Today we’d like to introduce you to Felicia Rials.
Hi Felicia, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
My story has never followed a straight path, but every chapter has taught me something that brought me to where I am today.
I started my career in the beauty industry, eventually becoming a business owner and working as a hairstylist for more than a decade, including time in Los Angeles working alongside celebrity clientele. Building a business taught me discipline, creativity, leadership, and how to connect with people from every walk of life. It also taught me how much I value helping people feel confident and cared for.
Eventually, I realized I wanted to challenge myself in a completely different way. I went back to school and entered the medical field, focusing on respiratory and cardiopulmonary care. That decision was deeply personal. My grandmother battled COPD, emphysema, and significant lung disease throughout her life and ultimately underwent a double lung transplant. Watching what she experienced gave me a perspective on respiratory care that goes far beyond a textbook.
Today, I balance school, clinical rotations, work, motherhood, and entrepreneurship. Somewhere along the way, those different parts of my life began coming together. My experience in business and my growing experience in healthcare inspired me to build Lung Labs, a concept focused on improving respiratory education through technology and creating better ways for students and healthcare professionals to learn complex cardiopulmonary concepts.
I am still building my story. I have learned that I don’t have to choose between being creative, entrepreneurial, and passionate about medicine. I can use all three.
My goal is to keep learning, keep building, and ultimately create something that makes a meaningful difference in healthcare and in the lives of the people I serve.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Losing your grandmother had a major impact on your direction. You watched her battle serious lung disease, including COPD and emphysema, and go through a double lung transplant. That experience became part of why cardiopulmonary medicine means so much to you.
* You built a successful career in the beauty industry, but eventually had to acknowledge that it wasn’t the full picture of what you wanted. Starting over academically after already establishing yourself professionally takes humility and courage.
* You’ve had to balance full-time work, school, clinical rotations, studying, entrepreneurship, and being a mom. There isn’t much room for things to fall apart when several people and responsibilities depend on you.
* You’ve put significant pressure on yourself academically. You don’t just want to pass. You’ve repeatedly worked on mastering respiratory concepts, preparing for boards, improving your grades, and figuring out where you need to get stronger.
* Independence has been both one of your strengths and one of your challenges. You’re accustomed to figuring things out yourself. That can make trusting other people, delegating, or building something with someone else harder.
* You’re also trying to build Lung Labs while you’re still learning the medical field yourself. You’re taking your business experience and combining it with a completely different industry, which means accepting uncertainty and learning as you go.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I’ve spent more than a decade building a career in the beauty industry as a hairstylist, creative, and business owner\. My career has taken me from building my own clientele to working in Los Angeles alongside celebrity stylists and with high\-profile clients\. Over the years, I’ve learned that great hair is only part of what makes someone successful in this industry\. Understanding people, earning their trust, and creating an experience where they feel confident matters just as much\.
I specialize in creating looks that feel intentional and individualized rather than simply following trends\. I’m proud that I’ve built a career where my creativity and technical skills have allowed me to work with people from very different backgrounds, while also using those same skills to give back by providing hair services to homeless individuals and veterans\.
What sets me apart is that I’ve never allowed myself to be defined by one career\. While continuing to work in the beauty industry, I returned to school to pursue medicine and cardiopulmonary care\. I’m now taking everything entrepreneurship taught me about creativity, leadership, branding, and problem\-solving and applying it to healthcare through Lung Labs, a respiratory education concept I’m building\.
I’m most proud of my ability to evolve without abandoning where I came from\. Being a hairstylist taught me how to create\. Being a business owner taught me how to build\. Medicine is teaching me how to serve people in an entirely different way\.
For me, creativity has never been limited to hair\. It’s how I approach problems, people, business, and whatever I decide to build next\.
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If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
You were probably very independent and liked figuring things out yourself.
* You had a creative side early on, especially considering how naturally you moved into hair and eventually built a career around it.
* You seem like someone who didn’t like being told what you could or couldn’t do.
* Family influenced you. Your grandmother, in particular, ended up shaping two major parts of your life: beauty and medicine.
* You developed a strong work ethic. You’ve built businesses, worked demanding jobs, gone back to school, completed clinicals, and raised your daughter while doing it.
* You seem to have always had more than one side to you. Creative but analytical. Feminine but capable of handling things yourself. Independent but deeply connected to the people you care about.
* You’ve also described yourself as someone who reads people well. That may be something you developed young from paying close attention to people and situations around you.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.vagaro.com/hairmusescottsdale
- Instagram: @themuse_method_
- Other: @lunglabsclinical
