Rachel Winard
Rachel Winard knew she would be a professional violin player when she was four years old. “The second I started playing, I felt a connection,” she told Ari. “That sounds crazy, because I was four, but I just, it clicked immediately and I thought, ‘Yep, I’ve got it all figured out.’” She began playing professionally when she was just 12 years old and practiced eight hours a day.
Rachel’s passion and dedication to her craft led her to the Juilliard School of Music, where she began studying for a BFA in Violin Performance when she was 17. She described her two years studying, practicing, and performing at Juilliard and around New York City as “intense and confusing. Things weren’t exactly as I expected them to be and had thought for a decade or more that they would sort of unfold to be.” She found herself grappling with the difference between working as a musician and loving to play, her own needs changing as she grew up, and feeling burnt out.
Rachel took a semester off and moved back to Seattle, where her family lived. Closer to her support network, she scaled back her time playing violin and worked in a furniture store and a small retail shop; she also worked as a barista. During her time off, she decided to leave Juilliard permanently and stay in Seattle, where she transferred to the University of Washington. She graduated with a degree in Political Justice and Political Theory before moving back to New York City to attend Columbia Law School at the suggestion of her advisor. “At the time, I had thought for so many years that I was going to be a violin that I just...I was really impressionable, so I thought, ‘Okay, sure. Let’s try that.’”
Rachel’s next career change came four years after graduating from law school. While at Columbia, she had been diagnosed with lupus, a chronic and painful autoimmune disease that causes one’s immune system to attack healthy cells. Four years into practicing law in New York City at two different firms, she received an ultimatum. “My doctor said, ‘It’s your health or your job.’ And that was an easy choice.”
Because lupus made it impossible for her to use any skin care products on the market, she took matters into her own hands and started to make her own soaps. She taught herself everything she could about skin care and worked up the chutzpah to launch Soapwalla in 2009.
“I’m my own boss, and it’s awesome,” she said.
Highlights
Why she has no regrets about being a 12-year-old professional violinist: I really try not to have any regrets about anything. And one of the surprising side effects is [that] now, if I see a class I’m interested in, I sign up for it and I take it. I don’t care if I’m in my thirties and everyone else is 18. If I’m interested, I’m going to try it. And maybe that’s because I had a really structured childhood. I don’t know.
Problematic skincare ingredients to look out for: Some of the most popular or most widely used are parabens, which are preservatives. There’s a set of them— propylparaben, methylparaben, and many, many more. They are synthetic preservatives. They help extend the shelf life, so that’s why they are used so [widely.] Some of them have been banned in the E.U. for health reasons. Phthalates are another one...It’s used as a fragrance enhancer...and it’s also been linked to several health issues. Coal tar is often used as well. Artificial colorants, petrochemical byproducts, which is liquid plastic.