Queen Divas Academy · Founder PR · March to June 2024
We put the founder in a classroom, then turned the classroom into press.
Sharnell Ellerby is a Brooklyn native who built Queen Divas Body Sculpting and then an esthetics academy on Long Island. She survived a near-fatal motorcycle accident along the way. Her business needed students and clients, and her story needed an audience. We put her in front of high school students first, then took that appearance to the press.
- Client
- Queen Divas Body Sculpting & Esthetics Academy
- Founder
- Sharnell Ellerby
- Location
- Franklin Square and East Rockaway, New York
- Period
- March to June 2024
The problem
An esthetics school competes for students it can’t reach through ads.
A small esthetics academy recruits people who are deciding what to do with their lives: high school graduates, career changers, people looking for a trade. Ads can’t show why this school is different, and to most outlets a beauty business is advertising, not news.
Sharnell’s story is news. She’s a Brooklyn entrepreneur who came back from a near-fatal accident and built a business, then a school, teaching others the trade. It works best when people hear it from her in person.
So we started with a room full of students and used that appearance to get press.
Put the founder in front of the audience first. The press can cover what happened in the room.
The campaign
One panel, then the press that followed it.
The campaign started with a career day and grew from there. Each placement gave us something new to pitch the next outlet.
The founder session
A working session with Sharnell to set the story and the audiences: students, women rebuilding after hardship, and aspiring estheticians.
Olympus Academy Career Week
We brought in the invitation and placed Sharnell on the panel at a Canarsie transfer high school, speaking to students aged 16 to 21 about building a career in beauty. Our team attended.
The panel becomes a story
The next day we sent a release and photos to Caribbean Life, which ran a feature on her empowering students at Career Week.
Authority Magazine
A “Leading with Heart” feature on authentic women’s leadership, from our pitch.
Way Up With Angela Yee
A full interview on Angela Yee’s nationally syndicated iHeart show. We prepared her talking points the week before.
She Owns It
A founder Q&A for a women’s business audience.
The speaking circuit
A speaking plan covering domestic violence survivors, empowering Black and Latina women, and beauty careers for graduating students. We also submitted speaker forms to the International Beauty Show and the International Congress of Esthetics and Spa.
Each appearance gave us something new to pitch.
The placements
Community press, national radio, founder features.
Each row below is backed by a submission, a pitch and acceptance, or prep materials in our records.
| When | Outlet | Placement | Our role |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 2024 | Olympus Academy | Career Week panel | Booked, team attended |
| Mar 2024 | Caribbean Life | Career Week feature, photos by our team | Submitted and placed |
| May 2024 | Authority Magazine | Leading with Heart | Pitched and placed |
| May 2024 | Way Up With Angela Yee | Full interview | Interview prep |
| Jun 2024 | She Owns It | Founder Q&A | Placed |
FEMI Magazine also profiled her in July 2024, using language from our pitch. We have no record of pitching FEMI, so it’s left off the table.
The number
This one isn’t measured in impressions.
Way Up With Angela Yee’s network says it launched on more than 30 iHeartMedia stations. It doesn’t publish a listener figure for any single episode, and none of the print or digital outlets publish an audience figure, so this page has no impressions total.
What we can report is a school panel that became a news story, a national radio interview, and three founder features in four months.
What it cost
The honest part.
- A typo in a headline undercuts the whole feature
- Authority Magazine misspelled her surname in the headline. We asked for a correction, but it was never made. The founder saw it before anyone else did.
- Not every pitch landed
- A PIX11 lifestyle pitch, a second school and a professional women’s network all asked for more or went quiet. The speaker applications were still pending when the engagement ended.
Check the byline and the headline before the founder shares the link.
What transfers
Three rules for any founder-led school or practice.
- Book the audience first
- A career day puts the founder in front of the exact people the school recruits. The press coverage afterwards comes almost free.
- Photograph everything
- Photos from our own team let Caribbean Life run the story the next day. Without pictures, most local papers won’t cover an event.
- Build a speaking plan by audience
- Survivors, women entrepreneurs and graduating students each need a different talk. Plan the circuit by audience so each booking fits the room.
Founder-led schools don’t need louder ads. They need the founder in front of the people deciding their future.
Playbook MG is a boutique public relations and influencer agency in Brooklyn, working with culture-rooted brands and founders across beauty, wellness, education, food and beverage, fashion, music, arts and nonprofits. This engagement ran from March to June 2024.
All case studiesPlaybook MG · Industry City, Brooklyn · No impressions claimed where no publisher states an audience · As of September 2026