This Celeb Hairstylist Commutes from Ohio to N.Y.C. How She Brings the 'New York Vibe' to Her Midwest Salon (Exclusive)

For the last year, Mia Santiago has been getting her head in the right space. Literally.

The celebrity hairstylist, 44, who launched her career in New York City working for Sally Hershberger, recently opened her own scalp spa in Columbus, Ohio, called Headspace by Mia, and she tells PEOPLE that it’s her way of bringing the hottest hair innovations home.

“Here in Columbus, we get things just a touch later. Columbus is such a cool city, but I was like, 'I want to bring something New York here. I want the salon to have a New York vibe,'” says Santiago, an Ohio native.

Her solution? Start a scalp spa in Columbus.

“We take such great care of our skin on a regular basis. We go and we see our estheticians and we have a nighttime regime of doing our skincare routine. But I think that people forget that your scalp is skin, and everything that's alive in your hair is within your scalp," she says. "So the better care that you take of your scalp, the better care you're going to have for your hair and your hair health.”

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Santiago’s clients are consistently looking to get rid of build up and restore their hair’s shine without knowing where to begin. She likens the treatments at her scalp spa to getting a facial… for your head.

“Buildup on your scalp causes blockage in your pores, so we remove all of that and then you see this nice clean scalp without buildup or dandruff or product stuff,” she explains. “We exfoliate the scalp with different tools, and then there's different massaging features and deep conditioning treatments for your hair, too.”

Santiago works closely with her assistant, Jake Turner, who enrolled in special classes in order to perfect the scalp services. Santiago began her career in a similar way — she worked as an assistant for renowned celebrity pro Sally Hershberger in New York beginning in 2008.

After watching a TV show called Sheer Genius featuring Hershberger as a judge, Santiago decided she wanted to become a celebrity hairstylist. Three weeks later, she enrolled in hair school and moved back in with her parents. Ten days after she graduated, she moved to New York.

“I worked at an awful salon and no one there was very nice. It still exists. It just wasn't my vibe and they actually let me go,” Santiago says of her first job. The layoff was defeating, but Santiago was scrappy and undeterred.

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“I had sent a resume in [to Hershberger] via snail mail. I didn't know what to do, but I wanted to try to figure it out, and I became friends with a few of Sally's assistants, so when I lost my job, I remember her assistant calling me and being like, "Sally just opened up a new salon on the Upper East Side, and I think you should apply and put my name on your resume."”

Santiago followed the instructions to a tee.

“I got hired, and I worked for Sally Hershberger for 15 years,” she says. “The people were incredible and so talented. I was so lucky to have been brought up as a baby hairstylist in such an amazing community with amazing people.”

Fast forward more than a decade, and Santiago ultimately made a decision that would change everything. She’d gotten married and given birth, and with a three-and-a-half-year old son at home, the city was becoming untenable.

“I left," says Santiago. "It was really scary and it was really sad and involved a lot of therapy. The city with a kid is really hard and really expensive, and [the idea] of him taking the subway to school wasn’t ‘normal’ for me. I wanted to go back to where he had a big yard to run around in, and neighbors in the neighborhood to play with and football games on Friday nights."

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Santiago and her husband, Jaime, and their son Silas, now 8, have been in Columbus ever since, and Santiago commutes to New York City once a month for work. She also travels to Los Angeles, and her bicoastal celebrity clientele includes the likes of Ed Sheeran, Mariska Hargitay, Hugh Jackman, Dove Cameron and more.

“I feel so blessed for every opportunity that comes my way," she says. "And one of the most important things for me is, whether you are a celebrity or you're someone who saved up enough money to get a haircut with me, whether in Ohio or New York, I want you both to have the same feeling when you leave: beautiful and confident."

Read the original article on People