KAT LEVERETTE is a freelance writer, a nationally Certified Medical Esthetics Specialist and California State licensed esthetician specializing in acne, sports-related skin disorders, and results-oriented clinical skin care for People of Color. She is founder of Acne Clinic of Oakland and Solutions Center, both on the cutting edge in the skin care industry, and ethnic skin care in particular.
She owns and operates Urban Skin Solutions and urbanskinsolutions.com, headquartered in the multi-ethnic, culturally diverse city of Oakland, California. Leverette’s clientele is 90% African-American, 50% of which are men, and a 10% mix of West Indians, Hispanics, Asians, Pacific Islanders, Africans and Native Americans.
Leverette is also a talented cosmetic formulation consultant, writer and educator, and works extensively with Peter Thomas Roth Clinical Skin Care, June Jacobs Spa Collection, The Cornelia Collection, and several exciting new projects.
Leverette is best known in the industry for developing one of the first internationally recognized programs to successfully treat razor bumps and acne keloidalis. She was one of the first skin care professionals to utilize and write about the alpha hydroxy acids (glycolic acid) in the mid-1980s, and the very first to introduce the alpha hydroxy acids in Central Europe. Over 95% of the referrals to her practice are for hyperpigmentation, scarring, acne and razor bumps.

Her clientele includes writer actors Danny Glover, Laurence Fishburne, Ben Stiller, Malcolm Jamal Warner, and Blair Underwood, directors Bill Duke (Deep Cover, A Rage in Harlem and Sister Act 2) pop/soul diva Angela Bofill, Latin bandleader Pete Escovedo, bluesman Joe Louis Walker, and dozens of professional athletes from the NFL and NBA, including Tim Brown, Ray Lewis, Anthony Dorsett, Zack Crockett, Renaldo Hill, Sam Adams, Mitch Richmond and Bobby Hamilton.
Leverette is a passionate advocate for third degree burn survivors and donates her time to pro bono scar reduction procedures in the community. She is has developed effective non-invasive scar reduction techniques for acne keloidalis, a disfiguring scalp disorder afflicting black men.

She is the former editor-in-chiefof The Advanced Dermatologics News and her articles have  appeared in The Technical Forum Newsletter of the International Society of Clinical Plastic Surgeons, Dermascope, Black Elegance, Les Nouvelles Esthetiques, Salon Sense and Skin Inc. She is a contributing author to the medical textbook Ethnic Considerations in Aesthetic Plastic Surgery and a contributing editor of the defunct ShopTalk, known as the Black Journal of Cosmetology.
Her interviews have appeared regularly in Essence, Elle, Black Elegance, Allure, Upscale, Cosmopolitan, Harper's Bazaar, Self, Shape, Glamour, Vogue, BBW, Men's Health, Modern Salon, Black Tress, DaySpa Magazine, Good Housekeeping, Parenting and many more. Solutions Center, was chosen as one of the few individual skin care practices mentioned as a referral source for black skin in the best-selling Body and Soul, a health and beauty resource book for Black women.

Born into a Southern ranching family, Leverette was raised in Texas, and later relocated to Hancock Park in the Wilshire District of Los Angeles. After high school, she became a multi-disciplined professional dancer, including Dunham-style Afro-Haitian, West African, Congolese, jazz, Afro-jazz, tap, ballet, flamenco and a variety of North African and Middle Eastern folk and cabaret dance styles, including belly dance. Traveling extensively in Africa and Third World countries, she returned to the US to perform and teach ethnic dance at what later became known as Alice Arts Center in Oakland. She attended college in San Francisco, and then relocated to New York City, where she opened Urban Art, a contracting firm that specialized in interior wood refinishing, custom flooring, antique restoration and the renovation Harlem brownstones. She also continued to study dance, including Senegalese, Congolese, Brazilian and Afro-Haitian, at the world-renowned Clark Center, on Manhattan's Upper West Side.

These days, she resides in her Oakland Hills home and enjoys sports, especially professional football, world travel, home improvement and decorating, collecting African masks, Zimbabwe Shona stone and Jamaican black coral sculpture, and antique restoration.

Leverette also enjoys jazz and World music, dance, and tattooing. Part of her tattooed “body art” includes two large phoenix birds (the symbol of the burn survivor). The phoenix bird, according to legend, lives 500 years, then consumes itself in flames, and rises again from the ashes "more beautiful than before."