Tell me what this faith journey has meant.

Oh, man.

It's everything.

I didn't grow up in the church.

I started going to youth group with my acting coach, who is my godmother, Cornetta Jones, when I was about 12.

And what ended up happening is I grew up in a predominantly white neighborhood, lots of bullying, lots of stuff like that.

And there was two Latina girls, Barbara and Alicia, who used to look out for me.

How'd you get over that hump of being angry with God?

What HOSA resources did you use to further explore the pharmacy career path?

A lot of what HOSA offered was, like, after-school activities that allowed us to, um, have exposure to different healthcare fields or healthcare activities.

So our HOSA chapter would bring in guest speakers from across the city.

Um, we had a local, um, affiliation with another organization who brought in dummies and, like, mannequins and taught us phlebotomy on those as well as taught us, um, BLS and CPR certifications, and so got my BLS certification pretty early on and then, um, was able to recertify through them.

And then the other thing that was really kind of fun with them is, uh, PPE, um, like personal protective equipment.

Um, a lot of people hear about it and see it a lot in the construction industry, you know, on the side, like do not enter without proper PPE.

But this organization brought in all the supplies and taught us, you know, the proper donning and doffing of those different things from gowns to gloves to hair nets to booties.

What was pharmacy school like, and do you have any advice for those entering soon?

in this industry right away because there was another sister that when I went to Juilliard and it was just us two black girls and they tried to do that with us and I immediately said I can't operate like this we have to be cheerleaders and now we we family like I'm her child godmother and vice versa like so yeah Totally with you on that.

Yeah.

And I think that's so important because we were all on the journey.

We're all just walking it out.

We're all just figuring it out.

What we all bring is so unique to who we are.

But I had ideas around just what I felt was important and being very specific about not believing my own hype.

I'm curious on, do you have mentors that have helped you or was it that you were just watching how Halle Berry or whomever Angela was moving? Was you talking to them about how to move? Like, what was that?

I would've stiff-armed you

...

I didn't realize it.

'Cause y- that's why you b- be so blessed though, 'cause your posturing about things just be so- Right.

Damn ...

I would've freaked out.

Ugh.

[laughs]