🏆 Cortney & Julie Receive the 2026 Mission Driven Award
We are incredibly proud and humbled to share some very exciting news!
Cortney and Julie, owners of The Salon Professional Academy Maplewood and Hair Company & Spa, have been named the recipients of the 2026 Mission Driven Award at the High Performance Salon Academy Annual Awards Ceremony.
The Mission Driven Award honors salon and beauty industry leaders who are using their businesses for something bigger—creating an impact through the ways they lead, serve, give, grow, and positively affect others.
For Cortney and Julie, receiving this award is especially meaningful because their mission has never belonged to just one business or one community. Over the years, it has grown into something much bigger, creating a ripple effect that reaches from TSPA Maplewood and Hair Company & Spa to our local communities, Guatemala, the Philippines, and beyond.
A Mission That Starts With People
At the center of everything Cortney and Julie do is a simple belief: when you invest in people, the impact continues far beyond what you can see.
At The Salon Professional Academy Maplewood, that means helping future beauty and wellness professionals turn their passion into a career. It means providing education, mentorship, encouragement, and opportunities that help students grow not only as professionals, but as people.
The impact doesn’t end when a student graduates. Those graduates go on to build careers, serve guests, support their families, become leaders, open businesses, mentor others, and give back to their own communities.
That is where the ripple begins.
Making an Impact Through Hair Company & Spa
That same mission is deeply rooted in Hair Company & Spa.
For more than two decades, the salon has been about much more than hair and beauty services. It has been about creating careers, developing team members, caring for guests, supporting local organizations, and finding meaningful ways to give back to the community that has supported us.
Whether it is a fundraiser, community partnership, charitable initiative, or simply finding a way to help someone who needs it, we believe a local business has an incredible opportunity—and responsibility—to make its community better.
Taking Our Mission Beyond Our Own Communities
Over time, that desire to serve has reached far beyond Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Through mission work in Guatemala and the Global Stylist Scholarship, Cortney and Julie have been able to use the beauty industry as a way to create opportunity and empowerment across borders.
Beauty education is more than learning a skill. A skill can become an income. An income can help support a family. Education can create independence. And one opportunity can change the direction of someone’s life.
That is the kind of impact we believe in.
And the ripple continues even farther.
Our businesses have also created opportunities and relationships that extend all the way to the Philippines, reminding us that the people who become part of our mission don’t necessarily have to work within the same building—or even live in the same country—to become an important part of what we are building.
The Ripple Effect
That is what this award represents to us.
One student becomes a successful beauty professional.
One team member becomes a leader.
One graduate inspires another student.
One opportunity helps support a family.
One act of giving inspires another.
And one business that decides to do something bigger can create an impact it may never fully get to see.
That’s the ripple effect.
This Award Belongs to So Many
Although the 2026 Mission Driven Award was presented to Cortney and Julie, they know this recognition would not be possible without the incredible people who have been part of the journey.
Our TSPA Maplewood team and students.
Our Hair Company & Spa team and guests.
Our graduates and alumni.
Our families.
Our industry partners.
The organizations and communities that have welcomed us.
Our connections in Guatemala and the Philippines.
And every person who has donated, volunteered, taught, served, supported, encouraged, traveled, shared an idea, or simply believed in the mission.
You are part of this award, too.
Something Bigger
Winning the 2026 Mission Driven Award is an incredible honor, but it isn’t a finish line.
If anything, it is motivation to keep asking:
Who else can we help?
What opportunity can we create?
How can we give more?
And how far can the next ripple travel?
We are incredibly grateful to High Performance Salon Academy for recognizing Cortney and Julie and for celebrating businesses throughout the beauty industry that are choosing to use their success to make a difference.
From Maplewood, Minnesota, to New Richmond, Wisconsin, to Guatemala, to the Philippines, we have seen firsthand that when you lead with purpose and invest in people, the impact can travel farther than you ever imagined.
We are honored. We are grateful. And our mission is far from finished. ❤️
