Meet the Expert: Samantha Ambrose
Samantha Ambrose has 20 years’ experience in the beauty industry and 15 years in the teaching, training and the assessing industry. She has enjoyed various roles including Senior Beauty Therapist, Mobile Therapist, Lead Assessor, IQA and Manager of training and sales. We loved learning about her career so far and launching DB Training.
What was your first job in the industry?
I worked as a junior therapist at the age of 14 in a salon and progressed onto a senior therapist at a Spa.I enjoyed gaining product knowledge and experience from leading brands including elemis, Dermalogica, jessica and ST Tropez. I enjoyed teaching and training new members of staff to a standard that I treated my clients.
Tell us how DB Training got started
I decided that I wanted to train and teach but did not know where to begin! I worked as a technician at a college in the hair and beauty department where I could gain some experience in assessing beauty. To gain further experience I then worked for a fantastic training provider where I gained experienced assessing other sectors including customer service. When I decided to start a family I had a short career break and decided to start assessing beauty therapy qualifications and received many enquiries from professional therapists and hairdressers wanting to gain a qualification to teach hair and beauty. Looking back it would have been so beneficial to have a company support me to point me in the right direction to teach and assess beauty therapy.
DB Training was then launched and was accredited with VTCT. We have grown and are proud to say many of our students are recommended to us by all previous students that have gained qualifications with us. We are proud of the training we deliver and it is great to see so many students now teaching their own courses.
What keeps you motivated in your career?
When our learners achieve and progress onto a higher teaching qualification and they progress in their own careers.
What has been your biggest challenge within your career to date?
Being brave and deciding to start my own business after a short career break!
What advice can you give to a person wanting to become a beauty trainer?
Be confident and understand the subject you are teaching. Do not be afraid to make mistakes! We can learn and reflect on our teaching practices all of the time and this is what helps us to improve. We recommend achieving the Award in Education and Training level 3 to start your career in teaching.
The qualification was previously called PTLLS. This qualification is for everybody teaching adults and will be required to have this qualification when teaching courses, training days, and delivering private tuition. This may be in a small group or a one to one basis. Training may be delivered in salons, spas, fitness centres, colleges and training providers. Those that do not require the qualification will highly benefit from the AIE to start their career in teaching. Training is delivered to suit all centres and individuals including one to one, group and distance learning in various locations that will be agreed with the lead assessor.
If you are looking at becoming a fully qualified assessor we recommend you achieve the Award In Education and Training and progress onto the Certificate in Assessing Vocational Achievement. The Certificate in Assessing Vocational Achievement (CAVA) will help you understand and gain a qualification to assess occupational standard qualifications.
What can people expect when studying with DB training and what makes you stand out as a course provider?
What sets us apart from other providers is that we're passionate about the training we provide and quality of support. We understand some of our students do not have any teaching experience, so we provide the right resources to help and provide a good understanding in all areas of the teaching sector. Our assessors and tutors are qualified teachers with over 15 years’ experience in assessing, internally verifying and teaching and have worked in salons, spas and fitness centres.