I broke my teeth in my sleep. For years, I ground my jaw so tightly at night that the enamel cracked — the body keeping a ledger my mind refused to admit. I was a person capable of starting anything and finishing almost nothing, and the distance between what I was supposed to be doing and what I could bring myself to actually do had become a physical thing, carried in the joints of my face. I was thirty-nine when I was diagnosed with ADHD. The diagnosis did not rescue me. What it did was force me to renegotiate the terms of my own accountability. For most of my adult life, I had measured myself against the working assumption that a reasonably intelligent person should be able to finish what she starts through ordinary effort. When I fell short, I concluded that I was lazy. I punished myself for it. The pattern fed itself: the more I believed I was lazy, the less I trusted my own plans, and the less I trusted my plans, the more often they collapsed. Growth, for me, has been the slow unlearning of that math. The single change that moved me forward was permission to aim for eighty percent. I used to set a day's goals and count it as a loss if I missed any of them — a framework built for someone whose brain does not work the way mine does. Now I write the list, break each item into individual action steps, and call the day a success if I complete eighty percent of it. Counterintuitively, I complete more. What I lost was not ambition. What I lost was the all-or-nothing trap that kept my ambition decorative. Around that rule, I built the infrastructure that neurotypical students are handed quietly and early: external lists instead of internal memory, written plans instead of assumed follow-through, routines that do the work discipline alone could not. These are not crutches. They are the architecture that makes the rest of me functional. The proof is academic, because that is where I chose to test it. I am a first-generation college student finishing a bachelor's in Data Science with a concentration in Mathematics at Harvard Extension School. I hold a 3.3 GPA and have completed eighty-four credits. I did this as the mother of a young daughter, while running a business, without family money and without a template. None of it happened because I suddenly found focus. It happened because I stopped pretending I did not need systems and started building the ones I did. A learning difference is not an obstacle that can be willed out of the way. It is a specification. The growth I have found is in building for that specification on purpose, instead of breaking my teeth on the pretense that it isn't there. What my daughter will see, when she looks back, is not a mother who outran her diagnosis. She will see a mother who learned to name it, to design around it, and to finish things anyway — one eighty-percent day at a time. That is the work, and it is ongoing. Ambition, in my experience, is not a feeling. It is a structure you can still operate inside on the days you cannot feel it at all.

The firm I am building does not exist yet. It exists in spreadsheets, in curriculum drafts, in the names of fifteen women I have been quietly collecting in a notebook for three years — women who will be among NorthStar Women's Wealth & Consulting's first clients when it opens. Every one is a single mother. Every one earns a living. Every one has been told, explicitly or by omission, that wealth planning is not a room she is invited into. The social issue I am working to address is the financial exclusion of the women the industry has decided are too small to serve. Single mothers. First-generation earners. Artists, service workers, and small business owners whose incomes are irregular enough that traditional advisors cannot bill them predictably. It is not that these women do not want financial literacy. It is that the structures built to deliver it were not built for them. I learned this at a kitchen table in Brooklyn. For ten years I ran Basquiat's Bottle — part bar, part art gallery, part community space — and the artists who worked for me were extraordinary in every way except the one the IRS cared about. They could stop a room with color. They could not file a return. So we met weekly. We built business plans. We formed LLCs. We opened lines of business credit, tracked expenses through QuickBooks, and at year's end I walked each woman through her taxes, line by line, because compliance should not be the thing that kills a dream. Five became full-time artists. Two signed gallery contracts in New York. One toured internationally. None had been served by the existing system. All of them were served by a woman with a notebook and a willingness to sit down. In the two years since, I have mentored more than twenty young entrepreneurs in my community on the same mechanics — the unsexy part of a first year nobody teaches. The pattern has held: the knowledge is not complicated. The access is. NorthStar is my answer to access. Business formation, tax strategy, investing, long-term wealth planning — delivered as clear, usable structure for women building financial independence without a roadmap. I am currently a Data Science student at Harvard Extension School, concentrating in Mathematics, because the precision data science demands is the same precision required to build financial tools that work for women living on variable income. My community service taught me what needs to exist. My education is teaching me how to build it at a scale that outlasts me. Some will argue that financial literacy alone cannot close a gap this wide — that without policy reform, equal pay, and capital access, teaching women spreadsheets is a patch on a structural wound. They are right. Literacy is not sufficient. But it is a prerequisite. A woman who cannot read her own profit-and-loss statement cannot negotiate her worth, cannot demand the capital she has earned, cannot pass the map to her daughter. Systemic change and individual capacity build each other. I am a first-generation college student, a single mother of two, a woman who has rebuilt from real losses more than once. The women NorthStar is for are not hypothetical. They are me, three versions ago. They are the artists who learned from me. They are the twenty entrepreneurs learning now. They are the fifteen names in the notebook. I am not waiting for permission to solve this. I am building the system, and I am using every tool I earn to make sure it works when I hand it over.

