Most people believe that donating clothes to their local thrift shop is a good thing. I was one of those people until the day I happened to peek behind the staff section of my local Salvation Army. Faced with mounds upon mounds of clothing, I wondered how they could ever resell such an overwhelming amount of donations. After some research, I realized they couldn't. Less than 20% of donated clothing is resold. When I realized that the majority of clothes thrift stores in my community received ended up in the local landfill, I felt a burning desire to help solve this problem in my community.
Along with my twin sister, I co-founded Remixxed Bags, a social enterprise tackling clothing waste by upcycling unsold thrift shop jeans into stylish tote bags. We partnered with local thrift stores in our community to source donations, saving them the money of transporting unsold clothing to landfills. We sold at local fairs and helped sponsor sustainable fashion galas that allowed us to sell our product while sharing our sustainable message. We even got our bags stocked in a zero-waste grocery store and used as gift bags at a national investment forum. Not only were we able to directly reduce clothing waste in our community, but we put people first, using our financial profit to give back to our partner organizations like the Salvation Army that serve those in need.
Running my own business is something that I have already done that has shown me that change is possible and that business is a powerful force for social change. My experience as an entrepreneur has led me to believe that business is a tool that can help empower underserved populations, solve some of the biggest environmental problems facing our planet and create game-changing innovation.
Because of this experience, I am majoring in Finance at Howard University to better understand and contribute to the business world. My education from Howard University will prepare me to make a positive impact on my community by giving me the skills I need to teach my community financial literacy and, through consulting, help other small businesses perform better, tackle social issues and be more environmentally sustainable. It will also prepare me to solve some of the biggest issues facing our world today. I'm passionate about sustainability and want to reshape how the fashion industry thinks about supply chains, overproduction, and consumer waste. I aim to continue to grow and expand Remixxed Bags into a full sustainability apparel company and aim to one day become the CEO of a sustainable apparel or retail company. At Howard University, I've been able to minor in fashion and study supply chain and consumer buying behavior, participate in pitch competitions to scale my business, and travel to different countries to learn more about how business operates across cultures and the importance of sustainability globally. I know that my education at Howard University will give me the skills, knowledge, and network to make a positive difference in my community and the world.
How will your education from Howard University prepare you to make a positive impact on the world/in your community?
1. I am a connoisseur of real estate because it is my passion to help less fortunate people, such as myself, have access to housing and home ownership. This career field is best for me because it can bring new problems every day. I'm an analytical thinker, and I am mathematically adept. As such, I am currently studying real estate development and financial modeling with the Project Destined and MRP Realty Partners internships.
Once I get my degree, I will work in real estate finance to gain experience with purchases, loans, and fiduciary policies. After gaining investment experience, I will move on to work at a real estate firm. While I work at a real estate firm, I will learn the specifics of real estate investing. When I retire, I will open multiple merit and external scholarships for students who need more money. Also, I will provide internships, jobs, and less expensive accountants for people who wish to have financial freedom and to change their community and the world.
As a successful real estate investor, I could influence people in the finance industry to be less discriminatory against people of color so that we could be more influential across the business world.
What have you already done to demonstrate that change is possible?
2. Two years ago, as a freshman at the School of Business, I saw that there were only clubs and opportunities for very broad, cliche, and highly competitive fields. So while I was discussing my interest in real estate with my peers, another shared my interest, and we found two more people who were interested in creating a real estate club, where we met our founder, Raymir Johnson. However, we had to figure out how our executive board of four people was going to make it an official organization. Thus, we had meetings with our advisor every week to make sure we submitted the necessary paperwork to the university’s offices for us to become official. In completing this paperwork, I started to delegate some of it to our treasurer and secretary so that they could help us get it done and understand the lay of the land in terms of the organization's goals and policies that we must abide by. Eventually, we did become an official organization, starting last year with almost five hundred members and growing.
Furthermore, I was accepted to an MRP Realty Partners internship in the spring of this year, which I applied for in the fall. During the interview process, the recruiter informed me that she was very impressed with the Real Estate club's success, so she also assigned the task of recruiting all interested club members to the two-year internship program. As of today, we have eight inaugural interns from the Howard University Real Estate Club, and we hope to keep increasing the number of interns through the MRP Realty internship pipeline in the following years.
