She Needed Experience No One Would Give Her. So This Sigma Gamma Rho Journalist Built the Door Herself

Jelisa Raquel knew she wanted to write before most kids know what a byline is. She published her first article at ten years old. But knowing your calling and getting paid to do it are two different things, and after college the doors she expected to open stayed shut. Every job wanted experience, and no one seemed willing to hand her the chance to get any.

She has named that frustration plainly.

Every position asked for an experience they weren't willing to give you the opportunity to have.

That single sentence became the seed of her life's work. Rather than wait for permission, the Atlanta-based journalist built the very thing she had needed, a roadmap for women trying to break into media. Today she is an award-winning entertainment reporter, blogger, and public relations professional who has been writing professionally since 2005, with a bachelor's in mass communications and English from Jacksonville State University, and she is a proud member of Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Incorporated.

Her resume covers the culture. She has worked red carpets at the BET Awards, Soul Train, and Black Music Honors, been featured across BET, VH1, TMZ, Fox Soul, and Fox 5 Atlanta, and sat down with everyone from En Vogue and SWV to Spike Lee, Omari Hardwick, India.Arie, and Jacob Latimore. Along the way she has been honored as a Columnist of the Year and named among Atlanta's top journalists, building a reputation as a connector and a storyteller who centers everyday people as readily as legends.

But the work she is proudest of points outward. Through the Media Girls Network and Media Girls On Tour, she has built a digital community for women creatives, and through Broadcasting Beauty, a public relations agency, she puts her strategy to work for others. Her stated vision is to help women build careers in the media space, to shorten the brutal trial-and-error stretch after graduation by handing the next generation the roadmap, tools, and resources she never had, including plans to bring chapters directly to college campuses.

That is the throughline of a Sigma Gamma Rho woman who refused to let a closed door be the end of the story. Jelisa Raquel could have let the industry's gatekeeping stop her. Instead she turned her own hardest lesson into a platform, and made a career out of opening doors for the women coming behind her. You can follow her work at @thebaddestrho.