At 16 years and three weeks of age, Kora Lester has an active barbering license from the state of Virginia – but not an active driver’s license.
Before his 16th birthday on June 2, Lester completed all 750 hours of education and training required by the Board for Barbers and Cosmetology and took and passed the theoretical exam. On June 23, he passed the practical exam as well, making him the youngest licensed barber in the state of Virginia.
“And maybe in the U.S., too. We’re trying to figure that out,” said Lester, speaking this week from the lobby of Faded & Company, the barber shop and academy where he took all his classes and where he now works full-time.
Faded & Company’s owner and founder Antoine Carey calls Lester “the Faded Phenom.”
“He was bent on being a barber, not only learning how to cut hair but understanding that it’s important to enter through the front door, that the license and education are required,” Carey said. “He wants to learn and he wants to make everything happen as fast as he can. It’s been rewarding to have a front row seat to all that.”
Lester, who grew up in Pennsylvania and moved to the Fredericksburg area with his family three years ago, said he has always wanted to be a barber — not just someone who cuts hair, but a licensed barber.
“I feel like it doesn’t mean anything unless you’re certified to do it,” he said. “Anybody can say they’re something, but it doesn’t mean something unless you have that piece of paper.”
In Pennsylvania, his older brother had a girlfriend who was in barber school.
“She would practice on me,” Lester said. “I would make her put pineapples on the side of my head and all this crazy stuff she definitely wasn’t capable of doing at the time, like to the point where she would be cutting me for three hours at a time and the clippers were burning my head.”
Later, when his brother’s girlfriend was working in a barber shop, Lester would also be there “all the time, sweeping the floors.”
“People would throw me $2,” he said. “I just loved being in the shop.”
At age 12, he took all the money he had saved up and purchased $300 worth of “random barber supplies” that he couldn’t use until he finally convinced a friend to let him practice.
“I tried to give him a low taper, and it definitely didn’t come out how it should have,” Lester said with a laugh. “I fully convinced him that it looked good. I fully convinced myself that it looked good. But it definitely didn’t. Looking back now I messed up that boy really bad. But I still cut his hair to this day!”
Lester started working on his parents to let him attend high school online so that he could finish early and go on to barbering school. He was finally successful, or at least able to wear them down, toward the end of his freshman year and finished his entire high school career via online modules in one month. He graduated with a full diploma at age 14.
“My parents were very hesitant [to let me go online], but the only reason they were stopping me was if I wanted to go to college, it would be harder to get accepted,” Lester said. “But I knew I didn’t want to go. Everybody thought I was crazy, but that didn’t really matter to me, because I had faith. I knew what I wanted to do, and that I could do it.”
Once he had his high school diploma, there was another hurdle: finding a barber academy that would take him at his age. After being turned away by multiple schools, he had given up looking when his father had a lucky conversation with a client.
“My dad is an RV salesman. This lady came in, and I guess they got on the topic of me, and she just put her finger up in my dad’s face and said, ‘Let me call someone,’” Lester said.
The client called Juanita Shanks, executive director of FailSafe-ERA, who called Carey. Carey sent him an application.
“There was no hesitation here,” Lester said. “Mr. Carey was very open-minded about it. Like he said, age didn’t matter. We all want to do the same thing here.”
Carey said he was inspired by Lester’s determination.
“I never met a 14-year-old that had graduated high school,” he said. “I was amazed at the fact that he was so ahead of the game.”
Lester said everyone at Faded Academy was welcoming and supportive of his goals.
“Everybody was so very willing to help me,” he said. “They wanted to see me win.”
He did encounter some hesitation from clients who weren’t sure they wanted to trust someone so young with their hair. But Lester said he just started acting as if he were a licensed barber already, and that self-confidence was contagious.
“I started to act like what I wasn’t. I just think, therefore I am,” he said. “If I act like a student barber and don’t think highly of myself, I’m not going to operate as highly. You should operate as you want to be. You should be the person you want to be in the future now, if you can.”
Once his license was in hand, Lester didn’t travel far for his first professional barbering position.
“As soon as I got done with all my testing, I immediately went over and got in the shop [at Faded],” he said. “I knew I wanted to be here for sure.”
It’s not just the staff and clientele of Faded & Company that make him want to stay, but “the amount that they do out in the community,” Lester said, such as giving free haircuts twice per month at the library, and hosting a 24-hour cut-a-thon to raise money for youth barber scholarships.
“Little things like that I enjoy doing to give back and get nothing in return, just knowing that I’m helping people who need it,” he said. “I’m a firm believer in good karma. You do good things, and good things will come back to you.”
The state’s youngest licensed barber has a new goal now.
“I’m in the process of getting my instructor’s license,” he said. “The goal now is to be the youngest barbering instructor in the state of Virginia.”
And in September, his driver’s license will finally be valid.
