get you? And to the point 0:05:51.880 --> 0:05:56.200 where one a night, my brother was, you know, always 0:05:56.320 --> 0:05:59.160 making jokes at a step brother. My mom remarried and 0:05:59.200 --> 0:06:02.840 I had a stepbrother who basically was a good guy, 0:06:02.839 --> 0:06:05.120 but he would play jokes on me. And so one 0:06:05.240 --> 0:06:08.680 night when I was home in my room alone, I 0:06:08.720 --> 0:06:11.040 saw behind me, you know, that awful scene in a 0:06:11.040 --> 0:06:13.640 horror movie where there's somebody standing behind you that I 0:06:13.720 --> 0:06:15.760 was looking in a mirror and someone was behind me 0:06:16.040 --> 0:06:19.160 and had on a ski mask and looked like a 0:06:19.240 --> 0:06:22.920 dish towel hanging over something and was all covered up 0:06:22.920 --> 0:06:25.719 with gloves and lots of clothes. And I thought it 0:06:25.760 --> 0:06:29.040 was my brother playing a joke, saying don't move, and 0:06:29.080 --> 0:06:32.919 it turned out it was not my brother. And you know, 0:06:33.000 --> 0:06:35.200 I don't really need to go into all the details 0:06:35.240 --> 0:06:37.520 of it, because I do talk about it in my book. 0:06:37.760 --> 0:06:41.440 We all worry, now what, but enough that I thought 0:06:41.440 --> 0:06:45.200 my whole family was, you know, had been killed and 0:06:45.240 --> 0:06:48.400 I was the last victim. And so that's all I 0:06:48.480 --> 0:06:54.000 kept thinking about. And really from that experience, which manifested 0:06:54.120 --> 0:06:58.520 in severe claustrophobia for me, and you know, he had 0:06:58.560 --> 0:07:03.240 a knife and I stabbed and brutally raped, and it 0:07:03.440 --> 0:07:07.600 was I learned about something called which I talk about 0:07:07.680 --> 0:07:11.280 in my book called zooming out. But for at the time, 0:07:11.320 --> 0:07:15.840 it was really disassociating from what was happening to my body, 0:07:16.000 --> 0:07:19.239 kind of you know, sort of floating above looking down 0:07:19.480 --> 0:07:22.560 and really being very cognizant of there was a reason 0:07:23.200 --> 0:07:26.520 that I was here. This wasn't going to be how 0:07:26.560 --> 0:07:30.400 I went out and was very clear that when I 0:07:30.520 --> 0:07:34.240 had a moment to scream and break free, that's what 0:07:34.280 --> 0:07:39.120 I did. And that was obviously another pivot point, for sure, 0:07:39.320 --> 0:07:43.240 you know, a brutal pivot, but a pivot to there's 0:07:43.280 --> 0:07:46.400 a reason I'm here, I've been spared, there's a reason 0:07:46.440 --> 0:07:49.520 I'm here, and what is that reason? 0:07:50.320 --> 0:07:53.960 And from there you wrote that you never went back 0:07:53.960 --> 0:07:54.640 home after that. 0:07:55.200 --> 0:07:57.760 Yeah, I never went back in my room. I was seventeen, 0:07:57.800 --> 0:08:00.280 I didn't graduate high school. I was in my final year, 0:08:00.320 --> 0:08:05.920 of my final months actually of graduating in the twelfth grade. Yeah, 0:08:06.000 --> 0:08:07.920 I just could never go back in the room. And 0:08:07.960 --> 0:08:11.679 then at eighteen, when I turned eighteen, I got married 0:08:11.720 --> 0:08:13.960 because you know, I had to be eighteen and just 0:08:14.320 --> 0:08:17.480 didn't want to be alone, basically, was it. So you know, 0:08:17.520 --> 0:08:20.280 I married sort of like almost like a high school 0:08:20.280 --> 0:08:24.280 friend and to not be by myself, and I