How the beauty exec behind Harvey Nichols' newest counter is challenging racism

As I walk into Harvey Nichols in Manchester it isn't hard to spot LA based make up exec Sharon Chuter, who is paying a VIP visit to the store following on from the launch of her make up brand. Sure, she is surrounded by a gaggle of laughing women, there is a champagne bucket and a fluffy little white dog called Leo, but I'm pretty sure I could have vibrated towards her from her infectious energy alone.

Then there is her magnetic physical presence - glowing skin, hair a mass of goddess like tumbling braids and a dazzling, mega watt smile. Dressed in ripped jeans and a blazer over a slogan T-shirt, and sporting designer shades, she has effortless star quality and oozes confidence from every perfectly closed pore.

But Sharon wasn't always called Sharon, in her birth place of Nigeria she was actually christened Ufuoma - which means "beautiful thing."

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Glossy and glamorous Sharon might be, but she is also fiercely intelligent. An academic who was considering a career as an aeronautical engineer, and a woman who has faced a myriad of challenges on account of her skin colour.

"When you are born in my skin, regardless of where you are born, you know that you are different but not in a good way - you are different bad." For Sharon, beauty was 'therapy'.

"How do you confront all the ugliness that you are not allowed to confront?" she asks me rhetorically. She says doing so can turn you into a person seen as having an agenda. "My life is not an agenda," she says. "This is a culture that has been metabolised by society.

"When you are born in Nigeria, you are a person. When you move overseas you are a black person. And you find out