Trauma to Triumph-the Rise of the Entrepreneur

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Narrator

"Trauma to Triumph, The Rise of the Entrepreneur"", is made possible by... (atmospheric music) -

Narrator 2

The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, working so that all people, regardless of their race, gender or geography have the opportunity to achieve economic stability, mobility and prosperity. Don Pablo coffee (atmospheric music) growers and roasters passionately supports the entrepreneurial spirit. Throughout the world, we provide education and micro loans to hardworking people with big dreams. We proudly stand behind the inspiration of "Trauma to Triumph, The Rise of the Entrepreneur"".

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Narrator

Atlas Learning (atmospheric music) and Steve Mariotti, empowering organizations and individuals to raise the capital required to achieve their missions. (atmospheric music) -

Woman

We had a very tragic incident in our family dealing with race. Everyone told me that it would ruin my life. -

Woman 2

Then the doctor called. When she delivered me the news, the whole world just goes black. You don't know if you're gonna be lucky and survive, or if you're going to die. -

Woman 3

I woke up in this motel, and I knew something horrible had happened to me. -

Woman 4

Life gives you adversity. You can live beyond that. You can become the person that you've always wanted to be. -

Woman 5

When you go through a "Trauma in your life, you have two ways that you can deal with it. One way is you give in to the "Trauma, and you let it drive you. I decided I didn't want to do that. Cathy's an inspiration at so many levels, I mean not just at an entrepreneurial-ship level or a business level, but at a human level.

There are some leaders that elevate our thinking about possibility and also feed our spirit. And that's what she does. She's a force. (film machine sounds) -

Cathy

When I was growing up in Omaha, Nebraska, Omaha was a thriving industrial city. The sense of community in the projects. I'm the oldest of four. My mother never had a babysitter, and all the women took care of you.

There was a place called Carter Lake that still exists. But back then, that's where all the black folks would get together and have picnics on the weekends. I was having a wonderful time. Nikki Giovanni, the famous poet, has a point about she did not know that she was poor, that her family was impoverished until she got to be an adult because she was so happy and there was so much love.

I have to echo that sentiment. I didn't know that you had to be low income to live in public housing. I was having a wonderful time. My father had not finished high school when he married my mother.

She made him go to night school. He got his high school diploma, and then he enrolled in Creighton University. Once, he graduated from Creighton University and passed the CPA exam on the first sitting. And for the next four years of his life, the only job he could get was bagging macaroni on the midnight shift.

The priest at Creighton said, "Oh no, this will not do, someone's gonna hire William Woods." One of their graduates was Head of the Audit Division of the Internal Revenue, and they went to him and said, "Listen, we think that you're gonna hire your first black agent." My father was the only African-American CPA. They sent him to out-state Nebraska, where he went in to audit a restaurant and bar combination, and the good old boys pistol-whipped him and nearly took his life. I recognized at a very early age that my father's challenges were all based on the color of his skin. One of my biggest regrets is that he's not my CFO in my company.

My education at Duchesne is the total foundation for me now owning and operating the largest media corporation in the United States of America geared towards African-Americans. It was those Latin classes that I hated. Duchesne Academy of the Sacred Heart, which is run by the Madames of the Sacred Heart, very exclusive school. The student body of Duchesne was the creme de creme of Omaha's white hierarchy, okay, if you were Catholic.

And so I was the first African-American graduate. I had a very confrontational relationship with the Madames of the Sacred Heart. They didn't understand the entire civil rights movement. I thought they were intentionally picking on me.

When in hindsight, I realized that they knew what I was going to be confronted with, because of the lessons that they literally pounded into my hard head. At the time, I was able to thrive, I was able to rise above the discrimination. However, it was Duchesne that motivated me to be a social activist. (upbeat music) My first venture into social activism was getting elected as Vice President of the NAACP Youth Council.

And they, at one of their meetings, said that we've got to enter great Peony Park. It was the Omaha, Nebraska's version of Disneyland. We showed up at the park and went to pay our admission to get into the park. And they said, "We're sorry, no Negroes allowed." And then my classmates from Duchesne Academy walked up and said, "What do you mean, no Negroes allowed?

This is a public park." And the police came, and they took seven of us to jail. We had a very tragic incident in our family dealing with race that kind of solidified us on the activism. My mother was such an accomplished musician that she had been able to get a job with the Omaha Symphony. My mother looked very much like me.

