Lavera Wright: From University Heights to Fordham University

Lavera Wright, CEO and founder of L. Wright Co., LLC

Sitting on her front stoop at 1900 Hennessey in the Bronx, an 8-year-old Lavera Wright told her best friend that she wanted to be an accountant when she grew up.

Some 40 years later, Wright sits at her own desk at the Fordham Foundry, as CEO and founder of L. Wright Co. LLC, a financial advisory firm.

It was not an easy journey from University Heights to Fordham.

In 1999, Wright’s young son was hit by a bus and killed while riding his bike. Two years later her marriage fell apart. Wright said her ex-husband continued to be a good father to their other three children, but the increased duties of raising a family left her little time to go to school.

“To do the right thing, I had to put school to the side,” she said. “I just wanted to make sure that I raised my kids in a nurturing home.”

Wright was able to take online classes with University of Phoenix, however, and gathered credits at Bronx Community College. When her childhood friend from the front stoop asked her to accompany her to Fordham while she applied to a master’s program, Wright had no idea that she would also be recruited.

Wright attended a conference for minority
businesses at the White House last summer.

Having recently been laid off from her job, Wright said she had little to lose when the adviser from the Gabelli School of Business told her to apply. She fretted about her writing skills, but was certain of her love of arithmetic and logic.

“I’ll never forget the call, it was September 2008,” she said. “The man on the phone said ‘Congratulations, welcome to Fordham University.’ The tears just came down from my eyes and I thought, ‘Oh my God, I made it in.’”

The first year proved the toughest, Wright said, but she eventually found her footing, leaving behind work-world habits and adjusting to a life of schoolwork. She even conquered her fear of writing.

“All I could see were the grammar mistakes, but one of my professors said, ‘Lavera you’re going to be a beautiful writer one day.’   He saw the potential in me and knew that one day I’d be in a place where I could accept my voice. I really thank God for my professors, because they didn't give up on me.”

Wright graduated from Gabelli in February 2014 with a bachelor of science in public accounting. A couple months later her daughter graduated from college and her son graduated from high school. Her third son continues to do well in high school.

“When I walked down that aisle at graduation it was like a domino effect,” she said. “I made that first impact, and because of that, it opened up many doors for my children.”

On graduating, she immediately applied to be one the first businesses to be part of the Fordham Foundry’s business incubator. She was accepted on June 4, 2013. She and her partner, Goodnews Mora, spent hours sorting through legal documents to set up the business. On arriving for her first day at the Foundry, her professors saw a professional businesswoman, dressed for success.

“They said, ‘Lavera we know you, why are you so dressed up?’” she recalled. “I told them, ‘You knew me as a student, not as a CEO.’”

Learning from Malala

Pakistani education activist Shiza Shahid, left, talks with Smart Girls founder and Gabelli student Emily Raleigh.

What does Malala Yousafzai, the young Pakistani education activist who was shot by the Taliban, keep in her purse? Time magazine and ChapStick, said Shiza Shahid, CEO & co-founder of the Malala Fund. It was a small detail that Shahid said should inform smart girls everywhere.


“She’s the anti-Miley Cyrus,” Shahid told a diverse crowd of young women at the 2014 Smart Girls Conference, held July 9 and 10 at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus and co-sponsored by the Fordham Foundry and the Gabelli School of Business.


In a blunt assessment of Western values, Shahid told the young women that there are far more pressing concerns in the world than “thinking you need more money and shining your hair.”

Shahid, who grew up in Pakistan just three hours south of Malala's hometown, said that she had heard of her neighbor's mission to get an education for herself and other girls when she was just 19 and Malala was 11. Shahid contacted her via telephone and asked how she could help, and the two became very close.

Shahid received a scholarship to Stanford University, where she said she struck her classmates as “too serious,” and where she said she struggled make connection with a youth culture that seemed more interested in the Kardashians than in world affairs.

Her relationship with Malala, she said, began through the desire to "help and support people." Then Malala's struggle gained international attention after a Taliban gunman's attempt on her life.

“I thought, my God, that girl could’ve been me,” she said.

At the time, Shahid had graduated from Stanford and had settled in to “a very shiny, exciting job” as a business analyst with McKinsey & Company in Dubai. In a life-altering shift, she decided to abandon plans to earn an M.B.A. and start the Malala Fund instead.

“When she was shot the world was shocked, but Malala chose bravery over fear,” she said. “Afterwards we said, ‘OK this needs to be more than a moment; this can't be a tragic thing that everyone moves on from; this has to be a changing point in history.’”

Shahid, whose language easily segued from that of a businesswoman to social worker to NGO official, now works to empower girls through education so they can become agents of change at the grassroots level.  She said she held no illusions about the complexity of the problem.

“I wish there was one thing we could do help the girls, but it’s an issue of access and quality,” she said. “Very often, learning is different than educating.”

-Tom Stoelker

Fordham Invites Entrepreneurs to Start a Company Over the Weekend

Take a shot at pitching your best business idea: The Fordham Foundry's 3 Day Startup, happening this weekend in the Bronx, is a program seeking to create a viable company in just three days. The event, which begins this Friday, Jan. 17 at 5 p.m. launches Friday evening with a series of brainstorming sessions to pick the best six pitches among entrants.

Over the course of the weekend, those six chosen will create a prototype by Sunday night and hopefully build enough momentum among a network of motivated people to sustain the company beyond the weekend. Startup support over the weekend will be provided by the Fordham Foundry.

Students, business owners or anyone with a strong entrepreneurial drive are encouraged to apply. 3 Day Startup is a social and business experiment to see just how much a group of passionate people can accomplish over the course of 60 hours.

3 Day Startup will take place on:
Friday, Jan. 17 at 5 p.m. to Sunday, Jan. 19 at 10 p.m.
Fordham Foundry, 400 E. Fordham Road, 7th floor, Bronx, New York 10458

For more information, email bronx@3daystartup.org or visit the 3 Day Startup Bronx application page.

--Jenny Hirsch