Suite Success Stories

Shadonna Jenkins: From “Hoochie” Clothes to Professional Style

A single mother of three young girls, Shadonna Jenkins was working and pregnant with her third child when she was told by her doctor that she risked miscarriage if she didn’t slow her pace. Employed as a cashier in a café housed in a government agency, Jenkins also worked the grill and did inventory, which meant that she had to lift boxes.

When her manager wouldn’t alter her work duties, Jenkins left her job. “I was on my own,” she says. The father of her unborn child “basically up and left, saying ‘I’m not ready for this.’ ”

With no other options, Jenkins signed up for TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) and kept looking for a job as a receptionist or file clerk. When she needed a suit to interview in, she went to a thrift store. Then she faced other challenges. Her car broke down on the way to one interview and the time for another interview time clashed with her daughters’ school schedule, so she missed out. In addition, she was visibly pregnant. “I was turned down for a lot of jobs because they saw I was pregnant,” she says. “Nobody would hire me, but I thought, ‘just because I’m pregnant doesn’t mean I can’t do the job.’ ”

At the same time, Jenkins decided to get her General Educational Development (GED) degree to help her job search. Her program referred her to Suited for Change. By the time she walked through Suited’s doors, she had given birth to her youngest daughter, Shanetta, now seventeen months. [Her other daughters are eleven-year-old Sharde and nine-year-old Shakiya.]

“I thought [Suited] would be like any other organization,” she says. “I thought they’d give me a suit and we’d have no more contact. I didn’t know that we had to be sized and try stuff on. I didn’t know that we were going to get jewelry, shoes, earrings, handbags. I didn’t know that we were going to get all that, and even cosmetics. … To be honest, I never thought I’d be getting all this stuff.”

Jenkins says that she was immediately welcomed at Suited for Change. “It feels like you’re going shopping, being in a store and picking out nice things,” she says. “All the suits are nice and clean. You don’t have to go home and wash anything or put them in the cleaners. You just get your suit and you’re ready for an interview.”

Before Suited for Change, she says she didn’t like to wear suits. “I was wearing what they call “hoochie” clothes -- short skirts, stilettos, shirts showing your belly,” she says. With help from Suited, Jenkins picked out two interview suits. One was a classic black skirt suit. The other, a pastel tweed skirt suit, she calls her “Michelle Obama suit.”

Before Suited, Jenkins says she “wore jeans or whatever I wanted to wear” to job interviews. Now, when she wears her suits, she says she gets a different reaction. “Different people talk to you when you’re out there in a suit compared to when you come out in a mini skirt or pants and a shirt showing all your stuff, showing your underwear. You definitely get a different reaction.”

The difference, she says, is “[The suits] make you look more mature. [They] make you look more confident. It builds you self esteem. You walk in with your head up. … They take you seriously.”

Although she hasn’t found a job, Jenkins is moving toward her goals of completing her GED, finding a part-time job and eventually attending the University of the District of Columbia for her bachelor‘s degree in accounting. Suited for Change is still in her life. She regularly attends workshops, such as a recent one on managing money, which will help her clear her credit and work toward another goal: to own her own home. She attends other Suited workshops to polish her professional skills. “A lot of things we know we’re not supposed to do, but we do them anyway,” she says. The workshops remind her how to present the best possible professional image.

“Suited for Change is helping underprivileged women like myself,” she says. “If Suited for Change wasn’t here, where would we get this help from? A lot of people can’t afford the thrift store. These programs help us out because we wouldn’t have any way to get these clothes…. [Suited] makes you feel confident. They tell you, ‘We know you can get this job.’ … If no one has told you that they love you that day, you’ll feel loved when you walk in to Suited for Change.”

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