Shakiya Ford

I started college in 2025 as a freshman at Jackson State University, and that experience pushed me to start a nonprofit to help other girls like me who were starting school confused. I started my nonprofit, Becoming Her. With this nonprofit, we aim to help motivate young girls, get them through college. We have a scholarship going on. It is a micro-scholarship. It's only $2.50, so it won't help cover tuition, but it will help with things like supplies, parking decals, dorms, stuff like that. This is our first year launching our nonprofit. It did start as a social group where we did events like mocktail and makeup, girl talk, just sister-to-sister mentoring. Prior to that, at my school, I became Miss Gold, and I did stuff like clothing drives, gave food to the homeless, we made hygiene bags. I currently work at a daycare as well, working with children, going over the basics, ABCs, 123s, getting them ready for real-world life, during the summer doing summer camp, activities every day, field trips.