12 acres of vacant land and seven dilapidated buildings stood before 35-year-old tech professional Nashlie Sephus. She had a dream to turn this abandoned acreage into something special – something the predominantly poor, Black community of Jackson, Mississippi desperately needed.
What did she have in mind for her hometown?
For two years, Sephus has worked on a dream to develop a tech hub that could help revitalize the city’s once-bustling business district. The vision includes residential properties, office spaces, an electronics lab, an entrepreneur innovation center, a photography studio, apartments, restaurants, and a grocery store.
And despite her lack of development experience, Sephus is leading the charge, already breaking ground in September 2020 on property close to a historically Black institution, Jackson State University, as well as downtown Jackson.
The hardest part was convincing investors and city officials that this was a worthy opportunity. But once Sephus raised money from close contacts and invested a significant amount of her own savings into the deal, a Kellogg Foundation grant worth $500,000 came through, as did seller financing from the fourth bank Sephus solicited.
Sephus’s ambition to supply opportunities and skill-building spaces for her neglected hometown exemplifies why we don't need to wait for career opportunities to come our way. We can learn to build our own for our communities to thrive upon.