LeBrina Jackson (photo by Shamir Johnson)
LEBRINA JACKSON, A noted equestrian with a fascinating story of overcoming challenges to succeed and grow, has always been an entrepreneur with a nurturing spirit. Even as a child growing up in Fifth Ward, she sold homemade popsicles — with fruit juice frozen into Styrofoam cups — for fifty cents, to cool her customers down on hot summer days.
“I’ve always just wanted to be the caregiver,” says the former high school cheerleader and beauty queen turned wellness entrepreneur and NFL wife. “The person who takes care of others. The one who makes them feel okay.”
Now, as the new year has arrived and minds focus on wellness and rejuvenation, she’s turned her instinct for providing services that refresh and renew into a stellar business. Her months-old Escape Spa in Cypress is an increasingly popular suburban outpost with an impressive roster of unique services, and a smiling staff of accomplished, hand-picked young therapists. It will officially celebrate its grand opening next month.
“Escape Spa is at the forefront of fostering a holistic approach to guests’ wellness and recovery by providing all-access resort-style amenities including a co-ed wet room where couples can relax together before and after their spa journey,” explains a rep for Escape in the press materials. Indeed, the strip-center setup is smart and polished, with lots of trendy bells and whistles — with many savvy couples and wellness aficionados already having found their way there. The extensive menu of services includes hydrotherapy, halotherapy, infrared sauna, contrast bathing and IV infusions, as well as luxurious body treatments, massages and facials.
Jackson has even devised a special package for the new year that gives guests an opportunity to enjoy a range of what Escape offers. The Ultimate Zen Escape comes with a hefty price tag — that’ll be $1,200, please — but, for spa lovers, the nearly five-hour experience may be hard to beat. The indulgence includes, in part, a Vichy body exfoliation treatment, a salt stone massage, tea service taken while wearing compression boots, a unique facial luxed up just for this package, a healing whiff of oxygen and, for sophisticated snacking, charcuterie and Champagne.
“We’ve been working on our Ultimate Zen Escape as a way to show off the all-encompassing Escape experience,” she says. “We’re so much more than just a spa; we’re a day destination, and it’s important to demonstrate that health and wellness goes far beyond the massage table.”
Multiple packages are designed for couples, usually beginning with a private jacuzzi soak. “Together in Bliss” includes both massages and facials.
Although Jackson is only 34, her knack for providing such clever, enticing services and succeeding as a businesswoman has been honed over many years, beginning with those popsicles. She followed that up with a stint in college, hoping to be a dentist. But when life threw her a curveball — an unplanned pregnancy — she changed her plans and, to earn a living for her and son Brinon, became a fifth-generation hair stylist working in her mom’s salon.
“I was good at it,” she says. But the then single mom wasn’t content to just do hair. She enhanced the experience with mimosas, cupcakes and, most effectively, friendly socializing. “I found that long after I finished someone’s hair, they lingered, wanting to continue talking as friends.”
When she wasn’t learning from her mom about the beauty biz, she enjoyed a passion for horses with her dad, a ranch hand who introduced her to the equestrian life as a toddler. She still rides and keeps horses at the Hockley, Texas, spread she shares with Brinon, now in high school, daughter Wynter, and her husband, former Cincinnati Bengals cornerback William Jackson, whom she wed in a lavish Napa Valley ceremony in July. (Baby Wynter arrived on horseback!)
“A horse reflects your mood and attitude back to you and helps make you more self-aware, a better leader,” says Jackson. “I realized on one of my meditative rides that I do care about everyone. I just want everyone to feel and be okay.”
For Jackson, opening a spa like Escape seemed like the logical next step in her career, sharing a bit of what she’s learned about looking good and feeling well with grateful customers — and building a successful business in the process. “To me, beauty starts from the inside out. It’s what you eat, how you think. What you do. How you help others.
And, she winks, “Pilates doesn’t hurt.”
William and LeBrina Jackson (photo by Shamir Johnson)
The entrepreneur wed football pro William Jackson in Napa last summer, with daughter Wynter and son Brinon looking on. (photo by Travis Daniels Photography)
The welcome desk at Escape Spa in Cypress
A couple in the water therapy room at Escape Spa
HaloIR Salt Sauna Suite at Escape Spa
Compression boot at Escape Spa
