ALPHA
MAGAZINE
Parul Mody’s Formula for Beauty, Confidence & Success
written by
CLINT PORTE
Parul Mody knows exactly where she comes from and exactly why she chose a different road anyway. A cosmetic dermatologist my trade, Parul has taken the lessons from her career and transformed her life to one that goes beyond what she could only have imagined. Her life feels like a series of chapters written by someone unwilling to settle for a single goal.
“Medicine was always in my blood,” she says, and it is not a metaphor. It is literal. She comes from a family that feels almost mythological in its devotion to medicine. Twenty two physicians across generations. Her brother is an orthopedic surgeon, her sister an eye surgeon. Her cousins and uncles and extended relatives all trained in medicine as if it were the only language their family ever needed to speak. It was an environment where discipline was expected, success was assumed, and ambition was treated as a given.
But alongside all that rigor ran something else.
A love for beauty that felt instinctive, almost genetic in a different way. “If I did not become a doctor, I would have been a beautician,” she admits with a laugh, remembering herself as a young girl in India, experimenting with colors and fabrics, captivated by the way beauty could transform a face, a mood, an entire presence.
She grew up in a home that was not only accomplished but deeply rooted. A family where love was expressed through devotion, where gatherings felt like rituals, and where tradition was something you carried inside you. “If I could ask God for the same family again in my next life, I would,” she says. She tells stories about summers spent with cousins, celebrations that lasted until dawn, long trips through the rich and vivacious beauty of India. Her childhood was saturated with connection, music, culture, and the kind of structure that shapes a person without confining them.
Her father had once studied in the United States, earning an MBA from Syracuse University before returning to India to help support the family. He was a man who believed in stability and duty but also—
—recognized the wild streak in his youngest daughter. “Everyone knew me as my father’s daughter,” she says. “Everywhere I went, I received a kind of red carpet treatment. It was beautiful, but I wanted something more. I wanted my own identity.”
So at eighteen she told her father she wanted to leave. Not just to study abroad but to step into a life where she would be entirely responsible for her own success or failure. She wanted to arrive in a place where nobody knew her name, where she would not benefit from her family’s standing or reputation. Her father agreed.
He trusted her. He believed she had “a good head on her shoulders,” as she puts it, and so she left for the United States with a confidence that feels astonishing when she describes it now.
She earned her first bachelor’s degree at age 19 and went on to complete her clinical dietetics training at the University of Illinois. She lived alone. She navigated life in a foreign country, built a foundation for herself from the ground up, and never once looked back. “I was self made from the moment I stepped foot in this country,” she says. “My parents supported me, but everything else was mine to build.”
She started in emergency medicine, drawn to its intensity, but she felt a missing note, a faint tug in the opposite direction. She wanted a field where her scientific training could meet her artistic instincts. In cosmetic dermatology she found exactly that.
“Even small treatments changed people’s lives,” she says. “People would thank me with a gratitude I cannot even describe. It opened something in me.” Cosmetic dermatology came as a result of her longing to achieve more.
She built a thriving practice in New Jersey, one she nurtured for seventeen years. She talks about her patients the way some people talk about lifelong friends. Many of them saw her not only as their doctor but as the person who helped them reclaim parts of themselves they had forgotten.
When she decided to move to Los Angeles to support her daughter’s rising career, some cried. “They thought they were losing me,” she says softly. “I told them I would come back every month. And I have.”
Her daughter, Aria, is the chapter she speaks about with the most tenderness. The shift in her voice is unmistakable. “My daughter is a recording artist,” she says, the words carrying both pride and reverence. “She sings. She plays bass, guitar, piano, saxophone. She writes her own music. She wrote her first song at five.” There is a sparkle in her eyes when she talks about Aria’s gifts.
Music, she explains, was something she herself loved deeply. She began singing at seven and grew up listening to Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey. She remembers playing Mozart and Beethoven during her pregnancy because she believed her child would absorb it, breathe it in before she ever entered the world.
“When she was three, she recognized every instrument on an iPad,” she says. “I knew she was gifted.” A spiritual guide once told her that her daughter was destined to be a global star. Years later, she still remembers that moment. “She said, do you know what Aria means? It means beautiful melody. I still get chills thinking about it.”
She watched as her daughter grew into herself, into her voice, her confidence, her presence. “What makes me proud,” she says, “is who she is. Her identity. Her authenticity. She is grounded. She is respectful. Her beauty is internal before it is external.”
Parul styles Aria for most of her public appearances, something she approaches with the same instinctive artistry she brings to her medical work. “Styling is natural for me,” she says. “I can create an Indian traditional look or a very modern look. But it must always preserve her youth. It must be graceful. Never provocative. That matters to me.”
Their bond is fierce. “We are two peas in the same pod,” she says. “We love each other. We fight. But one thing about my daughter is she respects me deeply. She knows how hard I have worked. She knows the sacrifices I have made.” She never tries to control Aria’s creativity, only to guide her direction. “She may resist me at first like any teenager. But she knows I am leading her for her own good.”
Motherhood has redefined her sense of purpose. “I live for her. I wake up for her. I breathe for her,” she says without hesitation. “If I could have had more children, I would have.”
Her father once gave her a metaphor she now carries with her like doctrine. “He said when you fly a kite, someone has to hold the string. The kite flies high, but it can only do that if someone is grounded, keeping it steady.” She smiles at the memory. “I am the one holding the string so my daughter can soar.”
The next chapter of her life is unfolding in Los Angeles, where she is building a new practice in Beverly Hills while maintaining her long standing practice in New Jersey. It is an extraordinary undertaking, but she approaches it with the same ambitious, youthful energy that propelled her across the world at eighteen. “Even at my age, I feel like I have the spirit of a twenty five year old,” she says. “I can build anything again if I need to. I did it once. I can do it again.”
She insists on staying grounded. “My achievements are not mine alone,” she says. “They belong to God. They belong to my parents. They belong to every patient who trusted me. I am grateful for everything I have. I know people struggle. I do not take anything for granted.”
Before she leaves, she says something that sounds like a promise she has already made to herself. “I see my daughter taking off,” she says. “Movies. Music. Beautiful opportunities. She is going to be a global star. It is already happening. She is soaring like a kite.” Her voice softens but stays steady. “And when the world sees her the way I do, that is when I will say I achieved my dream.”
credits
talent
Parul Mody - @jermainedupri
photographer
Clint Porte - @paper.clint
cinematographer
Clint Porte - @paper.clint
key mua & hair
Jazmyn Fountain - @sandramerlanmakeup
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