PASSION’S STORY PRISCILLA SMITH, FOUNDER AND CEO

My story, difficult as it is to share, needs to be heard. It’s the reason why I’m so passionate to change this city.

Both my parents are ministers. In the eighties they set out to America from Brazil with a family of nine. When I was nine years old, my father shared a dream with us where he saw a freeway sign that read Albuquerque. He wrote down the name and began looking for it on a large map he laid out on the dining room table. When he found it, he visited and fell in love. Within a couple of years, we moved here. We lived in Barelas.

Within six months of living here I witnessed my first drive-by shooting/ murder. Then, on my first day of middle school, I was introduced to drugs and alcohol. To fit in, I quickly fell into that lifestyle. I felt completely hopeless! I looked for ways out and could only find community centers to pass my time and find some sort of escape.

Drug addicted with no hope, I befriended adults at the community center to seek advice. The one person I trusted raped me twice at thirteen. I became so angry with life that I began to seek fulfillment in more drugs and other dangerous relationships. I knew that one day I would show up dead somewhere, in prison, or trafficked.

At 18 I became pregnant, got married and began the journey to save me from myself. I focused my energy into my career and building a better life for my new family. Now, as a successful business owner, my purpose is to provide young adults a place to safely grow and build a life they can be proud of.

When I started doing research and learning about opening up my own nail technology school, I learned that you can start beauty school as early as 16. Shortly after that, I learned that 50 percent of the homeless population in Albuquerque were teenagers. It made no sense why that should be the case if these kids can start beauty school as early as 16.

I started doing more homework on nonprofits and it escalated from there. I learned that in Albuquerque alone, 23 girls go missing per day and are sold for trafficking. Essentially, all these young ladies become high-risk for trafficking because they don’t have any other resources. That’s when I decided to launch Passion’s Story and essentially flip the beauty industry on its head.

The program that served as the inspiration for Passion’s Story has been ongoing at my salon for the past seven years, helping dozens of young women in the beauty industry to build better futures. The plan is to continue Passion’s Story in a non-profit salon — complete with a childcare facility attached — that will open by the end of the year. The young ladies that I’ve hired in the past were not just receptive to the trade, but I saw how it developed them as human beings and the difference it was making in their lives. That’s when I started looking at the nail industry not as a business, but as a chance to help young women change their lives through training, mentoring and personal development.