Julissa Prado is making waves in the beauty industry.

The UCLA alumnus founded Rizos Curls, a hair care company that specializes in curly hair textures inspired by her Latina background, in 2017. Having begun in her uncle’s garage with her brother and co-founder, Tony Prado, Julissa Prado said Rizos Curls was entirely self-funded and remains so after nine years. The beauty brand has made history, becoming the first Latina-owned curly hair care brand to be sold nationwide at all Ulta locations. Although her products are for everybody, Prado said, Rizos Curls is a reflection of her culture, where all consumers are welcomed into her roots.

“When you learn to love the thing that you hate about yourself the most, it’s almost like it unleashes a new version of self-love and a whole new level of confidence in yourself,” Prado said.

As a child of immigrants and a Los Angeles native, Prado said she grew up with recipes for things such as scalp masks and hand scrubs inherited from past generations, all of which were rooted in natural ingredients. She said she became accustomed to creating her own hair care products in high school, where she often styled her peers’ hair for events as her passion for hair grew.

Prado added that in her teenage years, the beauty industry was vastly different from today, as textured hair care education was absent aside from the occasional magazine column. She became obsessed with learning about her hair, she said, because of the lack of representation curly-haired children had in the early 2000s. Prado said after learning how to style her hair, she learned how to love her hair and, as an extension, her identity.

“The mission of the brand is to help other people not only learn to love their hair, but understand it, learn how to style it, learn how to achieve their hair goals with their natural hair texture,” Prado said.

Rizos Curls’ senior marketing manager Gabby Tafoya has been with Rizos Curls for 4 1/2 years, and said she has found a personal connection to Prado’s mission of representing her culture in that time. As a Latina herself, Tafoya said working with Prado is like working with a friend that she respects and admires. She added that working with someone with so much enthusiasm for their vision allows her to think big when it comes to her work.

“I’ve worked with a lot of different brands, like Dyson, all of these really prestigious brands, but I think in my career, this was the first time that I really felt like I was unstoppable,” Tafoya said. “I think it’s because of Julissa’s leadership. … Nothing can stop that girl. If she sets her mind to do something, and she has her vision, she will make sure to make it happen no matter what.”

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In her nine years as a business owner, Prado said she has found joy in passing on her knowledge to other small businesses. For the past four years, she has taken up mentoring for the UPS Store Small Biz challenge, a national competition that recognizes and empowers small businesses through visibility opportunities and challenges.

One of her mentees, Sydney Attis, recently won the 2025 Small Biz Challenge alongside her co-founder with their company Just Call Me Shirley, a cocktail company specializing in canned, on-the-go drinks. In working with Prado during the challenge, Attis said having a female mentor was especially important to her, as she could learn to navigate being a female business owner in a male-dominated field. The best advice Prado gave her, she added, was to not underestimate herself, which has allowed Attis to approach her business with a newfound confidence.

“I think that she is inspiring because of the level of innovation that she seems to cultivate,” Attis said. “She constantly is coming out with new products, and her marketing strategy and the things that she creates are fun, but they’re new and they are very authentic. They don’t seem to be something I’ve seen before, and she really has a grasp on her audience and on her consumer and what she is pushing.”

Prado said she credits much of her entrepreneurial success to her educational pursuits. As a first-generation college student who earned a master’s degree in Business Management from Wake Forest University, Prado said the pursuit of education changed her life, and she believes that the growing rhetoric on social media that college is unimportant for one’s career is false. For her, she said her education was her fast track to growth, both as a businesswoman and as a person.

“I think that I 100% wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for my education,” Prado said. “Especially for people that come from a background where maybe their parents didn’t go to college, especially kids of immigrants like myself, I think that there is no better way to completely transform your generation and your future generations than to go get educated and go to college.”

Before Rizos Curls, Prado said she always envisioned a career in political science, law or business, and that her venture into the beauty industry was only motivated by her desire to make products that work for her. She added that the mission of the brand, despite its growth into a large company, remains the same.

“I feel like it’s kind of the name itself,” Prado said. “I think it represents the two sides of me, the two cultures coming together. … It’s one of those things that’s so intertwined with my identity and who I am. So I think I bring it into everything that I do.”