Living Dappled
Erika Page spent much of her life visibly standing out from the crowd because she lived the majority of her adolescence and young adulthood, as she so gracefully calls it, “dappled.” Others call it living life with spots. Doctors call the skin condition – vitiligo. And like other great leaders that we will interview in this season of the LION 40, she had her turning point.
Erika Page, Founder and Editor of Living Dappled
Erika Page is the Founder and Editor of Living Dappled, a blog and community for women with vitiligo, an autoimmune disease without a cure that causes loss of pigment. After getting vitiligo at the age of seven, she went on to lose 100% of her skin's pigment over the course of two decades. Growing up with vitiligo, she struggled with low self-esteem, anxiety and depression, but always found the courage to show up and be herself. Seeing a gap in the resources for the vitiligo community, Erika merged her passion for writing with her experiences with vitiligo to found Living Dappled as a platform that would help educate, support and inspire women just like her.
Since its founding in 2016, Living Dappled’s blog has garnered an average of 100k pageviews a year with the brand’s social content reaching more than half a million people a year. The platform carries a niche, highly engaged community of 10k followers across its email, Facebook and Instagram channels. In 2020, Living Dappled launched a membership network to further connect with its readers and provide community support. Living Dappled collaborates with brands across the beauty, skin and medical industries to bring products that matter to its readers. These partners have included Vitiligo Vanquish by Fake Bake, TeVido BioDevices, Clarify Medical, Daavlin, Beauty Counter, Sohma Naturals, Zanderm and Avita Medical. Living Dappled’s content has been featured in Glamour UK, Bella Grace Magazine, Yahoo and The Mighty.
As the founder of Living Dappled and an advocate for vitiligo, Erika has spoken at the U.S. World Vitiligo Day conference and has been featured on WebMD, Love What Matters and DermHealth.Co’s Heal Thy Skin podcast. In 2021, for the second year in a row, Erika Page was named the #4 most influential vitiligan of the year through a survey conducted by Unite for Vitiligo.
How has being different made you a better leader?
I can do hard things - My family thrived on tough love and jokes as I was growing up - and still does today. And I always remember my mom telling me: “You can do hard things.” I didn’t think much about it then but that phrase shaped a lot of my life, including the way I lived with vitiligo and my leadership style today. You can read more about this HERE.
I’m my own worst critic - I don’t know anyone who doesn’t struggle to be criticized or feel some way about negative comments or feedback. And I’m not any different. Yet growing up with vitiligo, I was my own worst bully mentally and emotionally and in many ways, that prepared me for the worst of what could be thrown at me. No one will be as mean to me as I’ve been to myself, as sad as that is. Read more on this BLOG POST.
I can relate - I’ve been through some hard things. I know what it’s like to feel insecure and vulnerable and through living with vitiligo and now working with others with vitiligo every day, I know what it takes to help someone feel comfortable enough to talk to me.
Lion Leadership – an executive education company.
We coach and train leadership teams and mid-level managers so that people don’t quit because of bad bosses. Whether you need 1-on-1 coaching for yourself, a custom leadership academy for your company, off-site retreats for your teams, or just a few hours of morale building, we are here to get your organization ready for what’s next. Natasha Ganem, Ph.D., is founder and principal consultant.