Biography for Press

Nana Addison is a true modern-day renaissance woman, known for her strategic prowess in brand activations, her direction of exciting experiential events and live music & beauty formats, and her recent recognition as one of Europe's 100 women most infuential women in the Startup & Venture Capital Space. She has been honored as a FOCUS Magazine Top 100 Woman in Germany, an EU Startup Magazine Top 10 Beauty & Tech Founder, and is a LinkedIn Top Voice inductee.

The Ghanaian-German entrepreneur holds the distinction of being the first woman to bootstrap two businesses in Germany that have disrupted the country's beauty and marketing industries in parallel.

In 2023, Nana founded Styleindi GmbH, a global cosmetics CPG and tech company crafting inclusive and culturally conscious solutions for hair, skin, and body wellness, aiming to disrupt global beauty ecosystem and Africa's beauty supply chain. Notably, Styleindi is the first Black women-founded Cosmetics CPG startup in German history and is backed by a tech venture capital firm.

Under Nana's leadership, Styleindi introduced its inaugural brand, Ancient Beauty, providing African botanical-infused, hair texture-inclusive scalp - and haircare products. Launched as an ecommerce-only brand in November 2023, Ancient Beauty is expanding.

Before her groundbreaking work with Styleindi, Nana established CURL Agency, Germany's go-to boutique agency for inclusive and multicultural brand communication and experience marketing. Additionally, she served as the founder and director of the CURL CON Festival, Germany's leading Multicultural Hair, Beauty, and Lifestyle Festival, drawing over 10,000 attendees.

Nana's dynamic career trajectory underscores her commitment to innovation, inclusion, and empowerment in the tech and beauty sectors, cementing her status as a visionary leader and trailblazer.

Nana’s life motto is “If it’s on your mind, it’s worth making it reality.”

She has been featured in Bloomberg, Vogue, Business Insider, ZEIT, INDIE, VICE, I-D, DW, and more publications.

My Story, IN MY WORDS

Hey there!

My name is Nana Amma Addison - Agyei. I am a 1989 born Ghanaian-German woman. I started deliberate personal development from the age of 18 when I realised that I will not be successful with formal education after my A-Levels in Germany. I had to learn to be confident with what I can do and build on that rather than feeling inadequate and crippled by the cards I had been dealt. At the time I was desperately trying to hide my dyslexia from teachers and students. In school teachers called me very intelligent but lazy - very smart but too rebellious.

10 years later I know that this difficult time at school was the stepping stone to becoming who I am today. Why? Because what had been labelled as lazy and rebellious was me trying to solve a problem and finding an infrastructure and vehicle to facilitate that solution! I needed to find a way to understand myself, my behaviours and my intelligence in order to grow it in a way that doesn't need “formal education". So I tried a lot of jobs while in school and after my A-Levels, I continued that quest as a freelancer while studying 4 horrific semesters of Business Management and Theology at University. At the age of 23, I felt I had enough trial and error experiences and decided to choose to build my career with a radical learning by doing approach.

I dropped out of University and started working full time as a freelancer in Project management, Event management and anything digital marketing/communication. Eventually, I Co-Founded my first company Addison Green and continued on that path which allowed me to travel around the world. However in 2015 I had to file for private bankruptcy. That experience really drove me harder towards impact entrepreneurship.

Today I am the Founder of two Startups. My boutique brand consulting agency CURL (2018 - 2024) and my consmetic Startup Styleindi (2023 - today). Ancient Beauty is the first texture inclusive scalp- and hair care brand infused with African botancils that is coming out of Styleindi, and I am excited to create more meaningful products, tools and tech for an inclusive beauty industry.

Ouside of my work as a Entrepreneur, I offer you my African-European (Afropean) perspective. This means the views of a woman, born in Ghana - raised by a single mom in a suburb of Germany - with friends all over the globe, therefore travelling and experiencing cultural and ethnic diversity from a young age - being kida conservative, yet wildy proressive at the same time - with a passion for culture, cosmetics/wellness, technology and all forms of bridge building communication - working hard towards effecting real change for the future generations by re-ignighting what might have been supressed.

I consider myself a poly-hyphenate . I am very ambitious, information-driven and keen for results. I like finding problems because I’ve spent a lot of time of my life being treated like I was one. I am a professional sh*t starter so to speak ;-)

But more than identifying problems, I have great pleasure at solving them - with likeminded driven individuals.

It’s pretty complex, but it’s beautiful and even more beautiful when it’s shared, so hop on, join the journey and the conversation

- sometimes broad and sometimes intimate...

With Love, grace and peace,

Nana Addison - Agyei