The Rooms That Shape Us: Why Pride Lives At Tropic All Year Round

Tropic's Managing Director, Carlton, on identity, belonging, and why showing up without apology might be the most powerful act of all.

Carlton has spent much of his life walking into rooms where people had already decided who belonged there. Mixed-race, gay, a former theatre kid turned Managing Director of one of the UK’s fastest-growing beauty brands, he has long carried the weight of other people’s assumptions, and spent just as long proving them wrong.

The reaction still amuses him: the raised eyebrows, the flicker of surprise, and the moment realisation crosses someone’s face.

“It was quite funny, actually,” he says. “They hadn’t expected success to look like me.”

Learning To Keep Going

Carlton grew up in the performing arts, a world that teaches you early to stand in front of people and keep going, whatever the response. In hindsight, it was useful training for business.

“Being an actor teaches you to be resilient,” he says. “You’re getting kicked out of auditions. People are saying no to you all the time.”

But beneath the performance, something else was happening. A Jamaican father who had imagined a son who played sports. A sexuality Carlton didn’t yet have the language for. A persistent sense that, in almost every room, he was adjusting himself to meet someone else’s expectation.

“I didn’t know what was different,” he says. “I didn’t know whether it was my sexuality, whether it was the fact that I was a theatre school kid and loved to sing and dance, and all the other boys were playing football.” He pauses. “In all of those different areas, I felt like I was forever trying to fit into whatever was expected of me. I was always adapting.”

Confidence, then, was something he saw in other people long before he felt it in himself.

Walking Into Rooms Anyway

When Carlton moved into business, the assumptions followed him. Suppliers and partners would exchange emails with Tropic’s Managing Director, then look up when he walked into the room.

“They were expecting probably someone a bit older, someone a bit whiter, someone not as gay.”

The irony wasn’t lost on him. More often than not, he was the one bringing them business. He was the client. They needed him in the room. That’s what makes his decision to keep showing up so powerful. He kept taking the meetings, holding the room, and occupying the role people had not expected him to fill, not to prove a point, but because he understood what it meant to be there at all.

“There are a lot of people that don’t even get through doors like that,” he says. “When you do, to shy away would be an injustice to so many other people.”

And it was never only about him.

“At Tropic, it’s the thousands of people that depend on this business for their livelihoods, for their happiness. It’s much easier to stay somewhere that feels uncomfortable when you’re not doing it alone. You’re doing it for a group.”

Over time, that visibility began to matter. The rooms didn’t change because Carlton waited for them to. They changed because he kept walking into them as himself.

“People know who I am when I walk through a door now,” he says, “because I unapologetically asserted my right to be there and refused to shy away.”

From Performance To Authority

In Tropic’s earliest days, Carlton was still new to skincare, beauty, and the world of business. He didn’t pretend otherwise. What he did have was the strength of someone used to walking into unfamiliar spaces, reading them quickly, and finding a way through.

“There is,” he says, “some truth in the idea of ‘fake it till you make it’. Not because I didn’t care, or because I lacked capability and knowledge, but because I trusted my ability to learn. As a performer, you take on challenges before you feel fully ready. You listen, adapt, recover quickly, and learn not to make the same mistake twice.”

At the beginning, it was just Susie and Carlton. He started, as many people do when entering business for the first time, on £7 an hour, packing boxes. From there, Tropic and him grew together. Carlton moved through roles including General Manager, Head of Operations, Operations Director, and eventually Managing Director. That progression matters. This was never a story of someone walking straight into authority. It’s a story of someone building it, piece by piece, by learning the ropes from the inside.

The difference today is that authority is no longer something he has to reach for.

"I really, really know Tropic," he says. "I know this industry. I know what our brand essence is, what sets us apart, what our values are."

His experience stretches far beyond Tropic. Over the years, Carlton has built a deep understanding of the wider beauty landscape, working across almost every part of the business – from manufacturing the products to award-winning marketing, customer experience, operations, and brand building. He knows what it takes to grow and sustain a company at scale.

