Neferttiti Stewart

A Creole Queen of Glamour, Grit, and Good Vibes

By Ava Reid, Editor‑in‑Chief, Sublime Avenue.

When I lean on God, I know I’ll be okay. Gratitude is my method.

The light is in the air; we are on. Before the first question lands, she’s already laughing—low, musical, warm—as if we’ve joined a conversation that was waiting for us. Ukulele at her side (she calls this one Lola), eyeliner wing sharp enough to sign her name, Nefertiti Stewart sits down and does what she does best: bring the room to life.

You may know her as the Bay Area’s singing makeup artist—the one who can beat a face, slay a hook, and glide from backstage calm to onstage charisma without knocking a single rhinestone out of place. You may know her as a model, a mentor, a brand ambassador, or the woman who can turn “vampire villain” into a melodic thesis about agency and allure. If you were on Clubhouse during the pandemic, you might simply know her as Panda, the chill spirit with a velvet voice who played for thousands and made digital rooms feel like living rooms.

However you’ve met her, one thing becomes obvious five minutes into a conversation: Nefertiti doesn’t do half-measures. She builds worlds.

Rooted in the South, Raised by the Bay

“I’m Creole,” she says, the word lighting up her face the way a familiar spice sparks memory. Her grandparents followed a well-worn Southern path westward, drawn like many by the military’s gravitational pull to the Bay. Most of her family remains in Louisiana and Texas, but their culture—food as a love language, music as a second oxygen—travels with her.

If you want to know her, start with her kitchen. She cooks like she sings: cross-genre, high flavor, unabashed. “I made a jambalaya shrimp pizza,” she says, explaining it with the solemnity of a scientific discovery. “It was bomb.” It’s an apt metaphor for her career: Louisiana soul layered onto whatever canvas the day provides—beauty, stage, studio—baked hot and shared widely.

To really create, you have to be in a flow state. Wardrobe is my portal.

What’s in a Name

Her father studied Egyptology; her mother wanted her daughter to know she’s beautiful. Nefertiti—the historical queen—was brilliant, decisive, a force. Names carry frequencies. “They definitely wanted me to have that connection with someone powerful and beautiful,” she says. Whether by destiny or design, the resonance is real. Strangers gift her Nefertiti necklaces in bars; chance encounters feel like winks from history. She laughs at the coincidences but never dismisses them.

And then there’s Panda, the nickname born from a fluffy hat she wore at sixteen and carried forward because it fit: the gentle chill, the playful ease, the black-white-Asian triad that mirrors her multihyphenate identity. Queen by birthright, Panda by temperament—two facets of one modern icon.

The Clubhouse Years: A Digital Stage, A Real Audience

When the world went inside, Nefertiti went onstage. Clubhouse was the perfect crucible: no filters, no choreography—just voice, wit, presence. She played ukulele, hosted, performed, learned, and built an audience in rooms that regularly crossed into the thousands. “I wasn’t thinking anything would come from recording on an app,” she admits, “but the connections were real.”

One of those connections was Third Stream, a Beverly Hills producer whose walls glitter with platinum and diamond plaques. She went to a premiere party and realized just how heavy the room was. Soon she was recording “No Good,” a darkly luscious track for a vampire TV series—her mezzo-soprano slipping between operatic color and modern R&B edge. “It’s a villain song,” she smiles, “so you have to act.”

The Art of Becoming: Singer, Actor, Story-Shaper

Acting, for Nefertiti, isn’t a costume.

It’s an entrance to truth. Her mother sang opera; as a child Nef watched role and aria fuse into something large enough to hold contradiction. She learned to prepare as a performer would: wardrobe as a portal. For the vampire song she dressed full noir—black, gothic, a whisper of danger—until the character stepped through. “To really create, you have to be in a flow state,” she says. “That’s an actor’s mindset.”

The technique serves her in the studio and beyond. Put differently: she doesn’t put on a persona; she finds the self who can sing that world into being.

One of those connections was Third Stream, a Beverly Hills producer whose walls glitter with platinum and diamond plaques. She went to a premiere party and realized just how heavy the room was. Soon she was recording “No Good,” a darkly luscious track for a vampire TV series—her mezzo-soprano slipping between operatic color and modern R&B edge. “It’s a villain song,” she smiles, “so you have to act.”

I love putting people on. Mentorship is how you build a scene, not just a moment.

The Mind as Instrument: Prayer, Practice, and the Health of a Creative Life

Highs and lows are baked into show business. Nef refuses to anesthetize the truth. She’s seen what substances do to artists chasing equilibrium. Her antidotes lean steadier: prayer, devotionals, affirmations, meditation, journaling. “When I lean on God, I know I’ll be okay,” she says. Gratitude isn’t a mood; it’s a method. The ritual keeps her available to the moment without becoming dependent on it. She’ll catch an irie breeze now and then, she’s candid about adaptogens and nootropics, but the core is spiritual discipline and mental hygiene. “Music is lyrical journaling,” she says. “I notice a big difference when I prepare my mind.”

