There is a magic that happens in a barber’s chair. A relationship is cultivated over years of service, conversation and connection with another in that finite window of time. There’s also a transformation that leads to a new beginning.

For Jaz Limos, a San Francisco native and manager at the Apple Park Visitor Center in Cupertino, that connection and transformation planted the seed of an idea to help individuals experiencing homelessness.

“I started to become obsessed with, why do people open up in a chair?” Limos says.

In 2016, after Limos broke bread with a homeless man at a sandwich shop in Oakland, she was shocked to discover he was her father who she hadn’t seen since she was a teenager. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she needed to do something. For months, she thought about that chance encounter, talking it over with her barber and contemplating how she could have a real impact on people’s lives. It was then that she realized how easy it was to open up in the chair, and also how it felt to really see herself in the mirror afterward.

“When I recognized that there’s so many different piecemeal options for someone to get help, that the entry point has to be just right where you can build rapport … a barber was a very organic way to open up and just feel better,” Limos says.