I lost my job. A job I had held for 17 years. Let that sink in for a moment, 17 years. That's not just a job. That's a rhythm, an identity, a sense of knowing exactly who you are when you walk through a door every morning. And then one day, it was gone. My first instinct was pure survival mode: fix this, fast. Update the résumé. Search the listings. Find something. Get back to solid ground before anyone, including me, noticed how scared I really was. But something made me stop. I took a breath. A real, deliberate breath. And instead of sprinting back to the familiar, I sat down and did something that terrified me more than the job loss itself. I got honest with myself. What if there's another option? That question cracked something open. Because right behind it came everything else: But what would that even look like? I've never done this before. I don't know where to start. What if I fail? What if I'm not cut out for this? What if I lose everything trying? The fear of the unknown was loud. I had spent nearly two decades inside the structure of an organization, with a manager, a paycheck, a process, a team. Going solo meant none of that. No blueprint. No safety net. No one to tell me if I was doing it right. Just me, my experience, and a leap of faith I wasn't sure I was ready to take. I didn't know how to set up a business. I didn't know how to find clients, price my services, or market myself. I didn't know what I didn't know, and that might have been the scariest part of all. But here's what I did know: 17 years of HR experience didn't disappear when my job did. That knowledge, those relationships, that hard-won expertise, none of that belonged to the company. It belonged to me. And sitting in that uncertainty, that truth became the one steady thing I could hold onto. So I made the decision. Not because I had it figured out. Not because the fear went away. But because staying frozen felt worse than moving forward scared. I became a solopreneur. I launched my own HR consulting practice, built from everything I had spent nearly two decades learning, now finally on my own terms. The path wasn't clean. There were moments of serious doubt, days I questioned everything, and more than a few times I wondered if I had made a terrible mistake. But every step forward, no matter how uncertain, taught me something the corporate world never could: that I was more capable than I had given myself credit for, and that sometimes the most powerful move you can make is simply refusing to let fear make your decisions for you. Losing that job after 17 years felt like the end. It turned out to be the beginning. If you're standing in a moment that feels like the ground just disappeared beneath you, I see you. The fear is real. The uncertainty is real. But so is your strength, even when you can't feel it yet. Take the breath. Sit with yourself. Ask the hard question. Your next chapter is waiting, and it might be the most powerful one yet.

If it makes you uncomfortable then you know it's your next step to make it happen, fear is just an option, I've learned by failing and accepting that I am not an expert on anything.

I couldn't find a seat at the table so I created my own. As an African woman with a lived experience of major depression and complex trauma, I struggled to find culturally and linguistically appropriate mental health services. I created the Women's Wellness Institute to ensure that women from multicultural and multilingual communities have access to culturally responsive mental health support services. This is a labor of love and it's personal and an integral part of my journey of healing.

My passion for people began at thirteen, behind the counter of a local grocery store in my hometown. While most see a first job as a steppingstone, I saw it as a heartbeat. I realized early on that a simple conversation could brighten someone's entire day, and that connection fueled me. For years, I stayed within the customer service sphere, but it wasn't until a trip to Las Vegas that my true path became clear. Seeing the grand scale of the hospitality industry, I felt an immediate pull...this was where I belonged. I didn't wait for "someday" to get started. I enrolled in school immediately to pursue a Business degree with a minor in Hospitality, determined to back my passion with professional expertise. The stars didn't align overnight. It took a major life transition (my sister moving in with me) to provide the catalyst I needed to join Marriott. From the moment I stepped onto the property, I knew I had found my professional home. I stopped worrying if I was "ready" for leadership and instead focused on growth. I became a sponge: constantly seeking out every training manual and module available, closely watching how my own managers led their teams to identify the traits I wanted to mirror, and leaning into the core beliefs of the company, letting those values guide my decisions. That dedication paid off. Within eight months, I was promoted to Front Desk Supervisor, and today, I am proud to serve as the Assistant General Manager. By stopping the wait for the "perfect" moment and simply diving into the work, I turned a childhood love for people into a thriving leadership career.