HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR MONEY MINDSET?

Selena: Witnessing my grandmother owning and managing her own property, then leveraging it to create more streams of income and turning the property into a family asset. That financial literacy absolutely rubbed off onto me and inspired me to do things to enrich my financial health and do things like taken home buyers classes. It’s always been in my immediate goals to buy homes and I’ve placed bids on properties, unfortunately nothing has come through as of yet but I’m able to learn from the process. It has also always been ingrained in me that, not only do I want to buy properties but having a multi-family unit and seeing that revenue come in. It’s important to me to be able too sustain consistent income and help out the rest of my family, that was imparted in me very early on and another immediate goal. Even if my grandmother and family didn’t always articulate it properly, they set the example. Because of the example set for me I’m able to put all the pieces together and shape the life that I want to build for myself.

TELL US MORE ABOUT YOUR EXPERIENCE WITH JOURNALISM, WAS THAT JOURNEY ALWAYS YOUR GOAL?

Selena: I originally started at a smaller black owned company, it was called Envy magazine. At the time I was in New York and went on to write for the New York, Amsterdam news, which is also the longest black owned newspaper in the nation. After that, I worked for Global Rhyme, which was under Russell Simmons at the time. Basically a lot of minority owned outlets and publications was where I invested my time and talents. I also spent some years working on WOR 710 radio, in New York and that’s probably one of the only white owned outlets I’ve ever worked for. Finally, I started working at Black Enterprise where my entry point was as a freelance researcher in the freelance department. Then, six months in I was promoted to assistant digital editor and six months after that, I was promoted to digital editor and promoted again in April of 2021 to deputy digital editor. And prior to my journey with Black Enterprise my college career exposed me to a lot of what I needed to know too be successful. Sometimes in our college careers and in a lot of educational spaces some of the data is antiquated. They don’t keep up with the time, I didn’t learn digital media until afterwards and when I left I still learning radio and television. However, my goal had always been to create impact, inform, educate and empower marginalized communities. Not only does that mean becoming more politically and civically successful but also financially. All of the opportunity to do and be this came later on, through working at black enterprise and some other outlets that put a major focus on economic empowerment. Those experiences are what opened up my eyes to realizing we have and need to prosper as a community in all three of those ways. We have to begin to understand why it’s important to vote, why getting involved civically is important, the power of our dollar, buying black and supporting our own businesses.