She Was Built for the Room: Our Founder On Receiving the 2022 Phenomenal Woman Global Award

There are moments that don't announce themselves until you're already inside them.

I remember the weight of the room - the energy of women who had built something real, chosen a harder road, and kept going anyway. I remember looking around and thinking, "Wow! Women are amazing!"

I consider it an honor to have been in the room with such inspiration.

In 2022, I was honored to receive the Global Phenomenal Woman Award, presented by Texas State Representative Ron Reynolds and the American Caribbean Chamber of Commerce, alongside a room of extraordinary women leaders, including Beyoncé's former choreographer.

Not every honor changes you. But this one reminded me of who I was already becoming.

What 'Phenomenal' Actually Means

The word gets used loosely these days. But phenomenal, at its root, means something that is evident to the senses, something undeniable. Something that cannot be ignored.

I think about the women in my life who are phenomenal not because of the stages they've stood on, but because of the stories they carry. Women who raised families through grief. Women who built businesses with hands still shaking from the last setback. Women who showed up in rooms that weren't designed for them and redesigned the room.

Phenomenal is not a title. It is a posture.

On Being in the Room with Greatness

Being honored alongside women of that caliber, including someone who has spent her career shaping how the world experiences Black artistry, movement, and cultural power, wasn't intimidating. It was clarifying.

Because here is what I know about proximity to greatness; it has a way of showing you what you're made of. It either shrinks you or expands you. And that evening, I felt something in me expand.

I thought about my mother. I thought about the women in Natchez whose voices helped shape a monument, whose lives became the very ground that younger women stand on. I thought about how legacy is never really about one person, it is always a relay.

Why Awards Matter (and Why They Don't)

I'll be honest with you. Awards are not the point.

The point is the life that earns them. The choices made in private. The clients served with care. The words written with intention. The stories lifted, honored, and preserved.

But awards do matter in one specific way: they create a record. And records are powerful, especially for women whose contributions have too often gone undocumented.

This is, in fact, why I do this work. At The Write CEO, and through Ink & Legacy Publishing™, we believe that a woman's story deserves to be told with the same care she put into living it.

Our silence is expensive. And so is our forgetting.

What I Want You to Take From This

If you are a woman who has been doing extraordinary things quietly, this is for you.

You don't have to wait for an award to claim your story. You don't have to wait for validation to know your work matters. But I do want you to document it. I want you to write it down, record it, preserve it, not out of ego, but out of responsibility.

Because someone younger is watching you. And they need to see that women like you exist.

→ Start your legacy story today. Grab Letters to Tomorrow™ at thewriteceo.com.