He no longer has to act like he belongs in this arena. With Susie, he’s carved out one where he does – and where others who’ve felt like misfits in spaces not designed for them can belong too.

For Carlton, that matters because companies are shaped by the people inside them: their instincts, histories, blind spots, talents, and courage. "Businesses are created by the lived experiences of the people building them," he says. "One hundred percent."

Inclusion Built In, Not Bolted On

He’s not making a diversity argument. He’s making a cultural one.

At Tropic, that culture starts with our Founder and CEO, Susie Ma – not because she’s followed a set of rules about what a business should look like, but because she’s never been constrained by inherited ideas of what it should be.

"Susie doesn't carry pre-existing barriers, legacy thinking, or fixed assumptions about who belongs where. She's always been open. It doesn't matter who you are, how you look, or where you come from – if you're best for the business, you have a home here. There's no ego in that, no need to protect old ways of working, no fixed view of how things have to be done."

That openness has allowed Tropic to become the beauty phenomenon it is today: a place shaped by ambition, belief, and possibility rather than by limitation. And it continues with Carlton.

"I am that mixed-race, gay guy," he says. "I'm that guy who didn't come from business, who came from performing arts, off the stage. And all of those things are reflected in Tropic."

Because Carlton has helped shape Tropic from the inside, his influence doesn't stay within the office, the leadership team, or the decisions made day to day. It travels wherever the brand does.

It’s present in the products, the events, the marketing, the language, and the way people are welcomed into the business. It’s there in the values that guide decisions, in the customer experience, and in the way Tropic shows up in people’s homes across the country, and far beyond it. That reach is what makes the work feel so powerful.

“There is so much homophobia in the world, so much racism,” he says. “And for me to be deep within the essence of Tropic – in its bones, in every product, every event, and every marketing piece – we’re automatically putting ourselves in front of people that maybe don’t think they want to be in the same room as me.”

For Carlton, this isn’t about winning a battle. It’s about visibility, representation, and subtle influence. Someone may hold prejudiced views and still use a Tropic product shaped by the very people or communities they may not yet fully understand or accept.

That’s the power of being embedded in the DNA of a business. Tropic becomes a way in: a way to reach people, challenge assumptions, and make differences feel more familiar without always having to name it directly.

By existing in those spaces, Tropic helps normalise what some people may not even realise they need to normalise. That, to Carlton, is extraordinary.

A Business Without The Same Inherited Limits

That same openness also shapes how Carlton thinks about legacy businesses, and why many of them have struggled to create cultures where different people can thrive.

“Often,” he explains, “older businesses are trying to untangle patterns they inherited: who gets hired, who gets heard, how women are treated, how difference is understood, and how much space there is for people who don’t resemble the leaders who came before them.”

Those habits can become part of a company long before anyone stops to question them. Over time, they begin to feel like tradition, process, or simply ‘the way things are done’. That’s why so many businesses now have to work hard to overturn those systems and rebuild with more intention.

“Tropic began from a different place. It was not built around those same inherited assumptions. It was shaped by people from across the world, from many different backgrounds, who were open to learning, willing to do things differently, and not interested in protecting old rules but, instead, in building something that truly works.”

Carlton sees the same pattern in society more broadly. People aren’t born homophobic or racist. Those views are conditioned into people, passed down, absorbed, or inherited without you always realising.

That’s why visibility matters. People need to become familiar with what they may not usually see. They need to be surrounded by different stories and perspectives, so they can form their own views rather than simply reflecting someone else’s.

It’s also why staying in rooms can be so important, even when they feel uncomfortable. Sometimes, change happens because someone stays long enough to be seen clearly.

What Belonging Actually Looks Like

Ask Carlton what genuine inclusion looks like, and he almost laughs. “It means not having to answer questions like this one,” he says. “When the questions don’t have to be asked, that’s when it’s really doing what it needs to do.”

