Pamela Springer’s understanding of esthetics is more than skin deep.
For over 30 years, the Village of Bradford resident studied and researched different skin types as a licensed esthetician, and taught the nuances of darker complexions to medical spa professionals for two of those decades. In June, the Associated Skin Care Professionals named Springer its 2025 Industry Icon.
“From the bottom of my heart, it’s never been about the money and I don’t look for accolades. I love people and love what I do,” Springer said.
The trailblazer hopes to share her expertise with other Villagers — teaching them to understand their skin and what to look for when reading labels of skin care products.
“Companies advertise to people of different ethnicities, giving the public a sense that the product is for them,” she said. “That product may be a good product, but just not good for your skin. You as a consumer need to read the label of the skin care products you buy.”
Springer’s venture into skin care wasn’t planned.
“I was a plus-size model living in California in the ‘80s and ‘90s,” she said. “I did fashion shows, went on the Oprah Winfrey Show and other shows talking about what you should wear for your body type.”
Springer, who also modeled for BBW (Big, Beautiful Women) Magazine and became the first plus-sized model for Essence Magazine, faced a drastic change during the 1993 recession forced her to move back home with family in Boston.
A year later while in Arizona on a whim, A friend offered Springer a job as the national training director for one of the first Black-owned skin care companies. She said it only required her to read from a script, but that made Springer uncomfortable.
“When I’m doing something new, I have to do my research,” she said.
That led to Springer enrolling in Carsten Hair and Beauty School.
“When I moved to Arizona and enrolled in the school, I read a lot. There is a guidebook for skin care, but it’s just that — a guide. People look at it as if it’s the end all, be all but it’s not.”
After finishing school and working as a trainer at Doctor’s Dermatologic Formula (DDF), Springer said she really started understanding skin and the differences in ethnicities while doing trade shows for skin peels on melanated skin.
By 2000, Springer opened the Skin and Make Up Institute of Arizona — a private school training students to become makeup artists, laser technicians and estheticians. At 3,000 square feet, the school’s building in Tempe quickly became too small to accommodate its rapidly growing student population. Springer expanded the institute by opening up a second location in nearby Peoria.
“Word got around that I was teaching these classes that no one else was teaching. It was different, out-of-the-box thinking,” she said. “It’s about people understanding their skin and finding out what your skin needs. I liken it to a snowflake or a fingertip.”
Though she has had rooms filled with people eager to learn from her over the years, Springer remembers when it wasn’t easy to talk about multi-ethnic skin.
“It was hard across the board for years,” she said. “Once when I was giving a presentation, someone said, ‘This is bull. Skin is skin,’ and walked out. (Companies) automatically thought you meant Black people and would say, ‘Oh no, we don’t have any Black clients.’”
“But ethnic, in terms of skin care, is anybody who tans really, because if you tan that means your melanocytes are actively absorbing the sun, which produces melanin,” she said. “It’s education that people haven’t heard and it’s all still so new.”
Springer also faced difficulty becoming certified as a national continuing education provider by the California Board of Registered Nursing, having to apply four times before her application was approved 11 years ago — giving her the official credentials needed to train medical professionals working with skin for the global market.
Trisha Gulbranson, founder and president of Derma Health Skin and Laser, said Springer shared her knowledge with her medspa staff — including two doctors and an esthetician — who work with more than 80,000 patients performing chemical peels, CO2 laser resurfacing and microneedling.
“When I started my business 21 years ago, there weren’t any resources or anyone who had the full understanding of skin,” Gulbranson said. “Springer teaches us how skin types react to chemicals. She was the foundation to a lot of the information. I think she was surprised at how little doctors knew at the time.”
Springer puts that knowledge in her company, Global Skin Solutions, a corrective professional skin care line that can only be sold to licensed practitioners.
“Continued education causes nurses to have to take classes like mine,” she said. “You have to have a license to use products like mine rather than over-the-counter products, because the ingredients are much stronger.”
If Springer gets a chance to share her skin care knowledge with Villagers, she said she’ll use a skinscope, a portable machine that analyzes and shows underlying skin concerns, to showcase how her expertise can lead to instant results.
“I can do a before and after with the machine to show the difference in their skin after I service them,” she said.
Staff writer Brea Jones can be reached at 352-753-1119, ext. 5414, or brea.jones@thevillagesmedia.com.