I am a first-generation biracial woman who has spent her life building in the space between. I am a single mother of two, a Data Science student at Harvard Extension School, the former owner of a ten-year Brooklyn business, and the future founder of NorthStar Women's Wealth & Consulting. I turn visions into systems, and systems into outcomes. Adversity is not a chapter of my life. It is the material I build from. The hardest season came when I lost multiple pregnancies. Grief alone would have been enough to flatten most people. What complicated mine was the layered fear that shadows every Black woman walking into an American hospital — the maternal mortality statistics, the research documenting how routinely our pain is minimized, dismissed, or missed entirely until it is too late. Every appointment was a negotiation between hope and vigilance. Every loss arrived wrapped in the question of whether the outcome might have been different if I had been a different kind of patient in a different kind of body. The cumulative weight triggered a mental health crisis that pulled me out of CUNY entirely. For a long stretch, I stopped believing I could finish anything. I did not overcome it through willpower. Willpower had already failed me for years. I overcame it by dismantling the life I thought I was supposed to want and building a smaller, more honest one in its place. I went to therapy. I received an ADHD diagnosis at thirty-nine that reframed a lifetime of perceived failure as an untreated neurological pattern. I learned that eighty percent completion is one hundred percent success. I stopped confusing the absence of a mentor with the absence of possibility. When I found Harvard Extension School — rigorous enough to be worth my time, flexible enough to hold the life I was already living — I returned to school with eighty-four credits, a 3.3 GPA, and a clarity I never had at eighteen. What the loss shaped in me was a refusal to let the next generation of women inherit the same silence. I named my daughter Adeline Prime, after prime numbers, because I wanted her name to carry the precision and beauty I find in mathematics. I mentor more than twenty young entrepreneurs in my community. I am designing NorthStar as the financial infrastructure single mothers are rarely handed — business creation, tax strategy, investing, long-term planning — because time is the most valuable asset a woman has, and financial independence is what returns it to her. To anyone walking the same road — a BIPOC woman who has lost a pregnancy, or a mother who has lost the version of herself she thought she was building — my advice is the one Simon M. Humphrey lived by and left behind: control what you can control. You cannot control the statistics, the systems, or the chemistry of grief. You can control whether you get up today and do one small, deliberate thing that moves you forward. Build the structure. Trust the structure. Structure is where possibility lives.