My father was very Nubian. He was very dark. And one night, during a terrible snow storm, he had to pick her up from work. And he had said, "I'm here to pick up my wife." And the next day my mother was fired, and my mother was broken-hearted and never picked up her horn again.

Many, many years after that, Leonard Feather, who was a great journalist, a specialist in jazz, put together my mother's group, the remaining members who were still alive for the Kansas City Jazz Festival. And my mother even had this great tribute to the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, then refused to go on that stage and pick up her horn. She swore, she said, "I told God, I'll never touch it again. That horn will never be able to hurt me again." It's about to make me cry.

It was a very "Traumatizing time in our house because we needed the money. My father was in school. I think he might've been coming from his job as a waiter to pick her up. So we had no income.

God would have forgiven her for breaking her promise never to touch her horn again. I'm totally confident of that. But I learned no challenge is so great that you should be separated from that which you are good at. When I was eight years old, my mother put her transistor radio on layaway for me and paid on it for a solid year.

Layaway is when you select what you want from a retailer, and that retailer puts it on hold, and every week you come and make payments on it or every month. For Christmas, I got a transistor radio. The first thing that happened, I was so excited. It was so heavy.

It slipped out of my hands and hit the floor. I loved it. I probably got more punishment because I stayed up all night listening to the radio, when my mother would come in and say, "Turn the radio off, okay, or you're gonna be grounded." So I slept with it next to my pillow with my hand on it, like it was a puppy or like it was a, oh, that radio was the most precious possession. That was my 'a-ha' moment.

I'm not feeling well, and I go to the doctor, and the doctor says, "You're pregnant." And I said, "Oh, I can't be. I use Norforms, and I've only had sex one time." He said, "Well, young lady, it only takes one time. And by the way, Norforms is a deodorant, not a contraceptive." Everyone told me that it would ruin my life, that I wouldn't have a future. Alfred's father who was older than me said, "I'm marrying her.

She's gonna be my wife," which lasted for about 24 hours. You can either view it as a failure or as a special blessing, because literally, when they put that baby on my chest, I had a 'boing' like I've never, ever experienced again. It was the sensation of love and joy and purpose, more important than anything else. For the first time in my life, I felt connected to another human being that I considered more important than my own self.

It took all of the vanity out and replaced it with humility. When she had Alfred, she didn't say, "Oh God, this is...Poor me." She said, "This is something now that I really have to work for." It gave me purpose, and it taught me to love outside of myself. I got over being in love with Cathy and fell in love with Alfred. So Alfred was going to class with me at the University of Nebraska in his baby seat.

All of a sudden, I get word that these athletes and business people in Omaha are pooling their resources and they're gonna buy a radio station. So I jump up, get myself in the middle of the group, and tell them that I want to invest. But more importantly, I want to learn radio. I figured the best way to have access was to be an owner.

So Katherine Graham was told by the FCC that she had a monopoly, and she had to divest herself of a property. And so that's what she gave to Howard University, was WTOP-FM. Howard University had established a School of Communications, and they hired Dr. Milton White away from the University of Nebraska Omaha, and I followed him.

So now the new School of Communications had this radio station, and it needed people to run it. She says, "I have an interest in radio. I've actually worked at a radio station in Omaha." She went over there and became the first sales manager. They talk about me creating the quiet storm, but they don't talk about how that not only revolutionized urban radio, but it also helped expedite the rise of FM radio.

At a very early stage in my career, I realized that I was pretty controversial, and that I needed to own and operate my own radio. When I first met Cathy, she was the general manager of the radio station at Howard University. When a station in the Washington Market was being sold, Cathy and her husband at the time, Dewey Hughes, came to my firm. When my partner and I asked Cathy what her business plan was for this acquisition and for this station, she looked at us and said, "My business plan is to be successful in business." And we said, "Uh, okay." But that kind of showed a personality trait to say whatever it takes, I am going to win here.

To be a good entrepreneur, one has to understand it's not about a business. It's about a state of mind and about how you do what Cathy do, you take ownership where you say, "You know what, I'm responsible for this. I can build this. I can do this." Things got challenging during my early days of being an entrepreneur because my first million dollar loan with Chemical Bank of New York was priced at two points over prime.

