Pictured: Salon attendees at "Come As You Are". Jersey City, June 2018. Photo by Asha Ganpat.
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.
“The Salons are a crossover experience - life meets art and practice. Am grateful to have grown through these afternoons, to be a part of a burgeoning community that prioritizes connection and enlightenment, with self and others.”
Shreya - Financial Services, Environmental Social Governance Enthusiast
Pictured: Colin Wright in “The Becoming Tour”. Jersey City, Nov 2018. Photo by Alex Young.
The Team
At Salons For Life, we are proud of the diversity of our experiences and origin stories. 2/3 co-founders have finance and technology backgrounds. This adds to our distinct curatorial voice and enables us to co-create with our artistic facilitators, who come from diverse pedagogies and training. This is matched by the equally rich life pathways and experiences of our audiences. The “outsider” status of our founding story goes hand in hand with our mission, to celebrate the creative fire that lives within all us, regardless of training.
Nirupa Umapathy
Nirupa is the first founding partner at Salons for Life. After a job loss and a divorce, Nirupa quit the corporate world, went on a 180-day sabbatical to redesign a work life, anchored by joy, social and creative purpose. She returned renewed to found Salons for Life in 2018 as a learning community for adults to navigate a chaotic and complex world.
Struck by the loss of agency and disempowerment of the average corporate employee from her own corporate career, and inspired by the half-life of traumas from childhood, Nirupa created the salons as shared authority spaces where adults express their creativity freely and safely. Salons for Life has grown into an experiential learning community that organizes creative playdates for adults- spaces where adults invest in themselves and the currencies of the world through facilitated 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 an independent investor, who deploys the ESG framework in her investments, what she calls 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.
Sybil Ngai
Sybil is the second founding partner at Salons for Life. She joined Nirupa in this capacity end of 2019 to direct and design systems and infrastructure. 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 discovered her love of yoga and obtained a 75 hour certification in Jivamukti Yoga.
In January 2021, Sybil started volunteering at a local food pantry in Jersey City, organizing 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 development of the surrounding area without considering the needs of the community. In August 2022, Nirupa and Sybil joined the Coalition for Food and Health Equity’s inaugural fundraising committee, to plan and execute their two major fundraising efforts for 2023: the Love & Equity Gala, and their first Summer Food Festival.
Kate Szekely
Kate Szekely is the third founding partner at Salons for Life. An original founding artist for the salons project, Kate joined Nirupa and Sybil as a co-founder in 2020. A creative entrepreneur at heart, Kate spends a majority of her day as an actor, theatrical producer, personal trainer, and yoga teacher. In this multi-disciplinary capacity, Kate unites her many passions by her love of learning and her commitment to craft and constant formulation of pedagogies of confidence, which she and Nirupa have been dreaming up since 2018. 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.
Alexia Lewis
Based in occupied Tongva territory (Los Angeles, CA), Alexia Lewis is a visual and performance artist and art writer. Her professional career has ranged from working as an editorial photographer to being a creative director and consulting producer. She brings over a decade of experience to her role as the Creative Operations Specialist for Salons For Life.