was 0:08:24.400 --> 0:08:26.760 you know, I think we lasted about nine months, and 0:08:27.480 --> 0:08:30.800 because you know, his last name was Jackson, and I 0:08:30.960 --> 0:08:33.640 wanted to just sort of like, I think it raised 0:08:33.720 --> 0:08:36.760 so much of the past. And I'd had different names 0:08:36.760 --> 0:08:39.520 because I was born one name and then my stepfather 0:08:39.559 --> 0:08:42.000 adopted me and I had a different name. And then 0:08:42.440 --> 0:08:45.520 you know, I just thought, as in this pivot, I'm 0:08:45.600 --> 0:08:49.360 going to now be Victoria Jackson, and I decided to 0:08:49.360 --> 0:08:52.280 go to beauty school, which is because I am more 0:08:52.280 --> 0:08:56.079 of a creative and learn about doing makeup and hair 0:08:56.160 --> 0:08:59.800 and went to Marinello's School of Beauty. I was able 0:08:59.840 --> 0:09:03.199 to get a scholarship and did that. My marriage didn't 0:09:03.240 --> 0:09:06.640 survive that, but it really wasn't a marriage marriage. It 0:09:06.760 --> 0:09:10.480 was a friendship. And I think we've both figured out 0:09:10.480 --> 0:09:12.400 it was best to go our separate ways. 0:09:13.040 --> 0:09:16.920 After everything that happened, Victoria leaned into beauty school, carving 0:09:16.920 --> 0:09:20.839 out a new life for herself. She hustled, made connections, 0:09:21.280 --> 0:09:24.600 and eventually, after spotting a gap in the market, she 0:09:24.720 --> 0:09:28.880 decided to start her own makeup company out of her garage. 0:09:29.520 --> 0:09:31.560 I mean, while I was, you know, when I decided 0:09:31.559 --> 0:09:34.080 I wanted to be a makeup artist, and to be 0:09:34.120 --> 0:09:36.079 a makeup artist, a Hollywood makeup artist, you have to 0:09:36.080 --> 0:09:39.560 start building a portfolio. And at the time I started 0:09:39.840 --> 0:09:43.600 doing that by working. I'd look through which no longer exists, 0:09:43.880 --> 0:09:47.760 the phone book, and I would look to see different photographers. 0:09:47.800 --> 0:09:51.920 I'd look on magazines credits, you know, for photographers, I'd 0:09:51.960 --> 0:09:53.640 go see them and I had to ask if I 0:09:53.640 --> 0:09:57.320 could work for free to start building my portfolio. And 0:09:57.679 --> 0:10:00.440 I noticed as I was doing that, and that was 0:10:00.679 --> 0:10:04.679 after graduating from a beauty school sixteen hundred hours later, 0:10:05.000 --> 0:10:08.280 that makeup was really what I was excited about. I would, 0:10:08.360 --> 0:10:11.280 during the day work for in the makeup counters, you know, 0:10:11.840 --> 0:10:15.200 clinique or different department stores. I'd work in the makeup 0:10:15.200 --> 0:10:18.280 counters and be familiar with different brands and makeup, and 0:10:18.360 --> 0:10:21.640 I didn't find anything. As I was now working and 0:10:21.760 --> 0:10:25.800 testing and building my portfolio with photographers, a makeup that 0:10:26.160 --> 0:10:30.240 was more of a neutral base foundation. And so I 0:10:30.320 --> 0:10:33.240 decided that everything was like two pink and orange. This 0:10:33.320 --> 0:10:36.440 is going back aways before there was you know the 0:10:36.480 --> 0:10:39.920 companies now that have eight hundred shades of foundations. So 0:10:40.040 --> 0:10:44.559 I started to create in my garage my own makeup 0:10:44.720 --> 0:10:48.640 by mixing and matching different things so to create what 0:10:48.800 --> 