Career

I have been an entrepreneur, freelance writer, and blogger since 2005. I have been a business consultant and freelancer, and written business articles, blogs and other web and print content for various clients with a specialty of targeting small business owners. I created products to promote peace and sanity in your home and business lives and sell at Peace & Sanity.

Previously, I owned a sole proprietorship as a business consultant where I primarily created and developed business plans for entrepreneurs.  I also worked as a business consultant for the North Carolina Minority Business Enterprise Center (NC MBEC), operated by the North Carolina Institute of Minority Economic Development (NCIMED).

While a student in UNC Kenan-Flagler’s MBA program, my coursework included creating business plans and working with various local for-profit and non-profit organizations to create solutions for their business issues. I interned at FedEx in the product development department where I created a mentoring program (developed an internal product) for project managers and their project sponsors (company senior vice presidents). During my second year, I worked as a teaching assistant for an undergraduate global marketing course and a graduate managerial accounting course. My favorite course was consumer behavior!

In my early career, I worked as an engineer for a major telecommunications company and in supply chain for a regional wireless company in Atlanta, GA.

In 2005, I earned a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from UNC-Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School with dual concentrations in Marketing and Sustainable Enterprise. Along with several extracurricular activities, I capped my education by participating as team captain in the Executive Leadership Council’s Case Competition. My team developed ways an international beverage company could influence South Africa from a social enterprise standpoint even though the company did not sell products in the country. We won second place (beating a Wharton Business School team) and that has haunted me to this day!

In 1999, I earned a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering from the University of Missouri-Columbia (Mizzou). I loved the challenge of math and science, yet knew I wanted some flexibility in my training so I chose to study Industrial Engineering. I learned how to define problems and develop solutions especially for the relationship between man and machine. I saw how my education could reach beyond the context of my training and realized the beginnings of what I felt was really the call for my life. During summers, I returned to St. Louis and worked for temporary services, primarily in customer service and administrative roles. During school, I worked as an inventory specialist, an office assistant in the medical school and tutored reading with Americorps.

I attended the Ph.D. Project in 2005 and still haven’t made that step. It was a great experience that I highly recommend to any minority considering pursuing that level of business degree!

Professionally, I have earned certification as an Economic Development Finance Professional (EDFP) through the National Development Council and completed executive training for servicing minority businesses at Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH. Additionally I successfully passed the engineer-in-training (EIT) exam in 1999.