Salons for Life | Save the Child

Our Mission

At Salons for Life (SFL), we believe that arts and storytelling are powerful gateways into lived experiences and personal histories. Every salon’s intent is to go on a journey of self-discovery through a focused artistic experience-in-community. At SFL, we believe that a salon has been impactful if you walk away having glimpsed your unique capacity as an agent for compassionate change.

Our Manifesto

Come as you are. To be seen and heard is a fundamental birth right. In a world polarized by competing agendas and information overload, we have to intentionally and respectfully create spaces where we can unapologetically be ourselves in our diversity and multiplicity, collectively in our similarities and differences.

https://www.salonsforlife.com/

Meet the Team

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Nirupa Umapathy

Nirupa founded Salons for Life as a learning community for adults in transitional periods of their lives. In 2017, Nirupa quit the corporate world, went on a 180-day sabbatical to redesign a work life, anchored by joy, social and creative purpose. Struck by the loss of agency and disempowerment of the average corporate employee, and inspired by the half-life of traumas from childhood, Nirupa created the salons as shared authority spaces where adults could express their creativity freely and safely.

Salons for Life is now a women-run and women-owned experiential learning community that organizes creative playdates for adults- spaces where adults invest in pedagogies of confidence. These are navigating ambiguity through curiosity and play, somatic awareness and financial demystification. In her past life, Nirupa was a Managing Director at Bank of America, serving as a trusted advisor to fixed income institutional investors.

Nirupa is now an independent investor, who deploys finance with a heart. Nirupa writes non-fiction with a focus on trauma, burnout and post-traumatic growth. Nirupa has lived in Jersey City since 2002. A native of south India, Nirupa feels most at home in the small batch vibe of a historic community called Paulus Hook.

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Sybil Ngai

Sybil Ngai is a native New Yorker and a Jersey City resident for over 20 years. After 30+ years of working in project management and information technology servicing financial services and the software industry, Sybil retired to pursue the next chapter of her life. Sybil has a 75 hour certification in Jivamukti Yoga. In 2019,

Sybil came on as founder number 2 for SFL, to direct and design systems and infrastructure. In January 2021, Sybil started volunteering at a local food pantry in Jersey City, managing the community bank food delivery and the bagging for distribution. In March 2022,

Sybil became the treasurer of the local neighbor association. The association was created to compact the over development of the surrounding area.

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Kate Szekely

Kate Szekely is a creative entrepreneur, at heart. An actor, theatrical producer, personal trainer, and yoga teacher, Kate unites her many passions by her love of learning and her commitment to craft. Kate is honored to be a co-founder of Salons for Life, and is dedicated to its core mission of cultivating radical self-love within a community context.

After residing 12 years in NYC/Jersey City, Kate decided to head into the untamed swamps of Central Florida, where she now hikes, paddleboards and practices Brazilian Jiu Jitsu daily.

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Salons for Life

SFL in conversation with Aasraa Trust

Aasraa Trust is an incredible organization that works to empower street and slum children in India. Their mission is to level the playing field for children who have neither seen books nor stepped into a school. 649 children currently attend their Street Smart program, designed to bring children up to literacy standards and mainstream them into the school system. 1021 children have been mainstreamed over the past few years. During the COVID-19 crisis, they have pivoted to address the needs of the time, providing COVID care packs and ration bags to the most vulnerable. Salons for Life is honored to be working with Aasraa Trust throughout out 2021. India Interrupted salon series. Part of every donation we receive will be routed to an organization doing this critical, on-the-ground work in the fight against COVID-19.

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Salons for Life

Interview with Trina Talukdar of Kranti

In March 2022, SFL founder Nirupa Umapathy chatted with Trina Talukdar, co-founder of Kranti, a Save the Child partner organization dedicated to rehabilitating and empowering women and girls in India’s infamous red light districts. In this conversation, Trina discusses how she was inspired to work with these under-represented women and girls not because of their vulnerability, but because of their resilience. In them, she saw are strong, independent women trying to support their families. Using healing modalities like yoga and meditation, and providing educational and vocational opportunities and training, Kranti takes the most marginalized outsiders and empowers them to be the greatest change-makers within their communities and the world at large. Salons for Life is honored to have Kranti as our beneficiary in the 2022.Children Interrupted Fund. https://www.kranti-india.org/ https://www.instagram.com/wearekranti/ https://www.facebook.com/kranti.india If you wish to make a US $ donation, please go to https://www.savethechild.org/kranti.

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Salons for Life

Interview with Seruds

SFL Founder, Nirupa Umapathy, sits down with Mallikarjunain of SERUDS, an Indian NGO dedicated to education, relief and rehabilitation of disadvantaged children, women and elders in Kurnool. SERUDS was the last partner organization in the 2021. India Interrupted Salon Series.