Early eighties, prime went into the mid-twenties. It was impossible to service my debt. I was married at the time. The debt was overwhelming for him.

And so he decided that we should just walk out and forget the debt and leave the station. And I said, "No," that I was on a mission it's something that I had wanted to do since I was eight years old. I was not leaving. He left and I filed for divorce, but he took my son with him.

So I'm here alone, struggling to keep this radio station afloat and alive. In my most challenging period, I had a total of 14 full-time and part-time staff to run a 24/7 operation. I realized that I no longer could continue living in the house that I had lived in with my husband. I ended up moving into my radio station and sleeping on the floor for 18 months in a sleeping bag and washing up in the public bathroom for almost a year until my mother took pity on me.

My mother told me that she thought I had had a nervous breakdown. She said, "You're bright, you're accomplished, you're hardworking. Go get yourself a good government job." So my mother sent me $5,000. And with that $5,000, I installed a bathroom and a kitchen in my radio station so I could get up off the floor.

So Cathy coped with it in the way of looking at, this is an opportunity. This is my place and this is my place. If I have to live in it, I'll live in it. If I have to work it to death, I'll work it to death.

If I have to love people enough to work it for me, just for the love of doing it, I'll love them enough to do that. This is a woman who gave up her house because she couldn't afford it, is willing to live in a radio station to make this station work, and that's better than her trying to take more money out of the business so she can continue to afford her house. That's what an entrepreneur does. And Cathy Hughes is in this afternoon.

We have the pleasure of simulcasting once again with C-SPAN. My lenders say, "Listen, nice venture, nice idea, unaffordable for you. Put the music back on." And I refuse to go back to 24 hours of music. And I said, "I cannot do this in-morning drive to my audience." And they facetiously said, "Then do it yourself." And again, an 'a-ha' moment.

And for the next 11 years, I hosted that morning show, and it became the number one talk show in Washington, DC. I was able to bring my community around to realize that this is not only something they needed, but something they wanted. Harriet Tubman is quoted as saying that she freed a thousand slaves. She could've freed ten times that number if they had known they were slaves.

They didn't have the information. I believe that my mission in life has been to uplift and motivate and organize and help my community. Right now we're on Paxton Boulevard. Paxton Boulevard used to be Paxton.

Now it's Cathy Hughes Boulevard. You could see the signs posted in both directions here, going on the Boulevard. Martin Luther King said it best, "When you leave, you don't want to be remembered for what you owned or what you had. You want to be remembered for what you did, and to change someone's life to the positive is the most important, I think.

My mother is more interested in being known for what she's done and given than she is about how much money she's made. I think she is a person who cares about this country, quite frankly, and cares about the way of where we are going and about the future of this country. There was embedded in her, at an early age, that you can get anything in this world that you want, if you would just help enough other people get what they want. Is it the more you give, the more you will receive, because just about every religion teaches that.

That when you're generous, when you take care of those that are unable to provide for themselves, then a higher power rewards you. When you understand that, then it's about a mission. It's not about creating personal wealth, it's about a mission larger than yourself. And as long as you're engaged in something larger than yourself, you have the opportunity to create a legacy that lives beyond yourself or beyond radio one, urban one or TV one or whatever.

Those are things that are really for a bigger purpose. And I think that's what Cathy has done, and has become and that what she believes in. I just know that when you really use your blessings, your resources to help others, it is returned to you, sometimes in ways that you can't even imagine. And I've been doing this since we were only a radio company.

Look up, and today, we've got two cable networks. Look up, we've got a digital company that's the number one destination for African-Americans. Look up, and we reach 85% of all African-Americans, touch some aspect of my company on a weekly basis in one manner or another. That's because we have extended ourselves.

And when you have that mentality of helping others, the person who benefits the most is you. If you want to be a successful business, concentrate on your frontline as much or more than you concentrate on your bottom line because if you concentrate on your frontline, and you invest in your frontline, and you nurture and you grow, and you take care of your frontline, your bottom line is gonna automatically follow because your frontline will see to it. The triumph of the entrepreneur is definitely the ability to create job opportunities for other human beings and know that you, because of your effort, because of your dream, because of your dogged determination to keep your business alive and thriving, that you buy braces for kids who need them, you pay college tuition, you are able to empower your employees to get proper medical care, proper nutrition, proper education, proper housing. When you really realize the triumph of an entrepreneur, you realize that you are a self-proclaimed, established 'she-ro' if you're a woman or a hero if you're a man because you are literally uplifting and providing for the life of countless others.

