Oprah’s “Live The Life You Want†Weekend recently wrapped after an eight city arena tour that kicked off this fall. To inspire people to create the life they want, the tour brought together the world’s best thought leaders, including pop icon Iyanla Vanzant, star of OWN’s hit series Iyanla Fix My Life. Other spiritual life coaches included Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat Pray Love), mind-body expert Deepak Chopra, and one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People, Pastor Rob Bell.
At each stop, Winfrey and Paralympic bronze medalist and ABC’s Dancing With The Stars finalist, Amy Purdy, shared the stage to surprise a local woman with the Toyota Standing O-Vation award. The award was a $25,000 gift on behalf of Toyota for the work these entrepreneurial women did in their community, in the face of adversity. The women chosen all have incredible stories and include founders of the popular movements Black Girls Run and Black Girls Code. Here are six African American women entrepreneurs that gained inspiration and finical support from Oprah’s “Live The Life You Want†tour.
Atlanta, GA
Black Girls Run, Ashley Hicks & Toney Carey
Black Girls RUN! is a national running group launched in 2009 by Toni Carey and Ashley Hicks. The organization has grown to include more than seventy running groups across the nation and hundreds of thousands of members across the nation. The group was created to combat the obesity epidemic among women in the African-American community and dispel the myth that black women
do not run. Â The groups include beginner and experienced runners and provide a support system to help members reach their fitness goals. Black Girls RUN! provides a community and inspires all women to run.
Detroit, MI
Kitchen Connect, Devita Davison
Devita Davison is a native of Detroit who came back to her hometown after her NY home was destroyed by Hurricane Sandy.  She sees her move back to Detroit not as an accident of nature, but as something ordained to happen by a higher power. As her mother told her, “God didn’t send the waters to drown you. He sent them to move you. Detroit Kitchen Connect was formed by Davison to help home cooks expand their businesses, as one of the biggest obstacles for starting a food business in Detroit is the high cost of setting up a commercial kitchen. Detroit Kitchen Connect aims to increase entrepreneurial success by negotiating affordable kitchen rentals in local churches so start-up businesses can have access to commercial, licensed kitchen facilities and equipment. According to Davison, the program hopes to provide a safe space for entrepreneurs to create their product, so that they can in turn provide a valuable contribution to the Detroit economy.
Washington, DC
Final Salute, Jaspen Boothe
Jaspen “Jas†Boothe lost her home and belongings during Hurricane Katrina while she was training as a platoon leader in the Army Reserves. At the same time, she was diagnosed with aggressive head, neck and throat cancer. After 6 months in
the hospital, 30 rounds of radiation and 2 surgeries, Boothe was in remission, but had no job and nowhere to go. She called the VA and while they had many programs for men, they had virtually none for women. After being homeless, Boothe finally got a job in the Army Reserves in Washington DC. One day in 2010, she saw an “Oprah Winfrey Show†episode about homeless female veterans and was shocked to learn this was still such an issue. She knew she must help. Using whatever funds were on her own credit card, Boothe started her program Final Salute to help as many of the 55,000 female homeless veterans in the U.S. as she could. Today, her organization has 3 homes (in WV, VA and OH) for homeless veteran women and their children to live in while they transition to finding full-time work. To date, Final Salute has helped 270 women veterans and their children from 15 states and territories.
Newark, NJ
Camden Sophisticated Sisters, Tawanda Jones
At fifteen years old Tawanda Jones was already a single mom. But, rather than become another statistic, she decided she was going to help break the cycle of teen pregnancies and gang violence in her Camden, New Jersey neighborhood. So, that same year, she started an activity she believed would offer hope and keep her peers off the streets—a drill team organized and coached by her. Now, twenty-six years later, 4,000 children have gone through Jones’ Sophisticated Sisters drill team and
drumline. Camden’s high school graduation rate is only 49%, but an astounding 100% of Jones’ children have graduated. To stay in the program, team members are required to perform 200 hours of community service a year and also maintain a C average. There are currently 223 kids in her program — with 214 on the wait list.
Estella’s Brilliant Bus, Estella Pyfrom
Estella Pyfrom was a guidance counselor in the Miami area and realized that many of the students didn’t have access to computers or technology — what she calls a “digital divide.†So, Pyfrom, 77, took over $1 million of her husband’s and her own personal savings to hire contractors and designers to revamp and rewire a bus with 12 computer stations. Now Estella’s Brillant Bus travels to underserved communities where the children are able to use the computers and a specialized program she developed that helps the kids in reading, math, science and history Between the bus and her computer program, Pygrom has reached over 61,000 children. She says “it’s not just a bus, it’s a movement.â€
San Jose, CA
Kimberly Bryant, Black Girls Code
Kimberly Bryant is convinced the next Mark Zuckerberg could be someone who looks like her. She started Black Girls Code in 2011 with $100,000 of her own savings after realizing her 12-year-old daughter was the only girl of color attending a technology summer camp at Stanford University. Bryant has had a 20 year career in the technology and bio tech engineering working for companies like Pfizer and DuPont. Black Girls Code teaches computer programming and entrepreneurial skills to girls of color, ages 6 to 17, hoping to train them to become tech leaders of the future. In just three years, the program has reached 3,000 girls through chapters in seven U.S. cities and in Johannesburg, South Africa. Eight additional chapters across the country are planned for 2014, with the goal of reaching 1 million girls by 2040.