Her Story
About Jessica
I've always been a person to stand up for injustice and help those who have been underserved or overlooked. This started when I was a kid and carried through to when I started my first company, Covered Arts Consulting, where I wanted to help everyday people in the community legalize their businesses. I was trained as a grant writer and have always been a writer. From there, I created programs with local churches, including the Pearls program, where we supplied groceries to elderly women every week and paired them with teenagers. At 25-26, I founded Princess Training, a youth entrepreneurship exploratory program for young girls of color in underserved communities. We secured a brick-and-mortar location at 3620 Grand Avenue in Coconut Grove and used it as a real-life case study to teach young girls business. We exposed them to arts, music, culture, sports like golf, and full language immersion programs in French, Spanish, and Italian. We proved that by investing in children, their parents who were unbanked or underbanked would achieve their own goals. We had four young ladies under 13 start businesses, and their parents became banked and started businesses themselves within a year. We organically began working with human trafficking survivors, particularly pregnant survivors. Now with Promise Pantry, which is in its sixth and seventh year, we focus on food, families, and futures. Our Promise Baby Initiative throws giant communal baby showers for pregnant human trafficking survivors and provides all support needed for a baby's first two years of life. We saw that zero dollars were being spent on foster care prevention in Miami-Dade County, and 85% of human trafficking survivors see foster care in their generation or the next. We pair them with parent mentors and help jumpstart entrepreneurship for them as a means to gain self-sufficiency. I've trained 29,000 people in trafficking prevention over the last 4 years, spanning 37 countries.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Jessica
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to doing everything with diligence and being a person of my word. So many aspects of what I've been able to do in my life have come as a result of making sure that I am the most diligent, operate in the spirit of excellence, and that I am a person of my word and do what I say I'm going to do. I've gained this trust in the community and with industry leaders to where if I ask them for something and tell them I'm going to do XYZ with it, I do it, and then I can come back and ask for more. Even in my personal life, I have volunteers and people who show up because they know that if I ask them for one thing, the outcome and the diligence by which I'm going to accomplish that thing makes them want to be a part of it. It is what has helped me to achieve so much success and accomplish all that we've been able to do so far.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I've ever received is to do everything with diligence and to be a person of your word. Just to be a very thorough person. There are times where so many aspects of what I've been able to do in my life has come as a result of making sure that I am the most diligent, operate in the spirit of excellence, and that I am a person of my word and do what I say I'm going to do. People just trust me because of this. I've gained this trust in the community and with industry leaders to where if I ask them for something and tell them that I'm going to do XYZ with it, I do it, and then I can now come back and ask for more. On the other side, in my personal life, I have volunteers and people who show up because they know that if I ask them for one thing, the outcome and the diligence by which I'm going to accomplish that thing makes them want to be a part of it.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Find a mentor. I don't have to do everything by myself, and I think women, we have a tendency to do that. We want to get as many things done as possible, but a mentor could have helped me avoid some of the stuff, some of the people-pleasing, some of the competing, some of the dimming down. A mentor could have told me, no, you can get all of that stuff done just by being the best that you can be at what you can be, but not competing with other people while doing it. I lost $250,000 because I didn't have a mentor. I blew up a quarter million dollar deal because I overshared too much with one of my investors. I can laugh about it now, but it was definitely not funny at the time. So much of my life, if I would have just had someone to tell me, don't be so hard on yourself. The power of mentors and just seeing things all the way through has transformed my life and everything. Find someone else to talk to, whether that's a church mother or just somebody who has experienced some stuff and can talk to you for lunch or hug you. In those conversations, that organic mentorship and counsel that you need will help you breathe. The best mentor advice from all these amazing women that I've had in my life have all just told me, relax.
04What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Authenticity, honesty, and diligence are my core values. Being the most authentic version of myself is important because there's plenty of people in the world trying to be others, but no one's trying to be me, so I don't have to compete. I think everybody was born with a non-competing clause in their life, so whatever we're put here to do, as long as you're authentic, honest, and diligent, I don't think there's a limit to what you can get done. People are more inclined to help you. Now that I have children myself, my husband and I constantly have conversations on who we want our children to become, not really focusing so much on the career outcomes, but the type of person we want them to be. We want them to be honest people, to be vocal, to be diligent, to be an asset wherever they go in their friendships, relationships, and in school. We want them to be thorough, that when they do something, they finish it and see it through. I think really just living that life, learning yourself, being diligent about studying yourself and accomplishing your own goals and not forgetting yourself. Part of that excellence is not leaving out anything, including ourselves.
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