(cheerleaders chanting) (marching band music) -

Announcer

Ladies and gentlemen, please draw your attention to the track in front of the 50-yard line. -

Announcer

As a recognized Class of 2019, - I'll shake hands. Bellbrook-Sugarcreek Hall of Fame inductee, we have Dana Cassie Donofree. (applause) We share similar stories, and I feel connected to her. No matter what profession you're in, whatever your path in life, you can do something to make a difference to help others, and she did that through her work.

It's really inspiring to see that she could call back on all of her gifts and talents to then move forward, jump ahead. And she didn't jump ahead, she leaped ahead. (atmospheric music) -

Dana

I mean, life growing up, I was quintessential small farm town Ohio kid. And she was very athletic, very smart. Involved in everything, student council, cheerleading, softball. Just a leader in the class.

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Patricia

Loved to dance, started dancing when she was four, I could see the shining star. She met all my expectations. There was a group of eight of us girls. She'd lead all eight of us.

She was big into the school stuff, leading the school stuff as well. As if you need something done, then you would go to Dana and ask her to do it, and you knew it was gonna happen. I came from a divorced family. Once we were old enough to work, we had to start working.

My children heard a lot, "I don't have the money. You know if you want that, you're gonna have to get a job." So a lot of my free time was taken up by babysitting or working at the local ice cream shop to teaching dance at my dance studio, just really doing whatever I could to make a few extra bucks. I was the middle child, so I oftentimes ended up entertaining myself through my art. I mean, kind of blew my mind when I would see her paintings and see her drawings and see her coloring and...

I ended up creating a piece that ended up winning the first place Congressional Art Prize. I was also sewing and making clothes for all my friends. I mean, she made this whole little business in high school. We designed a t-shirt together that we like, we drew it and had worked so hard on it, had it printed out, and we sold them to all of our senior class.

She's always been a go-getter, probably had an entrepreneur spirit at a very young age. I was living my life in my twenties, no cares in the world. Everything was moving along like it's supposed to. Paul and I had decided to get married.

So we were engaged and planning our wedding, and so I had flown home to Ohio to celebrate my bridal shower with all my family and friends. I was out shopping for my honeymoon clothes with my mom and my soon to be mother-in-law. And we had the whole cart full of all of these outfits I was gonna try on in the fitting room. And then the doctor called, and when she delivered me the news that I had cancer, the whole world just goes black, and I really didn't hear anything else, except for all of the awful things like 'invasive' and 'we have to act quick' and 'you're young and 'it's really aggressive' and all of these things.

So I just hung up the phone and looked to my mom and to my mother-in-law and just looked at them and I said, "You can put all of these clothes away because I'm not gonna need them because I have cancer." And, in that moment, I thought it was over. I guess when we talked about it on the phone, it was really difficult to hear. It was scary. From that point on, life changed as Dana knew it, so...

Your parents care about you. They don't want to see you get sick. They don't want to see you get hurt. And here I was at 27 telling my mom that her daughter had breast cancer.

I went into 1,001 mom mode. You know it's just like, like somebody just messed with my daughter, and we're gonna get this taken care of, and we're gonna figure out what's going on. There's so much you don't know when you're in the thick of it. You don't know if you're gonna be lucky and survive, or if you're going to die.

I was going through my treatment. My treatment was really heavy. I took a lot of chemo. The surgeries were obviously very taxing on my body.

The majority of the providers weren't used to treating women that young with breast cancer. I'll sit beside her while she's getting pumped full of who knows what, and just be there where I can, and try to take these steps with her. And I remember he was just talking to me normal. And I went into the chemo tunnel, where it felt like he was like Speedy Gonzales, like feeding me all of this information.

I couldn't digest it fast enough because my brain was too slow. And I got really, really frustrated, and then he got frustrated. I just told him, I was like, "You don't have to do this, like 'get out of jail free' card. We don't have to do this together.

I can do this alone." And he just stops the car, like slams the brakes, and looked at me and said, "If you ever say those words again, I will actually throw you out of the car, and then I won't pick you back up and put you back in." She told me that I could leave. I never saw it as an option. It's just not something that entered my mind. We're in this together.

