Vinegar Hill Magazine: Determined to Stay

article by Jordy Yager

Yolunda Harrell is currently the CEO of the New Hill Development Corp., but on September 11, 2001, she was working for a major airline. After the terror attacks, she immediately found herself among tens of thousands of people in the industry without a job. She’d never before been unemployed.

“I didn’t know how to deal with that at all,” she said. “I was not financially prepared.”

She didn’t have any savings. She hadn’t invested in her company’s 401(k) retirement plan. “I just didn't take all of those things into consideration because no one had ever explained it to me,” she said. “As a result, I learned a lot of hard painful lessons.”

She lost nearly everything, and set out to not just rebuild, but also learn more about financial health. By 2008, when the financial crisis hit the U.S. and she was working for a major hotel chain, she was in better shape.

“By that point, I had personally put money away and knew that if I did lose my job, no big deal, I could find a job and find a way to survive, versus the last time,” said Harrell.

Now, with more Americans on unemployment than ever before and the economy in complete disarray, African Americans are being the hardest hit yet again. Harrell looks back on her own education and how it’s helped her weather storms. She wants to help others prepare for the next one.

Read the full article here.

Photo credit: Lorenzo Dickerson