0:10:50.880 was more of what I called at the time, it 0:10:50.920 --> 0:10:54.760 was Victoria Jackson Beauty Basics. That was my first line. 0:10:55.080 --> 0:10:58.760 And while I was doing that, I started I thought 0:10:58.760 --> 0:11:01.200 I would see if I could teach makeup class, and 0:11:01.240 --> 0:11:04.679 I was doing that at ACLA in an extension course, 0:11:05.120 --> 0:11:08.040 and I started to perfect and see what people were 0:11:08.080 --> 0:11:11.360 responding to with my makeup. But it was all really 0:11:11.400 --> 0:11:13.360 started in my garage. 0:11:13.040 --> 0:11:15.680 So you really started it out of necessity looking for 0:11:15.720 --> 0:11:17.960 the products that It wasn't like you were approaching this 0:11:18.040 --> 0:11:19.760 as saying I'm going to be an entrepreneur, let me 0:11:19.760 --> 0:11:22.920 find the product. It was really the tool that you 0:11:23.000 --> 0:11:24.600 needed to make your business work. 0:11:24.960 --> 0:11:27.280 I always believe like if you build it, they will come. 0:11:27.360 --> 0:11:31.040 But yeah, I wasn't thinking I had no idea. Everything 0:11:31.200 --> 0:11:35.200 very organically came from that where I was in my 0:11:35.360 --> 0:11:39.960 class and a student in my UCLA class also said 0:11:39.960 --> 0:11:42.960 that she basically worked with a group of guys that 0:11:43.000 --> 0:11:46.040 were selling products on television, and I said, I had 0:11:46.440 --> 0:11:49.080 a great idea of how to sell cosmetics and TV, 0:11:49.360 --> 0:11:51.440 although I wasn't really sure that I had a great 0:11:51.440 --> 0:11:53.679 idea for how to do that. But I thought I 0:11:53.720 --> 0:11:56.480 would take what I'd been doing in my classes. I'd 0:11:56.480 --> 0:12:00.040 put together these color coordinated kits, and I took a 0:12:00.040 --> 0:12:02.200 lot of what I was teaching, which are now you 0:12:02.320 --> 0:12:05.840 see on TikTok all the time as these tutorials. I 0:12:05.880 --> 0:12:09.719 was doing a three hour class and lessons on you know, 0:12:09.800 --> 0:12:11.840 a ten over a ten week course of how to 0:12:11.880 --> 0:12:14.520 do your makeup. So I started to extract a lot 0:12:14.559 --> 0:12:16.520 of that and thought, how could I take all of 0:12:16.520 --> 0:12:19.800 what I do and bring it down to where, you know, 0:12:19.960 --> 0:12:21.760 I could sell this on television. 0:12:25.920 --> 0:12:27.960 And here we are with Victoria, and. 0:12:28.040 --> 0:12:30.439 I'm going to take you through a complete makeover or 0:12:30.480 --> 0:12:32.560 I make someone up from the start to finish, and 0:12:32.600 --> 0:12:35.559 show you all the right techniques for a general makeup application. 0:12:35.920 --> 0:12:39.760 And now joining me is Victoria Jackson. Hi, Cathleen, So 0:12:39.800 --> 0:12:40.680 what are we going to do today? 0:12:40.720 --> 0:12:41.439 What are we going to learn? 0:12:42.120 --> 0:12:45.360 And I got on the set and I did a 0:12:45.440 --> 0:12:48.160 million dollars a week in sales. From that point on, 0:12:48.440 --> 0:12:52.000 I did thirteen years of inpromercials, ten years of QVC. 0:12:52.559 --> 0:12:55.479 Where by the way, I just went back on QVC 0:12:56.040 --> 0:13:01.280 twenty five years later last week and it was amazing. So, yeah, 0:13:01.520 --> 0:13:02.840 I've talked about full circle. 