About
You have a life to lead, too.
You know how to show up for people. You've had plenty of practice. But what about the things you want to build, say, try, or change? They don't belong at the bottom of the list forever.
Me neither.
Most of us were never taught the strategies behind being heard, trusted, and asked what we think. Me neither. I was a shy refugee kid who wanted to make the world a better place by becoming a teacher.
Turns out, being the nice teacher didn't mean everyone would listen, either. So I went and did something about it. I trained with Sandy Dumont, The Image Architect, in the Washington, D.C. area.
Welp, I learned the executive image thing. But what about making the world a better place?
You can learn the strategies in a class. But the part of you that wants to make the world a little better? That was already there.
The problem is: no one's listening.
That's why I built Light Loves Color. To put the strategies behind powerful first impressions into the hands of women with hopes, dreams, and ideas that could make the world a little better. You've got something worth saying. Let's help people hear it.
I'm Tatyana Wilson, an educator, writer, and image consultant. For more than 25 years, I've cared about how people learn to trust their judgment, communicate what they know, and act on what matters to them.
That's taken me through education, image consulting, boundaries, assertiveness, communication, influence, selling, confidence, and authenticity. I hold an Ed.S. and the SHRM-CP.
Why weren't we ever taught this?
Sandy became my mentor, and I later acquired her business and intellectual property. Her clients understood that how they're perceived can shape whether they're listened to, trusted, and remembered.
The more I learned, the more one question bugged me: why on earth aren't we all taught this? Most of us were taught to work hard, be kind, be competent, and mind our manners. Nobody explained how first impressions form, or why one person can make a point once and get heard while another has to repeat herself three times.
These strategies were never meant only for politicians and executives. They belong in ordinary lives, too: at home, at work, and in the plans you keep setting aside.
The Strategic Impressions Method.
You care about other people. You're also here to develop ideas of your own. You don't need to become someone else. You need practical ways to let the person who's already good at this have a say.
Read my personal story
A little about me — only because you asked.
I'm Tatyana. I come from people who took down wolves with their bare hands.
My grandfather's family were horsemen in the Siberian taiga, where the cold could kill you and the wolves circled the camps. They survived on grit and fought for their freedom. When the communist revolution came, many lost everything. My own parents settled in Estonia, then fled the Soviet Union as it collapsed because they were oppressed for believing in God. Freedom isn't a slogan in my family. It's the thing we crossed the world for, and paid for in everything we left behind.
I came to this country at ten years old — the immigrant kid in hand-me-downs. Eight kids in the family, one working parent also taking college classes, life out in the country. I wasn't the hot girl in class. I wasn't confident. And like so many of us, I learned to make myself smaller. Softer colors. Don't be too much. For years, my tenacity sat buried under all that conditioning.
I earned three degrees and became a teacher. Then I pivoted into image consulting, and that's where I met the late Sandy Dumont, The Image Architect. I chose her because she started color advice from demonstrations you could see for yourself.
Two demonstrations early on: two small tan squares, one on a blue background, one on an orange one. They looked like completely different colors. They were identical. Then two plain tan circles — one "wearing" a bright shirt, the other a dull one. No faces. And every person in the room could tell which one looked tired and which one looked lively. The only thing that had changed was the color the circle was "wearing." That was nineteen years ago, and the lightbulbs have never stopped.
A couple of years after Sandy passed, I took over her work. Then 2020 happened. Covid. My father died from brain cancer. My husband and I took in my brother, who has cerebral palsy. My mother died a few short years later. My husband's young niece died. Grief has a way of burning off everything that isn't real.
What was left standing, when the smoke cleared, was one thing: the desire for freedom. The freedom to be happy, to be healthy, to make our own choices, to take up space and be seen — in our work and in our ordinary days. Freedom like that's never simply handed to us. It takes a little courage to take it back.
Before I did color, I taught kids to find their voices.
I was an elementary school teacher, and the thing I taught was Writer's Workshop. Not prompts, not book reports. A method where a child chooses her own subject, every single day, and learns that what happened to her is worth writing down.
That same principle runs through this work: observe before interpreting, find your own material, and practice in the world—not just in your head.
The Science of Clothes That Love You Back is the free visual education series. High-Worth Impressions is the coaching program, where CALIBRATE • OWN • UNMUTE gets practiced in real life.
Start with the free letters or the free color research. The coaching program is in development, and enrollment isn’t open yet.
Tatyana Wilson, Ed.S., SHRM-CP — founder of Light Loves Color, student and mentee of Sandy Dumont, and steward of the business and intellectual property she built. Writing weekly at posts.lightlovescolor.com.
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