Even as a child, Sinead Norenius-Raniere, VP of Product at Cision, knew that she wanted to accomplish a lot. At one point she remembers wanting to be a nurse. Then a policewoman. Both didn’t pan out, but it turned out to be the best thing that could’ve happened for her. One career stood out — makeup artistry.
Her journey began in Santa Barbara where she began working at a local salon as a makeup artist. It wasn’t exactly what she was going for (she wanted a career in aesthetic beauty), so she decided to go back to her home in San Francisco to get her aesthetic license. This, as she describes, was her entry point into the wild west of beauty.
Seeing as our theme this quarter is technology, I was intrigued by Sinead’s approach to the topic. Sinead has seen a tonne of evolution in the industry and has worked to strengthen beauty’s tie to technology. How does she envision technology as a part of her future vision for Cision? Initially, she was brought in to help reimagine the online tools used by content creators and journalists to report news and brand themselves. With print readership having been replaced by online readership, it was important for Sinead that their tools accurately reflected and evolved with the demands of the internet. She helped conceive ways to make their jobs more efficient and collaborative.
It’s of no surprise that this forward-thinking vision was, at a point, not understood nor appreciated by others in the industry. While working in platform education, Sinead pushed her clients to take full advantage of the power of the internet. Its capacity to crowd-source and connect with a broader community was what she saw as an important step in modernizing the industry. Unfortunately, others were not as quick to agree, citing the internet as a ‘low-brow’ platform. Yet it was this rejection that motivated her to take this idea into her own hands and make it tangible through her own business. This marked the beginning of her entrepreneurial journey in the social media space.
Through her blog, selftanningqueen.com, Sinead was able to amass a ‘cult-like’ following for her brand as a result of her willingness to take into consideration her followers’ wants, needs, and opinions. She’d created a path for herself, paving a way for the influencers of today.
Sinead has also made use of her platform to advocate for the importance of skin health. The revelation came after a scary diagnosis of stage two malignant melanoma that she received just as she had started a new job. It was a huge shock to her, as she’s always been a big proponent of skin health and sunscreen. At first glance, the cancerous mole in question did not concern her — it was only after her dermatologist insisted it be tested that she took action. A very important lesson that came out of this is the utmost importance of putting your health first. Especially as women, we’ve been taught to juggle so many different hats at once that taking care of our bodies usually ends up falling to the bottom of our lists. Sinead doesn’t want what happened to her to happen to anyone else, hence her insistence that people should not miss their yearly checkups (even if you think you’re okay). Be like Sinead — don’t be afraid to take your future into your own hands.