Modjossorica “Rica” Elysee Ndiaye

Founder & CEO • BeautyLynk

Rica Elysee started BeautyLynk to connect beauty professionals and customers, and co-founded #AtTheTable, for women founders to build community.

Photos courtesy of Rica Elysee

It took me a while to accept the title of CEO. I had always been in a role where I was supportive of someone or a team, and I thought about CEOs as people who hire and fire. When I decided to take on that title, I decided I wanted to be a leader. The difference is that I don’t treat it as the power to fire and hire, but the power to put people where they want to be. Now I’m building teams, and it’s powerful.

Rica Elysee

Entrepreneur Rica Elysee Ndiaye uses her power and influence for the good of all businesswomen. She is the creator of BeautyLynk, a tech-enabled platform that connects beauty professionals and customers for on-demand, on-location appointments. Specializing in beauty services for women of color, BeautyLynk sends stylists to individuals looking to get their hair, make-up, and nails done from the comfort of their own homes.

Rica had the idea for BeautyLynk while recruiting beauty professionals for a family member in need of in-home services. She envisioned a more extensive network of professionals and customers who could schedule in-home appointments, making services more accessible for people regardless of culture or capability.

Visit BeautyLynk

Check out how BeautyLynk helped Dana Blair get ready for Pajamas and Lipstick, a slumber-party-themed event that facilitates fun activities and conversations about feminine wellness, sex & relationships, and beauty.

BeautyLynk evolved into a tech-enabled platform that helps beauty professionals grow their businesses by providing a customer service system. After years of experimentation and growth, her marketplace platform now has over 16,000 professionals in its network. BeautyLynk won $50,000 in the MassChallenge accelerator in 2016, and in 2018, the team finished the Morgan Stanley Multicultural Innovation Lab in NYC. Today Morgan Stanley is an active BeautyLynk investor.

Before devoting her work full-time to BeautyLynk, Rica served as a nonprofit fundraising executive for organizations focused on empowerment and education from the local to national level. Rica also co-foundered #AtTheTable, a dinner series-turned movement where women founders across industries can build community and share experiences around entrepreneurship. Featured in Forbes, CNBC, and Black Enterprise, Rica is a celebrated entrepreneur, sought-out speaker, coach, and advocate for female business owners.

More on Rica Elysee

Built to Break the Rules

“I grew up in Dorchester, and we ended up moving to Mattapan when I was a teenager. I’ve always been super creative and ambitious. A lot of that encouragement happened because my mother allowed it to happen,” Rica said. “I’m a first-generation American, the first of three girls, and a lot of my childhood was understanding what it meant to be American. Both of my parents are from Haiti, so they couldn’t actually signify that or do that for me, but I’ve always carved my own path. My mom never named me to fit in. With the name Modjossorica, I was never built to follow rules.”

“I Just Went For It”

“I had a family member who needed services, and that’s how I got started. I built up the website myself on WordPress, I recruited beauty professionals, and I just went for it,” Rica said. “There was a lot to learn, and I started hiring my first developer within a year. I only needed one person to want it and need it, though, and then I decided to keep it growing. I was running a meet-up at the time for women of color called Boston Naturals, so I also had an audience to test it out with. Conversations quickly turned to how to be more inclusive and have other people also use the website. It was a good goal and process that kept it moving further.”

Transformational Learning

“After college, I went to go live in Arizona for a little while, working for AmeriCorps VISTA. I was fundraising at a homeless women and children’s shelter and doing program planning, creating infrastructure around what the women needed to learn and how, getting donations, and even doing overnight stays four to five times a week,” Rica said. “I was dedicated, and it was a very powerful experience for me. I learned a lot about the system and the simple things that many people don’t realize people don’t have. These are the types of experiences that I’ve seen, and that drives me to want to change the world.”