0:13:03.240 --> 0:13:06.360 Yeah I got yeah, Well when did you Maybe it 0:13:06.400 --> 0:13:09.360 was now, But at this point, when did you know 0:13:09.480 --> 0:13:12.320 that you'd made it in the cosmetics industry or even 0:13:12.400 --> 0:13:13.920 just like made it professionally. 0:13:14.920 --> 0:13:17.760 I don't know that I ever thought about. It's so strange, 0:13:18.000 --> 0:13:21.120 but the making it. When you deal with low self 0:13:21.200 --> 0:13:24.640 esteem and insecurity, you're always sort of like did I 0:13:24.720 --> 0:13:26.640 make it? And I always saw I was just saying 0:13:26.679 --> 0:13:28.599 the next thing. You know, when you do things like 0:13:28.679 --> 0:13:31.120 QBC at the time, you know, I'm I'm very hard 0:13:31.160 --> 0:13:35.320 on myself, so I'm a perfectionist, so I never quite 0:13:35.640 --> 0:13:38.360 Only now I think as I'm this year about to 0:13:38.400 --> 0:13:41.560 turn seventy, and I thought, you know what, this year 0:13:41.800 --> 0:13:44.360 I'm starting to take you know what, I'm looking at 0:13:44.400 --> 0:13:48.200 my resume and I'm ticking over a lot of boxes off, going, oh, 0:13:48.440 --> 0:13:51.160 you've done a lot, so I think it's just catching 0:13:51.240 --> 0:13:53.000 up now to all that I've done. 0:13:54.520 --> 0:13:57.800 By all accounts, Victoria had found success in her career. 0:13:58.360 --> 0:14:00.720 She was doing millions in sales. I was bringing in 0:14:00.800 --> 0:14:04.559 over twenty two thousand new customers a week in the 0:14:04.640 --> 0:14:08.080 nineteen eighties. No less. When we come back, Victoria's life 0:14:08.120 --> 0:14:11.520 takes an unexpected turn as we explore the more personal 0:14:11.559 --> 0:14:25.320 side of her story. Stay tuned. Before the break, Victoria 0:14:25.440 --> 0:14:28.760 was setting records and breaking glass ceilings at QBC, But 0:14:28.840 --> 0:14:32.720 while she was growing Victoria Jackson Cosmetics, her personal life 0:14:32.760 --> 0:14:33.520 grew as well. 0:14:35.720 --> 0:14:38.960 I was married for my first marriage, which was very 0:14:38.960 --> 0:14:43.360 short with the gentleman named last name Jackson. I remarried 0:14:43.800 --> 0:14:47.160 years later to you know, the love of my life, 0:14:47.240 --> 0:14:49.080 the first love of my life. I now have a 0:14:49.120 --> 0:14:52.640 new love of my life. I'm very lucky. And I 0:14:52.720 --> 0:14:56.000 was married and I had a son who is now 0:14:56.040 --> 0:14:59.200 forty years old. And you know, as our I was 0:14:59.240 --> 0:15:02.840 going up kind of in the world of infomercials. You know, 0:15:02.880 --> 0:15:06.000 we drifted a little bit apart, and again we split, 0:15:06.280 --> 0:15:09.360 you know, amicably, and have a beautiful son now as 0:15:09.360 --> 0:15:13.160 I say that we have together. And during that separation 0:15:13.680 --> 0:15:17.280 and as we were finalizing our divorce, I met my 0:15:17.280 --> 0:15:22.280 current husband, Bill Guthi of Gutty Ranker, and we have 0:15:22.320 --> 0:15:26.120 two children. So I have three beautiful children. And it 0:15:26.200 --> 0:15:30.960 was really during my time married with Bill, as we 0:15:31.040 --> 0:15:34.880 have a son and a daughter, that I was going 0:15:34.880 --> 0:15:36.960 along in my makeup world. And all things have been 0:15:37.000 --> 0:15:40.320 going well. And you know, I think Victoria Jackson enjoyed 0:15:40.360 --> 0:15:44.359 sales up to a billion dollars, thirteen years of infomercials, 0:15:44.400 --> 0:15:48.160 ten years of QVC. I