All Faculty Profiles

Jolie De Feis

by Janelle Mejias Trujillo

Gotham Blog & Newsletter Writing teacher Jolie De Feis knows her passion.

Seasoned educator, writer, and esthetician, Jolie pours her all into her newsletter, Hotline Skin. Despite their apparent differences, these roles have one common ground: the need to reach out to people in a meaningful way. It started with a degree in Psychology.

“I was interested in mental health," she says, "I was interested in helping people and helping them understand things. It was kind of a blend of science and humanity... It just seemed to be the right move for me.”

Life, in all its secretive scheming, had slightly different plans for Jolie, who handled them like a pro. She soon found herself pursuing a career in teaching.

“I’ve always liked teaching," she says, "I’ve always felt like I’m good at consolidating information and making it easy to understand for people.”

But that’s when things got bumpy, with an unexpected dive into skincare while Jolie was teaching English and sex education in South Africa. There she developed adult-onset acne, a confusing and difficult blow to her mental health, especially since it wasn’t something she ever had to deal with growing up. “I had no idea what was going on,” she explains. “I immediately understood [then] how much of a toll it takes on your mental health... you feel like people are judging you.”

Jolie then shared her skincare journey on her Instagram stories but soon got hungry for a bigger platform. She knew she could do so much more. She landed on the perfect next step: writing newsletters and finally becoming an esthetician. About the newsletter she says, "It felt like I was just talking to a friend... and there’s literally no rules.”

“I started the newsletter because I didn’t have enough space [on Instagram] to... go in-depth,” she says. “My audience is who I am [and] who I was, and I know I would want someone to explain the process, step-by-step.”

Jolie knows that when you’re in a classroom setting, sharing your personal work with an audience, you need to build that same trust.

“I’ve had really good teachers and really bad teachers,” she explains, “and the really good teachers care a lot. They want to talk about the thing they’re teaching and that’s how I feel about skin.”