{"id":23706,"date":"2026-05-20T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/?p=23706"},"modified":"2026-05-18T17:08:36","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T21:08:36","slug":"from-group-chat-to-glow-serum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/2026\/05\/20\/from-group-chat-to-glow-serum\/","title":{"rendered":"From Group Chat to Glow Serum"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For fashion lover Chelsea Rojas \u201915, her first job at Adidas felt like an ideal fit. As a member of the brand\u2019s global sales team, Rojas worked on fashion collaborations with designers such as Prada, selling Adidas collections to department stores and e-tailers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the job came with a tough manager and all the ups and downs of post-grad life. Rojas, a Brooklyn, N.Y., native, found support in a daily group chat with six close friends \u2014 all women navigating new careers, dating, and nascent adulthood. For Rojas and her friends, the chat became such an integral part of their daily lives that they began to wonder if the advice, humor, and vulnerability they shared might resonate beyond the group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That question sparked a trajectory that would take Rojas from a private group chat to a popular podcast and, most recently, a fast-growing beauty brand inspired by the same themes that fueled the podcast\u2019s success: female friendship, travel, and connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Launched in 2018 by Rojas and her friends (and fellow Brooklynites) Glynn Pogue and Sade Parham, Black Girls Texting<\/em> featured hour-long discussions on everything from long-distance relationships to the latest Real Housewives<\/em> drama to how to handle \u201cwhite-people hair touching.\u201d Their conversations were candid and often provocative. A popular 2022 episode with author and professor Dr. Sarah Webb explored colorism, or racism within one ethnic group.<\/p>\n\n\n

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With a growing fanbase and more than 250,000 downloads as of 2025, they soon scored interviews with high-profile guests like Serena Williams, Olympic track and field athlete Alyson Felix, and actress Tia Mowry.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One topic they always returned to was travel, specifically their international trips to warm destinations. \u201cWe would always end up competing over who had the best tan,\u201d Rojas explains. But even with trying to get a better tan with various products, she usually ended up in last place. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sure, Rojas knows that excessive tanning isn\u2019t good for your skin, but she believes there\u2019s a real benefit to responsible sun exposure. Research has shown that being in the sun with sunscreen can help your body produce vitamin D, boost your mood, and support your immune function. And Rojas can attest to that. \u201cFor much of my life, I dealt with vitamin deficiencies, and sun exposure was literally what my doctor ordered.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks to the success of Black Girls Texting<\/em>, Rojas, Pogue, and Parham used advertising revenue to reinvest in Blue Water Girls and fund the development of Private Island Glow, a tan-enhancing serum made with clean ingredients and scented with tuberose and jojoba oils. They leveraged their podcast success to make connections in the beauty industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNone of us has a beauty background, so we attended networking events, sent products to buyers and influencers, and we were able to make contacts organically,\u201d Rojas explains. \u201cWe are working with the same factory that developed [popular skincare line] Topicals, so there\u2019s a lot of expertise and science behind our product.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rojas says her time at Colgate also played a part in her success as an entrepreneur. A sociology and Spanish major, Rojas was involved in Thought Into Action, where she learned that \u201cyou could really start your own business and live well from what you build.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rojas and her husband now reside in Los Angeles, where she\u2019s been working as a financial adviser for two years. While episodes of Black Girls Texting<\/em> are scaling back for now, Rojas feels hopeful about the future of the beauty brand she helped create. Blue Water Girls landed a deal with Nordstrom in 2024, and Rojas says their products will be in stores by this spring. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI see Blue Water Girls [becoming] a household name that people are really familiar with,\u201d Rojas says. \u201cI hope we become a go-to suncare brand.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chelsea (Pinky) Rojas \u201915 and her friends launched a beauty brand inspired by their shared travels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1260,"featured_media":23708,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3774],"class_list":["post-23706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-endeavor"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/palXSH-6am","amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/04\/20240609_BWG2_0207-2-2.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1260"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23706"}],"version-history":[{"count":31,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25862,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23706\/revisions\/25862"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23706"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=23706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}