created about six hundred beauty products, 0:15:48.920 --> 0:15:53.440 and just overnight my daughter said she had an eyeball headache, 0:15:54.160 --> 0:15:57.880 and so began this kind of nightmare of she was 0:15:57.920 --> 0:16:02.440 diagnosed with this rare auto immune disease called NMO used 0:16:02.480 --> 0:16:05.400 to be known as Devik's disease. And they told me, 0:16:05.640 --> 0:16:08.480 and by the way, it's not so rare, that she 0:16:08.600 --> 0:16:12.160 had four years to live. And then I basically said, 0:16:12.560 --> 0:16:17.160 I'm closing the door on makeup, and I'm opening the 0:16:17.200 --> 0:16:21.200 door on everything medicine. And you know, I never went 0:16:21.240 --> 0:16:23.440 to college, as I said, I didn't graduate high school. 0:16:23.440 --> 0:16:24.840 So now I was really going to have how do 0:16:24.920 --> 0:16:28.720 I learn to cure this autoimmune disease when I've been 0:16:28.720 --> 0:16:32.640 making like foundation and lib gloss for the last fifteen years. 0:16:33.480 --> 0:16:39.640 Her daughter's diagnosis changed everything. Neuromyolite as optica or NMO, 0:16:39.960 --> 0:16:43.120 is an autoimmune disease where your immune system, which usually 0:16:43.120 --> 0:16:47.880 protects you, mistakenly attacks parts of your nervous system, usually 0:16:47.920 --> 0:16:51.480 your optic nerves and the spinal cord. So without his 0:16:51.560 --> 0:16:55.200 second thought, Victoria dropped everything to find a cure, not 0:16:55.400 --> 0:17:00.880 once looking back, people react to these moments differently. I 0:17:00.880 --> 0:17:03.440 think it probably just depends on you know, your life 0:17:03.440 --> 0:17:06.919 experience and kind of your disposition. But for some people 0:17:06.960 --> 0:17:09.880 they jump immediately into action. For some people they need 0:17:09.880 --> 0:17:13.800 to have a down period, they need to evaluate. When 0:17:13.840 --> 0:17:17.800 she got this diagnosis, can you talk us through, I 0:17:17.840 --> 0:17:20.640 mean obviously devastating, but you know, what were your feelings, 0:17:20.640 --> 0:17:22.560 what were your thoughts then, and what did you pull 0:17:22.640 --> 0:17:25.439 from in your past to help you get on a 0:17:26.000 --> 0:17:28.320 on an active track of figuring out trying to find 0:17:28.320 --> 0:17:29.240 the diagnosis. 0:17:29.640 --> 0:17:32.399 Well, I knew that I had to work let's call it, 0:17:32.440 --> 0:17:36.800 at the speed of life, and so certainly I fell apart, 0:17:36.960 --> 0:17:39.560 you know, and I curled up in a ball, and 0:17:39.760 --> 0:17:43.439 you know, was like, couldn't move off my bathroom floor 0:17:43.480 --> 0:17:47.560 for a while. But it's the thing that separates, you know, 0:17:47.640 --> 0:17:50.919 people from like you can stay in that position or 0:17:50.960 --> 0:17:53.199 you can allow yourself that and then you get up 0:17:53.240 --> 0:17:56.359 and you start making a plan. I was so focused, 0:17:56.480 --> 0:17:59.320 you know, I literally have to remember, like I was 0:17:59.480 --> 0:18:02.360 picturing the hour glass of the sands of time running out, 0:18:02.400 --> 0:18:05.560 and I was on this like had to get something done. 0:18:05.640 --> 0:18:10.240 So sure it was upsetting, but I became so singularly 0:18:10.280 --> 0:18:15.479 focused because I knew without me driving that narrative and 0:18:15.520 --> 0:18:18.720 being the person who's doing it and the quote