Success Stories

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Suite Success Stories

Since 1992, Suited for Change has had the privilege to serve thousands of strong, courageous, wonderful women seeking employment and economic independence. Despite their different paths, all passed through the doors of Suited for Change and demonstrated their strength and determination. Suited for Change is very proud to have played a small role in each of these women's Suite Success!

Before moving to Washington, D.C., from New York in December 2007, Ayehsa McNair was already a survivor, of both cancer and domestic abuse. A lifelong resident of New York City, she came to the District in pursuit of her childhood dream of becoming a police officer. “I was always fascinated with the law, and being a police officer,” she says. “It was always my fascination since I was a little girl.” McNair passed the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department test and submitted her application, but she was rejected because of a misdemeanor on her record. She also applied for a job at a temporary agency, but that, too, never materialized. By February 2008, McNair had run out of money, so she applied for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. Her daughters, Lenesha, now 12, and Alena, now 11, stayed with their grandmother in New York to attend school while McNair stayed in Washington and enrolled in Potomac College to study for a bachelor’s degree in government contracts management.

Read Ayesha's full story ...

After she lost her job as a family resource specialist with the Washington Scholarship Fund, Barbara Mickens couldn’t function for about a year because she was “very depressed.” Mickens received help from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, but the $300 in cash and $400 in food stamps she could count on each month were not enough to cover her $817 rent, let alone provide food for her two children, Ashley, now 20, and Samuel, now 11. Family and friends from her church helped, but “to this day I cannot begin to explain how I managed,” says Mickens. “One day I had this epiphany and I decided it was time for me to get up and take control of my life and do something other than wallow in my sorrow.”

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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.’"

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Until Thanksgiving 2007, Pat Morris’s life was steady. A legal secretary with more than 20 years’ experience, she was employed as a collections specialist for a Fortune 500 company. The job came with stress, but it also came with a good salary.

Then, her life started to unravel. Both her parents became seriously ill, and she became their primary caregiver. Her marriage broke up. Her only daughter, who was having problems with her son, lost her job. Not long after that, Morris lost her job. “It was just a lot of stress,” she says.
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When a counselor at a social services agency told Lu-Ann Patrick about Suited for Change, she thought it might be a thrift store.

The counselor assured her that Suited provided beautiful career clothing to low-income women looking for jobs.

Still, Patrick was a little skeptical. “Honestly speaking, I had no idea what Suited for Change would do for me,” she says. “The only thing that I understood was that they would allow me to have some good suits so I could go out on a job interview.” Read LuAnn's full story ...

"Suited for Change thanks Kathleen Currie for conducting the interviews and writing the profiles in this series"