Kara Gutierrez is a licensed tattoo artist, educator, and survivor advocate with over 13 years of experience working at the intersection of trauma, identity, and healing. She specializes in advanced permanent makeup, areola restoration, and scar-aware tattooing for breast cancer survivors—work that goes far beyond appearance and directly supports psychological recovery after illness.

Kara’s expertise centers on how trauma, medical loss of autonomy, and altered body image affect long-term mental health. After treatment, many survivors struggle not only with scars, but with grief, dissociation from their bodies, loss of control, and shame. Kara’s work restores agency by giving survivors an intentional choice about their bodies, often for the first time since diagnosis. Research consistently shows that regaining bodily control and narrative ownership is essential to post-traumatic growth, and these principles guide her daily practice.

Her passion for this work is deeply personal. Kara’s aunt Penny, her mother’s sister, survived breast cancer—an experience that showed Kara how illness impacts entire families, not just patients. Witnessing the emotional aftermath and lack of supportive aftercare led her to pursue restorative tattooing not as cosmetic work, but as a missing component of survivorship care.

Through her clinical experience, Kara has also seen survivors harmed by rushed, poorly trained, or emotionally unsafe restorative tattooing. In response, she founded the Spot On Survivor Breast Cancer Foundation to advocate for higher standards, education, and access. The foundation supports survivors, funds advanced artist training, and works to establish scar-aware tattooing as a necessary part of comprehensive cancer care—focused on restoring dignity, choice, and trust, not “fixing” bodies.