unquote 0:18:18.720 --> 0:18:21.520 mom on the mission, as they called me, there was 0:18:21.560 --> 0:18:23.879 no other choice. So I just knew that I was 0:18:23.920 --> 0:18:25.960 going to have to put together a group of really 0:18:26.000 --> 0:18:31.119 smart people, doctors, researchers, scientists, anybody that knew anything about this, 0:18:31.840 --> 0:18:35.480 and start I just started thinking through in business, what 0:18:35.520 --> 0:18:38.199 would you do to solve something. You'd start bringing in 0:18:38.240 --> 0:18:41.760 the people, You start building on the foundation, you start 0:18:41.800 --> 0:18:45.640 getting great minds together, you start about collaboration. All the 0:18:45.680 --> 0:18:49.399 fundamentals that I built in my beauty business, I just 0:18:49.400 --> 0:18:52.440 started to apply that here. So I started to seek 0:18:52.440 --> 0:18:56.000 out the experts and build this team. And I was 0:18:56.119 --> 0:18:58.639 just going to be as I've always been, just my 0:18:58.760 --> 0:19:04.040 authentic self telling the story. Because infomercials were telling a 0:19:04.080 --> 0:19:06.720 story for thirty minutes. I'm going to tell the story 0:19:06.720 --> 0:19:09.160 of my daughter where I am, what I'm trying to do, 0:19:09.760 --> 0:19:14.120 and I'm going to pay. I've spent eighty million dollars 0:19:14.160 --> 0:19:16.119 of my own money. But people are going to work 0:19:16.160 --> 0:19:18.120 the way I need them to work, which is they 0:19:18.160 --> 0:19:21.880 need to collaborate, share information. And I'm going to change 0:19:22.480 --> 0:19:25.399 the way in which medical research is done. So I 0:19:25.480 --> 0:19:28.280 set a big bar for myself and a big agenda. 0:19:28.520 --> 0:19:31.320 But I knew this was serious and I was going 0:19:31.400 --> 0:19:33.480 to save her life and the life of all the 0:19:33.520 --> 0:19:36.919 people that have this condition. I will say, in the 0:19:36.960 --> 0:19:41.160 midst of all of that I was diagnosed with cancer. So, 0:19:42.440 --> 0:19:44.600 but I always see things as a movie and I 0:19:44.680 --> 0:19:47.240 was sort of like, this can't be the part in 0:19:47.280 --> 0:19:50.080 the movie where the mom dies trying to save the daughter, 0:19:50.200 --> 0:19:53.760 you know, And so I was able to get through that. 0:19:54.600 --> 0:19:58.360 It's unbelievable what you've done. Can you walk us through 0:19:58.400 --> 0:20:01.639 a little bit of that, like how did you know 0:20:01.920 --> 0:20:05.399 what barriers needed to be fixed? And it sounds like 0:20:05.440 --> 0:20:07.680 you had some idea about how to solve them by 0:20:07.720 --> 0:20:10.000 funding them and forcing them to work in a collaborative way, 0:20:10.000 --> 0:20:12.840 But how did you even know that that was a problem? 0:20:12.920 --> 0:20:14.720 And then how did you force it forward? You did 0:20:14.720 --> 0:20:15.480 it very quickly. 0:20:16.160 --> 0:20:18.680 Yeah, I've done it very very quickly, because it became 0:20:18.720 --> 0:20:20.960 apparent to me early on and people let me know. 0:20:21.160 --> 0:20:22.879 And I have to give a lot of credit to 0:20:22.920 --> 0:20:26.320 the head of my scientific team, who is the head 0:20:26.320 --> 0:20:31.119 of molecular Medicine at an Infectious Disease at UCLA, doctor 0:20:31.160 --> 0:20:34.520 Michael Gaman, And it became clear to me. I was like, well, 0:20:34.640 --> 0:20:37.040 tell me what are