It's not easy for a young couple to be faced with life and death in such a short moment. You know, that's where that strength and that courage takes us over. Being 28 that has just such a prime of her life, and I knew that that would definitely be something, that she was gonna have to look at life a little different way. And I feel like Aunt Jeannie and I have always been like kindred spirits.

So happy that I got to have somebody so close to my life that understood where I was at. She was just there saying to me, "You're gonna get through this." Ninety-nine percent of every issue is attitude. You've got science and technology on your side, but your attitude will get you through it. And she was just that little silent cheerleader that I needed.

She didn't let the breast cancer get her down. She continued to do work, and as much as she could. Her artsy side said 'send me scarves, send me your favorite scarf, and I'll wear it around my head so I have a piece of you while I'm going through this.' I felt like the wedding day was a moment for us to close a chapter in our lives. Literally I had my port removed three weeks before the wedding.

So there was just enough time for my incision to heal. The wedding day was something. I fell apart. I was a mess.

I don't think... I didn't have a dry eye for more than maybe 10 minutes that day. It'd just been a long road to get there, and we got there. So it was special.

I'm going through the reconstructive process. My hair is just growing back. I have no eyebrows. I have no eyelashes.

I never really had a concern that she would be lost. She's just that type of person that could get through anything. For me, it was like okay, I'm finished. My cancer is done.

This is the moment where I go back to having my normal life. I was surprised I was there. I felt lucky that I got that moment. So for me, in that moment, I said, "Okay, I made it.

I fought cancer." And knowing what I know now, and not everybody gets to see that moment for themselves. It wasn't too long after my treatment finished that I found that there was this need to kind of always give myself the next milestone, that after the next surgery I'll be normal again. After the next treatment, I'll be normal again. And quite frankly, normal never came.

I found myself having really difficult challenges while I was preparing to get myself ready for the workday in the morning. And it started with my underwear drawer, and I had to go through all of my beautiful bras and throw each and every one of them in the trash. And that was really disheartening, especially as a young woman. And this literally was ruling my life.

I didn't realize it in the moment, but it was ruling my life. It was changing the way I express myself. It was changing the way I dressed, how I did my hair, how I did my makeup, because when I wasn't dressing well, I didn't really care about the way I looked. I was just unraveling a bit from who I knew I was and who I wanted to be.

I'll never forget after a chemo appointment, and we're driving home, and she was just like, "You know, Mom," she said, "This strips everything from you that identifies you as a woman." She says, "It's taken my hair, it's taken my eyelashes, taken my eyebrows. It's taken my boobs." It just felt like I had the right tools in the toolbox to make something better. I joke that I woke up in the middle of the night with a hot flash, but I literally woke up in the middle of the night with a hot flash. And I started sketching a few bra ideas, and I kind of just laid there afterwards.

And I was like, "Wow, why am I letting that run my life?" I started doing a ton and ton of research. I went to, of course, Google, and came up with nothing. So I met with my doctor, and I had told them that I had this outrageous idea, that I was gonna start designing bras for women with breast reconstruction. He was like, "Do you know how many patients ask me about what bra they're supposed to wear after their surgery?" He goes, "You know what my answer is to them every single time?" He goes, "The same one I told you, a sports bra or nothing at all." And he goes, "Because those are your only two options." You know, it's not easy running a business, and starting a business is not the simplest thing in the world.

And if it was, everybody would do it, but cancer isn't easy, either. If cancer prepared me to start my own business and run my own business, then heck yeah, I'm gonna have to go for it. But I remember going to see her in Philadelphia, and she just had sketches everywhere and fabric swatches everywhere, and it was just awesome. And my doctor looked at me and he says, "I hope you remember me." About four years ago, I met Dana.

She's one of my heroes. Somehow she said, "I'm gonna take this experience. I'm gonna learn from it, and I'm gonna make it better for others." When you're diagnosed with breast cancer, it doesn't mean you have to give up your sense of sexuality, your self esteem, that there should be products that work for you. And she didn't find them.

And instead of saying oh, I didn't find them, oh well, she was like, I'm gonna do something about this. Sometimes when someone comes in, they think I'm having a piece of my body removed from me. I can never feel normal again. And her lingerie really gives us the opportunity to say it's gonna be okay.

That's what Dana's message is. It's like, you know, you might get busted down, but here's something that's gonna help lift you up. It just empowers these women to feel good about themselves. I think that her purpose is to help women feel like they're never alone.

