Her First Clients Were Sex Trafficking Survivors. She Removed Their Brands. | Brandie Heredia

At the Brink with Erica Brinker · Jul 29, 2026 · 46m

Brandie Heredia spent 15 years in emergency and trauma rooms. She was good at it. But she was also burning out. Then a nonprofit recruited her to help remove branding tattoos from women who had been sex trafficked — tattoos their pimps had put on their faces and bodies to keep them from running away.

That work became the foundation of Unmarked Beauty and Wellness, the practice she built from a small salon suite into a facility she now owns. Along the way she went through a divorce, became a single mom, remarried, brought her husband into the business (after initially refusing his help), went…