the challenges of getting cures and 0:20:37.080 --> 0:20:40.560 getting things made? And the biggest one was collaboration, people 0:20:41.160 --> 0:20:45.000 not wanting to work together. And so immediately became clear 0:20:45.000 --> 0:20:46.480 to me, what I was going to need to do 0:20:46.720 --> 0:20:49.919 was sort of create new rules of the road for 0:20:50.160 --> 0:20:51.720 how I was going to if I was going to 0:20:51.720 --> 0:20:53.880 give money, how people were going to have to work 0:20:53.920 --> 0:20:56.960 together and share. And then I brought together a group 0:20:56.960 --> 0:21:00.440 of people where I said, help me build this, build 0:21:00.480 --> 0:21:03.520 it together. You tell me what you need and I'll 0:21:03.520 --> 0:21:05.239 go and get it. You know, you tell me if 0:21:05.240 --> 0:21:09.800 you need a certain specialist or research in a certain area. 0:21:10.000 --> 0:21:13.840 And I mean, I'm so simplifying what has been over 0:21:13.880 --> 0:21:19.560 seventeen years of problem solving, bringing people together, hundreds of 0:21:19.600 --> 0:21:26.000 people's together, forty plus countries together, over fifty short films 0:21:26.040 --> 0:21:30.280 that I've made, creating apps, building my own blood bank 0:21:30.600 --> 0:21:34.760 that has over one hundred thousand specimens, where I started 0:21:34.800 --> 0:21:40.160 with nothing because who knew that to you know, have research, 0:21:40.520 --> 0:21:44.000 they needed the material to work on. So I had 0:21:44.040 --> 0:21:47.479 to kind of go back in my old way of thinking. 0:21:47.560 --> 0:21:50.960 This is how creative you start thinking. I needed blood 0:21:51.359 --> 0:21:53.919 from people in the world that had this, and I 0:21:54.080 --> 0:21:58.480 was like, instance, it's mostly women that have autoimmune diseases. 0:21:59.200 --> 0:22:01.080 I was like, I'll give you blush if you give 0:22:01.119 --> 0:22:03.879 me some blood. Right, Like, I'm going back into my 0:22:03.960 --> 0:22:08.200 old makeup role. I'm thinking again that creative, which sounds 0:22:08.240 --> 0:22:11.399 kind of insane now, But I started with one nurse 0:22:11.600 --> 0:22:15.680 going across the country. She'd have extra blush in her bag, 0:22:16.160 --> 0:22:20.320 getting specimens, and that's how I started creating a blood bank. 0:22:20.480 --> 0:22:23.640 So anything that I saw was an obstacle. I tried 0:22:23.680 --> 0:22:24.800 to figure out the solution. 0:22:25.600 --> 0:22:30.359 Wow, that is really extraordinary. How quickly did you feel 0:22:30.400 --> 0:22:33.040 like you were making progress? Was it immediate or was 0:22:33.040 --> 0:22:36.159 it very frustrating? No, it was very frustrating because to me, 0:22:36.320 --> 0:22:38.560 progress was going to only look like, you know, again 0:22:38.640 --> 0:22:42.639 a high bar of a cure or a therapy. So 0:22:42.720 --> 0:22:44.919 it's taken me a while to be able to sit here, 0:22:45.400 --> 0:22:47.960 Emily and say to you, and now I have four therapies. 0:22:48.000 --> 0:22:53.000 But in real time, people said, nobody gets a drug made, 0:22:53.000 --> 0:22:56.080 even one maid this quickly. They say, you have to 0:22:56.119 --> 0:22:58.919 cross what they call, which is a not a great name, 0:22:59.000 --> 0:23:02.120 the Valley of death, where a lot of ideas, research, 0:23:02.240 --> 0:23:05.359 science just kind of goes into this chasm of like 0:23:05.520 --> 0:23:08.720