Alumni Spotlight: Maryelle Artistry

With clients ranging from celebrities and professional athletes, to brides, dignitaries and fortune 500 corporations, Maryelle O’Rourke of Maryelle Artistry has cemented her spot in the makeup world.

What first inspired Maryelle to pursue a career in makeup was watching her mother’s battle with cancer. “When I was eight years old, she was battling cancer and had lost all of her hair. She would get ready every day by applying a wig, and her makeup, and her scarf, and just watching her every day doing that was a magical experience…….. it totally inspired me to realize the magic of what makeup can do for someone.”

Fast forward to today, and Maryelle says that it is her ability to connect with her clients that has made all the difference. “You have to be passionate, empathetic, you have to be able to connect with the thoughts and the feelings and the attitude of the client in order to be able to support them.” When Maryelle Artistry first began, she was a team of one. She now employs ten artists and a part-time office manager, something she credits in part to the business knowledge she gained during the EforAll Accelerator Program.“I first heard about EforAll through an internet search because what I was looking to do was expand my business.” She applied for the Accelerator, describing it as “exactly what I was looking for.”

Once accepted into the program, she says:  “It was great to be able to be together with like-minded people, even though everybody was doing a different business, our issues and problems were the same. It was great to be able to feel not so alone anymore, to know that other people were feeling like the same thing.”

Maryelle was also given a team of mentors to support her during and after the Accelerator Program. EforAll Mentors are individuals with significant business and leadership experience that help guide new entrepreneurs through the process of turning their idea into a growing business.  “My mentors were terrific,” she says. “It was like having a brother and sister that you could always call and rely on. The collaboration of it was great because they didn’t always agree with each other, which was really cool because then you got different perspectives.” The Accelerator Program also gave Maryelle the tools she would need to expand her business. Before the Accelerator Program, Maryelle ran her business almost entirely by using paper and pen. Now she says, “We use many different systems and that was another way to scale the business.”

Before participating in the EforAll Accelerator Program, Maryelle Artistry was focused primarily on booking editorial and commercial shoots. After EforAll, her business has entered the bridal industry, resulting in more bookings for her team of artists and being able to scale her business even more.

Maryelle Artistry has been named 2018 Boston’s Best Makeup Artist by Boston Magazine, and has won the WeddingWire Couple’s Choice Award for the last three years. According to her website, “‘This award recognizes the top five percent of local wedding professionals…winners are determined by reviews from over a million WeddingWire newlyweds.” Looking at all she has accomplished, Maryelle says: “I would have never really been able to scale if I hadn’t gone through the Accelerator Program.”

Learn more about Maryelle Artistry at maryelleartistry.com or on social media @maryelleartistry.