It tracks. The voice you hear isn’t simply pretty; it’s grounded—the vibrato of someone who knows the floor won’t drop out when the chorus ends.

From the Floor to the Lens: Modeling, Makeup & the Business of Beauty

Long before she became “the singing MUA,” people were telling Nef she should model. Abercrombie & Fitch came calling after a pageant post; her mother, rightly protective, pressed pause. A softer runway into the work appeared at Hollister, where live models once fronted the brand like breathing mannequins. She loved it—the clothing, the camera, the easy glamour of being a story’s living edge.

MAC makeup artists also saw what was coming. “They’d say, ‘I don’t even know why you’re doing makeup—you need to model,’” she laughs. But Nef’s blueprint was bigger: learn every seat at the table. She pursued makeup first to understand the mechanics of beauty production—how to run a set, support performers, and later, run her own projects. If she ever built an empire, she wanted to speak everyone’s language.

Which is how a Bay Area group chat turned into real shoots, real friendships, and a runway of opportunities. “Once you’re in,” she says, “the gates open.” She smiles at the mention of gatekeepers. “I like being the person who opens the gate.”

Ambassador, Technologist, Connector

Not every artist speaks tech; Nef does, fluently. She’s worked events for Google, Salesforce, and NVIDIA, demoing creative AI tools at GTC—including a platform called Laura that generates photorealistic visuals. She explains it the way a good teacher does: start with your image, build your jersey, design the logo, iterate. Her tone is equal parts wonder and practicality. Photography may be evolving, but storytelling remains sovereign.

On the beauty front, she’s advocating for Root Essentials Skincare, drawn to its natural formulations and accessible price point. It’s less about endorsements than about alignment—does the product care for people the way she does?

The Empire: Mentorship as Infrastructure

What excites her most right now isn’t a campaign or a cameo. It’s mentorship. “I love putting people on,” she says—artists, models, anyone serious about the work. She reads contracts, translates jargon, and designs bespoke development paths. Some need confidence for an open mic; others need branding to match the agency they deserve. “Fit matters,” she insists. “If a client roster doesn’t match your niche, you don’t go anywhere.”

Could the mentorship crystallize into an agency? Possibly—but not if it means burying herself in admin. She imagines a networked atelier: scouts, agents, coaches, glam leads, photographers—each one excellent at their lane—feeding a pipeline that lifts Bay Area talent on merit, care, and craft. It’s a queen’s vision of infrastructure: elegant, efficient, humane.

The Lounge: Holistic by Design

There’s another blueprint on her desk: a holistic lounge concept—part wellness, part culture—gestating between Oakland and Los Angeles. “I’m into holistic healing,” she says, eyes bright with entrepreneur’s mischief. She won’t give us the full menu yet, only the promise of a space where people can breathe, restore, and create. She calls the forthcoming venture “Esteem,” a name that sounds like a compass.

The Woman at the Center

By now you’ve noticed the pattern. Wherever Nefertiti stands, two things happen: she raises the frequency of the room, and she organizes the energy. In the studio, that looks like a dress code for the soul. On set, it’s a perfectly matched foundation and a perfectly timed compliment. In conversation, it’s listening—really listening—and then handing you the sentence you were reaching for. She is generous, disciplined, and very, very funny.

Ask her which of the seven dwarfs her ex was in bed and she shoots back, deadpan: “Dopey.” She reads The Power of Positive Thinking and Think and Grow Rich like playbooks, quotes Einstein on imagination, and circulates wisdom without performance. Also, she loves Ocean’s Eight, which tells you everything about her taste for the caper: a stylish plan, executed with friends.

The Last Light

So who is Nefertiti Stewart, really? She’s Creole heat and Bay Area breeze. She’s a pageant pose turned producer’s partner, a MAC mirror turned mentorship engine, a Clubhouse chorus turned vampire aria. She is prayerful and practical, a woman who trusts God with the outline and herself with the revisions. She’s building an empire that prioritizes care before clout, and she’s doing it with the patience of a great makeup artist: blend, don’t blur.

If you want to find her, start at @nefertitistewart on Instagram—N-E-F-E-R-T-T-I-T-I and Stewart like the old family you meet at a reunion and swear you’ve known forever. Or book a ticket to the Bay and look for the woman with the ukulele named Lola, turning a green room into a living room and a living room into a stage.

And if, once a year, you happen to wander deep into an Egyptian pyramid and catch the soft echo of a melody that sounds like velvet on marble—well, don’t be alarmed.

Some queens still visit home.

Credits & Contact

Artist, model, mentor, makeup artist, and creative technologist.
Instagram: @nefertitistewart
Brand partner highlight: Root Essentials Skincare
Recent collab: Third Stream — “No Good” (vampire series track)
Tech demos: NVIDIA GTC (AI visual tool ‘Laura’)

Photography: Chris Otrebla