 I didn't know how to do my hair until I was 20 years old. As it naturally grows out of my head, that's crazy. Figuring out, like, okay, I'm trying shame moisture, I'm trying coconut oil. These are twist-out, these are bonchonuts, all these really fun hair styles. I was like, you know what? I feel like kids would love to do this. Like, this is fun, and I look amazing. There's an opportunity here to use products to teach us how to love ourselves and take care of our hair. If we give them the tools at an earlier age to learn how to do it, that could change their lives forever. My name is Yalitza Jean-Charles and I am the CEO and founder of Healthy Roots Dolls. Detroit is known to be a city of makers. The people that inhabit this magical city are resilient, they're passionate, and they're innovative. My name is Nika Julia. I'm a writer, photographer, creator, and Detroit local. In this series, I'll be taking you around the city and introducing you to the small business owners and entrepreneurs that help power it. This is Icons of Detroit. So it actually started in my undergrad while I was studying at the Rudon School of Design. I started to talk about my identity and my experiences in my artwork and then realized that I wanted that work to be done for children of the next generation. To really say, hey, I'm not only gonna manufacture a doll, I'm going to also provide hair care that goes along with this doll so you understand how to care for your hair. So did some research, learned how toys influence how kids think, act, and see themselves so when little girls can't find dolls that look like them, it negatively impacts their self-esteem. So I designed a doll that is more than just painted brown in order to connect the children through an educational and empowering experience. So I'm in this art class and I have this beautiful drawing. Okay, what do I do now? How do I make this a physical product? So I had to learn what I didn't know and find people that had that expertise. And then after that, I had to find people to believe in the work that I was doing. Elisa is very realistic and she's surgical with how she goes about raising money. She's not saying that, hey, just because I create this product, they will come. Elisa is like, I need backing, I need capital. She's raised a lot of money. Like she's won the A in a lot of money. Like over half a million, Elisa's not playing. She is going to knock on opportunities to do her until it answers. You go to people and they want to see more traction, they want to see sales, they want to see revenue, they want to see your team. And when you don't have those things at an early stage, in addition to the bias that exists in the industry with the fact that less than 1% of black founders raise capital, you realize the odds are not in your favor. So I spent a year of defining my audience, fulfillment, making sure that my e-commerce platform was built out strong because if you're telling me no because X, Y, and Z, and then I come back with X, Y, and Z and you're still telling me no, it's not me, it's you. For the first three to four years, I was primarily working on this business by myself. And then realizing like you have to let some stuff go because you can't do everything. If you're spreading yourself thin, nothing gets done well. Everything just gets kind of done like a little bit. And you want things to be done, excellent. So I started hiring people, finding contractors. And to now at this point where I have a team that are working on individual parts of the business and we come together as a whole to make sure all the cogs are turning and reach that long-term vision. She is on a mission to make sure that every little black girl and woman of color has a doll that looks like them and that they can call beautiful and not have it be this abnormal issue that a lot of us face when we're growing up. Because toys are social learning tools, you don't have to give a black kid a brown doll, but they should have options. Just the same way that white children should have options and their products should represent the diversity of their world and the people that they're going to be able to celebrate. Every day is just about advancing the brand and making sure that people are aware of who we are and what we're doing and why. There'll be some days where by 11 a.m., I'm like, I can't believe I have to do all this stuff. But seeing the feedback from customers, seeing the positive experience that they're having, making sure that these girls know what opportunities they have for themselves and can do whatever they wanna do and tell their own stories, they just don't know that yet. It's just, it looks like dolls, but it's way deeper than that. Success for the company is making sure no one feels less than because of the king of their color, the color skin and then for me personally, making sure that I make decisions that are best for myself and make my family proud.