At Tropic, that idea shapes how we think about people. We hire the person first: their grit, determination, talent, attitude, and personality, alongside experience where it’s needed.

Sometimes, we meet people who have something special to offer, and know the business would be stronger with them in it. That doesn’t mean creating roles without purpose. It means recognising ability, energy, and potential when it’s in front of you, then being open enough to understand where that person could make a real contribution. That, too, is part of building a business differently.

But belonging isn’t just about being hired. It’s about what happens once you’re here.

“I’d literally hate it if people made themselves smaller in this business – because they don’t have to!” Carlton says.” The thought of someone at Tropic feeling unable to fully be themselves genuinely upsets me. Belonging can’t mean asking people to shrink into something more acceptable. It has to mean creating the kind of environment where people can do their best work without leaving part of themselves at the door.”

When describing what that feels like, Carlton pauses. “Like home – like truly feeling at home. A space where nothing’s questioned, there’s no prejudgment. You’re just able to be you.” Then, he laughs. “I’m probably not your standard businessman looking after a business that turns over tens of millions. But that’s okay.”

And that’s the point exactly. Carlton may not have started out expecting to build and manage a business of this scale, but, just like acting, he belongs here. "I'm very good at what I do – I belong in this business, in those boardrooms. Like so many of us who've been underestimated, I have real value to add.” 

Not despite everything that makes him who he is. Because of it.

What Confidence Really Feels Like

Confidence feels different to Carlton now. In his forties, it no longer needs to be constructed before he leaves the house. It’s not an outfit, or a voice, or a version of himself designed to make other people comfortable.

“I feel confident in the way I dress – not just dressing to feel confident,” he says. “I feel confident in the way I show up in business. That comes from lived experience and actually doing it.” He pauses. “It’s like: ‘oh, this is what confidence really feels like’. Not ‘this is what I need to do to feel confident’. That’s the difference.”

He waited a long time to get there. For more than thirty years, Carlton carried his sexuality as a secret, unable to tell his father. When he finally did, his dad didn’t bat an eyelid. Nothing more dramatic than that. Nothing less meaningful, either. “Imagine that – for over thirty years, not being able to say something so massive to your dad, who you love dearly, because of legacy and tradition.”

If he could go back, he knows what he would tell his younger self. “Put all of that energy into your dancing, your singing, your grades,” he says. “Because the extra baggage of doubt, fear, or feeling different is not just painful. It’s distracting. It takes energy and focus away from what a person could be building, practising, learning, and becoming.”

Imagine how much greater someone could be if they didn’t have to carry that never-ending weight alongside everything else. Imagine what becomes possible when all that energy can go into craft, talent, ambition, joy, and growth instead.

“Just crack on, be you, do your best, and the rest will work itself out.”

The Legacy Worth Leaving

Carlton doesn’t want that weight for the next generation. He knows younger people are growing up with more language, more visibility, and more room to assert who they are. But he is honest about the difference between openness and ease.

Freedom still has to be used. Doors still have to be walked through. Rooms still have to be stayed in.

“I was working super hard to be visible, to be seen, to be in a room – with all of that baggage,” he says. “Now you can do all of those things. Just make sure you stay.”

The legacy Carlton wants is bigger than one career, one title, one story.

“I would love to think that the legacy Tropic leaves behind – Susie, myself, our Ambassadors, everyone – is that we’ve made a start on something that could be a massive change for the whole world,” he says. “If enough people get on board.”

That is what Pride means here. Not a month. Not a logo change. Not a campaign that gets switched off in July. It’s Carlton and the many others in our community who walked into rooms where they were underestimated, and refused to make themselves smaller. It’s a company shaped by people who know what it costs to be told that you do not belong. And it’s the choice to build something that works the other way round.

“No matter who you are, who you love, how you dress, how you express yourself, or where you come from, there’s space for you here.” Carlton’s been saying that his whole career. “That’s why, at Tropic, Pride lives here all year round. Not as a campaign, but as a consequence of the people who built this place, and everything they carried in with them when they arrived.”