Pride meets multi-talented career woman Juanita Ingram, who’s started an organisation to help women get into the workplace.
For Black women in 2019, an age of hyper-information and self-made internet successes, there’s never been a better time to have multiple passions and invest in them to create diverse streams of income.
However, it’s beautiful when people who are successful in their fields do what they can to pass the torch along – as the saying goes, ‘a rising tide lifts all boats’, and when women band together to help each other up the ladder, there are no limits to what can be achieved.
Juanita Ingram is an attorney, author and actress who has used her love for fashion and her entrepreneurial spirit to found the Greater London branch of Dress For Success, a charitable organisation that helps disadvantaged women become economically independent by providing them with free professional clothing and styling and interview coaching, as well as on-going support after they’ve re-joined the workplace.
Juanita, who’s based in the US and London, highlighted the importance of the charity’s work and its impact as something she takes a lot of pride in: ‘We have almost a 70% success rate,’ she explained, regarding the percentage of women who gain employment with their help. ‘It’s important to me because when you change a woman and give her economic independence you not only change her but you change the trajectory of her entire household. You impact her children, the direction they can go.’
And Dress For Success has indeed proved to be a success. Juanita explains: ‘We’ve helped nearly 1500 women since we opened the doors. We did a study that found that with the 67% success rate, we’ve helped over 900 women become gainfully employed and that has a million pound impact on the London economy.’
Having had over 20 years’ worth of professional experience, Juanita also felt moved to put pen to paper and share some of her ingredients to success, with her own book, Fabulous, Faithful and Free. A motivational guide, she describes it to be‘about the steps and the journey to not only allowing yourself to be free but really finding out what’s important to you, who you are, your value system, setting goals that really matter to you and not what other people want you to do, or think that you should do.’
Admitting that her own journey to self love wasn’t easy, Juanita credits her parents for allowing her ‘explore the different gifts and talents’ during her childhood, which helped on her journey to self-love and self-acceptance. ‘I think the biggest thing you can do is take the journey to figure out what’s important to you, what you value and then make no apologies about it… it’s a constant journey. I don’t think anybody does it perfectly every single day. You have to constantly remind yourself that “I am okay, that I am enough, I am fine”, because so many people will doubt you. We live in a very judgemental society where people like to judge a lot.’
With 90% of the proceeds from Fabulous, Faithful and Free going to Dress For Success, it’s clear that Juanita cares deeply about this cause, and can even identify with some of the women’s stories, as she was once made redundant, herself.
‘I know how they feel – I know how important it is for someone to come alongside you and tell you that you can do it. It’s one thing to tell somebody that they can do it, that it’s going to work out and you’re telling them from a place of optimism, but it’s another thing to tell a woman that you’ve been through it and it worked out for you. It qualifies you to help them and speak to them in a different way.’
Having received the Attorney For Justice Award from the Supreme Court of Tennessee in 2018, Juanita has also used her success to motivate and encourage other women to become successful too; she travels internationally, speaking on various topics regarding female empowerment and self-worth, and giving motivational speeches to women and children across the US, Europe and the UK.
However, this is not the only field in which Juanita has excelled; interestingly, she’s also passionate about the arts, and has an active career in acting too. Inspired by her mother’s career in performing arts, Juanita joined the theatre at nine, after taking a break and going into law school she returned to acting in 2012. However it wasn’t until her husband’s job brought them from the States to the UK that she was able to get into acting classes and take auditions.
‘I got signed while I was here and got my first feature while I was here, so I’m still acting.’ As well as being on screen Juanita also has an established modelling career; she holds multiple pageant titles including Mrs Great Britain World 2011. Alongside the likes of Halle Berry, Oprah Winfrey and Vanessa Williams, Juanita was recognised and acknowledged by Madam Noire as one of the Top 7 Black Women in Pageantry to turn beauty to business.
However all this success didn’t come without hardship. As a Black woman, Juanita experienced both sexism and racism from co-workers during her career as an attorney and an actress. ‘As an attorney certainly because it’s a male dominated field,’ she admits. ‘We’re talking about gender roles and pay gaps for women and that still exist within our field – and I’ve been practising now for 17 years. There’s still a huge gap in how we’re treated as women – especially as Black women.’
She’s found that one of the best ways to deal with these struggles comes through her faith – in fact, her favourite quote is one of the most recognised verses in the Bible. ‘I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me; I incorporate my faith into my life daily. It centres me, it gives me direction, it helps me to identify who and what I am. Everyday I take time, even just five minutes, to be still – because if you’re not still enough you don’t hear, you don’t listen. Everybody has a different walk of faith but I think it’s important to have time to meditate to be quite and to really think.’
Through her many different pursuits, Juanita Ingram is living proof that if you have the desire to make things happen, there’s little that can stop you from reaching the highest peaks of your dreams – while also doing your bit to help others reach theirs, too.
Fabulous, Faithful and Free is out now, on Amazon UK. For more information on Dress for Success, head to dressforsuccessgl.org