When you're a woman, and you have sensitive feelings about your breasts, and then they're removed from your body, that is mentally damaging, and we have to be comfortable talking about these things. And so I feel like, if my story can help change that person's perspective or point of view and give them a bit of hope and inspiration, it's all worth it. (atmospheric music) We're here to raise money for METAvivor. We fund metastatic breast cancer research.

We give a hundred percent of donations to our research grant program. And so we are taking to the runway to raise awareness for people living with metastatic breast cancer, and to raise the voices of those who can't speak for themselves. Every year, our show has opened the door to start a new conversation. So I knew that the only way that we couldn't ignore it this year was to partner with METAvivor and put all metastatic stage four breast cancer patients on the runway.

All the models we're taking to the runway this year are metastatic breast cancer patients, which means their cancer traveled beyond their breasts to other organs in their body, and they're all terminal. So every single person hitting the runway is dying from breast cancer. It's nice to be surrounded by people who genuinely understand what I'm going through. Back in 2001, I was given up on.

And here I am, 17 years later. You know, we need research. I'm so excited. I'm so excited.

It's such an honor. Lots of emotions, I guess. I am excited, nervous, a little overwhelmed. I was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer when I was 18 years old.

It's just, it's time that the world hear our voices. These are mothers and sisters and friends and partners and business people. They don't walk on a runway in fashion week. That in its own takes pure strength and empowerment and courage.

Dana stands with us and advocates for us, and that means a lot. All the looks that we're gonna see on the runway were created by her, and I feel like Dana is so selfless in the way that she gives back. I've been going for the last 45 days making this show happen, so like it doesn't stop. But now is the point of sleep, sleep deprivation and pure adrenaline.

This is fabulous. (laughter) Now you just have to hope that what everything that you tried to do to pull it together is actually going to work. We're here backstage. All the models are getting their hair and their makeup done.

Some are getting body painted, and it's pure madness until showtime. To see what she's done with her business, even after everything she's been through, just gives us more hope. We can still do the things that we want to do, no matter our circumstances. I see her out there doing her thing, so it makes me want to go out there and live my life and be the best version of me.

Going through all that she's gone through to still go after her dream, a dream of fashion, that completely inspires me. Dana is a force of life. She is pushing me to go further. She makes me actually believe in myself, and that I can do anything.

Despite this disease, despite her diagnosis, she is like a phoenix who rose and is creating something amazing. I aspire to be like her. That's my girl. Do your walk, walk up the podium, take off your wig.

So don't even leave the stage, just go up there. - Don't even leave the stage. Take off your wig at the podium. Shake out your hair, put the wig down.

And then at that point, when you're taking off your wig. I'm gonna have people start filtering out to you. Okay. That cool?

Awesome. You're (bleep). Seeing other people do good, you want to follow in their footsteps, right? I wasn't thankful for what I had after my cancer.

I was mad about it. I was angry about it. I didn't feel good about myself. I didn't feel confident.

I didn't feel empowered. I couldn't get intimate with my partner, all of this because of the way I looked. I knew that what I wanted to do with AnaOno was gonna be more than just a bra. It was going to be about femininity and sexuality and identity and feeling sexy or feeling pretty.

I don't think breast cancer should take those things away from us. My tragedy turned into a position where I could take my skills, my expertise, my background and my experience, and I could make something beautiful with it, and I could give back to others that have been faced with the same tragedy I was. I know this business is something that the world needs, and I know it's something that other women like myself need. That is my triumph, is that I myself did it for me, but all in all, I'm now doing it for everybody else.

(roosters crowing) -

Maria

I grew up in the Dominican Republic in a little town called Licey Almedio. It's a very small town, so no matter where you move, you live close to everyone. There were mango trees, orange, guava. I was surrounded by trees and beautiful flowers.

You listen to merengue, (Spanish music) you listen to bachata and salsa. We have this swing that I recall being in it for years. We were always running around in the yard without shoes, and I loved being with my brothers, playing with my cousins. We were surrounded by beauty.

I could tell you going back, I never remembered not struggling. My father was supposed to be the provider of our family. And for a few years, he was. But unfortunately my father got into alcohol and became an alcoholic.