I have always been passionate about mathematics. I find the subject truly beautiful because there is so much grace and mystery in it while simultaneously being full of structure, order and logic. Math has made me feel like life can be full of possibility and discovery. My formal education has been stop and start again but returning to school at this point in my life, pursuing a B.A in Mathematics from Harvard University and then a Masters of Finance, I feel like achieving this dream is actually possible. I expect to graduate in 2029. I have a detailed, well-paced plan and the support of my academic advisors, my family and my friends. Most of all I have a belief in myself, a determination to see my vision to the finish line. I feel a deep sense of purpose when I think of the consulting firm I want to open. Northern Star Women’s Wealth gets its name from concept that the North Star is a steadfast marker that can always guide you home. I want to be the guide for other women as they gain control over their financial lives. This is a purpose, a personal mission statement that I can be proud of. Many women have the creativity, drive and passion needed to win in this world, but without the tools, skills and mentorship they cannot take their ideas from concept to reality. I can help bridge the gap. I know I can because of my experience leading teams. With limited resources and no formal education in financial studies, I helped the majority of my staff launch their own businesses. Some were creatives that needed help monetizing their art, a few launched clothing brands, one is now a professional writer for a prestigious magazine, another a professional photographer. All got their start under the umbrella of my mentorship. I know that as I grow my own knowledge, network and certifications I can reach more women. Managing that business taught me to adapt constantly because being flexible as life changes will present me with the greatest opportunities. I learned to have faith in myself. I am more than capable because I am determined to be consistent, always willing to pivot, always wanting to share space with others. Teamwork makes the dream work is literally one of my management philosophies to the point that it has become a call and response catch phrase with my teams. My academic journey has not been easy. I have survived losing multiple pregnancies, financial strain, chronic illness, and housing instability. My son was born in 2020. His birth reignited my academic goals, reinforcing the values I want to model for my children: ambitious drive, determination, resilience, compassion. My daughter will be born in December of this year. I want my children to see their mother as someone who does not abandon her aspirations even when faced with potentially overwhelming challenges. Who I am, who I push myself to become will set the standard for what they believe they can achieve in this life. I will not allow them to believe they deserve anything less than their dreams. My role is to show them through my actions that dreams thrive through hard work, consistency and determination. To be fully engaged in a meaningful work while crafting a life in which I can be fully present for my children, this is my dream. I will found a company that opens doors for women. I will provide empowerment, guidance and trust. Creating generational wealth means giving women back their time and their choices, the true meaning of financial independence.

To me, resilience is the personal choice to push forward even when life’s challenges make the world feel overwhelming and unrecognizable. It is a quiet decision that is based in determination and personal fortitude. Resilience means adaptability, being able to constantly pivot through changing life circumstances. It means not giving into self pity, despite facing hardships and choices you never asked for. Resilience is finding humor in moments when it seems easier to give into despair. It means rebuilding yourself over and over. Ultimately, the daily practice of choosing to be resilient is a practice of choosing to be at peace with your life, choosing faith, hope and discipline. My experience with chronic illness began during the second wave of COVID-19 in New York City. I had just had my first child when I began to feel unwell rapidly descending into violent illness. I lost so much weight so quickly, dropping from 155 pounds to 90 pounds in two months. At the time medical care was restricted as all resources were directed to fighting the pandemic. I went months without being able to see a doctor. Eating was difficult. I could not keep food in me. Walking became painful. I developed large ulcers on my legs. When the city finally reopened medical services, I was diagnosed with severe ulcerative colitis. Navigating motherhood during this time was the greatest challenge of my life. Quarantine meant that I had no support for either myself or my son. There were days when I could not stand and did not want to get out of bed. But being a mother does not stop. My son needed me to care for his basic needs, to put on a false face of happiness and excitement and shelter him from the reality of my painful experiences. We survived those months together and I learned that not only is resilience a form of endurance, but love in action. Since then, I have experienced two to three flares per year. The flares start slowly and can escalate quickly, often accompanied by erythema nodosum—the softball-sized ulcers on my legs that make walking nearly impossible. Resilience is humor and over the years I have collected beautiful canes to help me walk as I heal providing an interesting spin on my wardrobe and fashion choices. Resilience has meant restarting my education repeatedly and adapting a new perspective. Flares of chronic illness affect my concentration, attendance, and energy. But I am nothing if not determined, always returning to school. Earning my bachelors and masters degrees is a life goal. A while back I had a shift in perspective that allowed me to see a blessing in my illness. Living with chromic illness has cultivated empathy in me. I know how much it takes to simply show up when your body is fighting you. I hope those living with chronic illness who read my story can learn that resilience is not perfection—it is perspective. Happiness is always one shift in perspective away.