He started spending a lot of time with a mistress he had. My mom decided, I can't do this anymore. I don't want to take this abuse anymore. So my mom started getting divorced from my father in an era where not many women would do that.

She was making $2 per week, at a cafeteria, and she's like, how do I support five kids on a $2 salary? She made the final decision, I'm going to the United States. (foreign language) So I was like nine years, nine and a half. And in that era, they were sacrificing kids.

This man and my father came in the middle of the night, one night, and they wanted to take my little brother. I said to my father, "You're not taking my brother. You are not taking him." So my father said, "Then you have to go." Maria woke me up, she said, "Billy, come help me. They want to take me." I wasn't thinking, I said, "It's your father." (foreign language) My father took me to this witchcraft house.

My father left me there. So my father left me with this man. The man decided to force me to drink a bottle of whiskey. And he said that, first of all, that if I said anything of what happened that night, that I would be, I would die, and that my family could die, too.

(foreign language) Then my uncle came over and said, "Where's your daughter?" And he says, "Oh, I left her with whoever the guy was." So right there, he realized something was wrong. Grabbed me by the arm, and he put it, he says, "You are not with driving around. We're gonna find this guy." I ended up in waking up, bleeding. The effect of that whiskey, I could hardly walk.

I was in a different place. He had taken me to a motel. I knew something horrible had happened to me. I went to the bathroom, and I knew I was raped.

I was in tremendous pain, and I was begging him to take me back. I wanted to go back to my house and he took me back to his place, and I could hardly walk. I think this is one of the hardest pictures for me is that I recall Billy carrying me in his arms because I couldn't walk. And Billy took me to the house, and people were waiting for me there.

And I was saying, "He raped me. He raped me." And everybody started coming to comfort her. And then I started hitting the wall, and I went out rage. My father was in the house like nothing happened.

(foreign language) I remember being on the floor, in this cold cement floor. I wanted to die. I think if I would've been, if I had the means to really commit suicide, I would have done it, because to me, life was not worth living. (atmospheric music) My mother was able to get the green card, and then started to petition for us to come here to New York.

I always looked at coming here as 'I'm gonna make it big'. I am going to become somebody big in the United States. And then my brothers and my mother were able to get an apartment in Queens. And I ended up going to high school there.

And boy, that was hard. No clue what I was being taught, zero. I was failing everything. There were times that I was like, I can't do this.

I mean, how am I gonna learn this language? How am I gonna be able to do anything here? But at one point, and I couldn't even tell you when, it sort of started to click. Endless nights, 11 o'clock, she would be there.

She would take her work home. It was pure dedication, pure dedication. I felt closer to something great. I met Francisco, the father of my children in the Dominican Republic.

When I was 15, we ended up dating, and my family found out, and I was told, "You either marry him, or you could not see him again," because I ended up sleeping with him. So we decided to get married. I mean, what the heck do you know at the age of 17? I married a macho man, a man that knew what happened to me, and will not let me forget it.

And I ended up getting pregnant with my son Franco at the age of 19. Then, when Jeffrey was born, I found out that he actually cheated with a friend of mine, and I decided I'm gonna leave, but I'm gonna leave in my terms. When my parents divorced, I was about eight, nine years old. My mom very much went into business mode, hustle, did her best to support our family.

I come from nothing, so the value of a penny, to me, is greater than other people that might not have gone through that. So when I started at Scarsdale Medical Group, I was very in tune with money. In six months of doing inventory, I saved the company $80,000. I mean, there was no job too small or too big for me.

I was hungry for knowledge. I was hungry to make more money. I was open to everything. So all these people started to see this drive that I've had and this passion.

I was there for 26 years of my career. I was the executive director. I took the practice from seven doctors to 50 doctors, from 35 employees to 250 employees. I'd been told my father's dying.

He had a tumor in his brain. I hated my father with vengeance, and my uncle called me and said, "Your father is asking for your forgiveness." And I said to him, "Please tell him that he can go in peace because I do forgive. I forgive him." My father cried when he heard that. He passed away five minutes after.

The funny thing is that my father gave me back my peace, because forgiveness is something that is the most beautiful gift that we can give to ourselves. And I remember saying, "I will never, ever hate anyone from this moment on." I've learned so much from this story. It drives me to make a difference. It drives me to live life to the fullest because I gave too many years of my life to misery, to pain, to darkness.

I don't want to go back there. I started to see my kids getting older. I started to feel a void, and I think I've rushed to fill that void. And I ended up meeting Steve, my second husband, and having a daughter, which I never thought in my life I would have another child, but I struggle with my ex-husband tremendously.

In 2014, I almost died. I had breast implants. After working out, I realized that one of the breast implants deflated. And when I had the surgery, I developed a reaction to penicillin, and my body blew up.

I was purple. I was swollen. They thought I was dying. So they actually had people come in to say goodbye to me.

We weren't exactly sure if she was gonna make it, and that was hard. And I was telling my son, "I'm going, I'm dying." I felt my life just fading away, like I felt so close to the other side. It was also a difficult time because she was married at the time, and her husband wasn't there for her. My kids are waiting outside, and my ex-husband is home sleeping.

I ended up having four surgeries. I was in the hospital for 18 days. It took me about a year to really recover from this illness. I was weak.

But during that difficult time, I had time to step back and reflect on my life. It all came clear to me. The catalyst for my mission now, to help the uninsured population, comes from realizing that I was privileged enough to be able to be in a great hospital, the best doctors, the best care. And I said to myself, my God, I know people that are suffering right now, that did not have access, did not have that privilege.

They don't have not even close to the access because they don't have insurance. My illness was the catalyst to revisit my life where I was at the age of 50. Here I am, somebody not even finish a college degree, 26 years of a career at this group, making a lot of money, great pension, great benefits, health insurance, you name it. A prestigious job, people knew me in the community.

And I said, one day, "I'm leaving." Everybody thought I was completely insane. Good morning, everyone. I knew that that experience was a wake up call for me to concentrate on my legacy. I decided I'm gonna put myself in the most uncomfortable place.

I am going to build a medical practice. How I was gonna do it, no clue. And I ended up getting a phone call from my business partner today, Gina Capelli. She had built a business and she was struggling.

And she said to me, "I would like you to join me on this business." And the business was a medical practice. I understood the business of healthcare, so I knew the costs, I knew the potential. I started to think, can I negotiate with these providers? Can I negotiate with a specialist?

And I said to her, "I will join you, but I need to serve the uninsured population." Everybody was blown away with the fact that we are focused on this population. So we started to get momentum. I'm here to talk to that little girl, that little girl that was destroyed that night. And I feel that, as crazy as it may sound, I am closing that chapter with her.

And I'm coming back to the place where it was the most painful place that she was at. And I want to tell her that we're okay. We survived this, and we are okay. For me, it is important to actually tell the story.

In our generation, the stories are hidden, forbidden from speaking about the story, when we don't confront it, when we don't talk about, when we don't let it out of our system, and we continue letting our past destroy our present and our future. That I could have come from that night and build myself to where I am today. What I've broken this cycle, I am a successful woman in the United States where people go for fulfilling dreams. And I come from nothing.

I have become today unstoppable. My message to people watching Maria's story is you can persevere after trauma, even if you feel like all is lost. Something that I've learned from Maria is that even if you don't know what step to take, just take a step. -

Maria

I wasn't going to let the trauma in this horrific experience that happened to me, continue to eat my years, my days, my hours. It is scary, but when you come from such a trauma, not much is scary anymore. You realize that there is no other choice but this choice. -

Narrator

"Trauma to Triumph, The Rise of the Entrepreneur", is made possible by... -

Narrator

The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, working so that all people, regardless of their race, gender or geography, have the opportunity to achieve economic stability, mobility and prosperity. Don Pablo coffee growers and roasters passionately supports the entrepreneurial spirit. Throughout the world, we provide education and micro loans to hardworking people with big dreams. We proudly stand behind the inspiration of "Trauma to Triumph, The Rise of the Entrepreneur".

-

Narrator

Atlas Learning and Steve Mariotti, empowering organizations and individuals to raise the capital required to achieve their missions. Another episode of "Trauma to Triumph". -

Man

And I was with one of the hospital coroners, opened it up, and from the floor to the ceiling were body bags. -

Man 2

Depicting close to three thousand people in the point of my life. -

Man 3

A physical wound, you can deal with. A mental wound, it's like a knife. It's always cutting. I wouldn't be here today.

I would've probably have drank myself to death. -

Man 4

And I thought, well, I'll build a casket. -

Man 2

And I said, "I'll leave. I quit." The same day, I started a business.