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The one-liner from the 1999 movie Life inspired the name for Garcia’s business. “You gonna eat your cornbread?”
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Cornbread Hustle and Cheri Garcia help ex-inmates fi d second chances. Cornbread Hustle is fundamentally like any other staffing age y, but it’s unique in that it provides second chances for the formerly incarcerated. Founder Cheri Garcia understands the need for redemption after she kicked a high school methamphetamine habit through entrepreneurship, “a career that offered me the same highs and lows of meth,” she says. She shifted her focus to volunteer in prisons teaching an entrepreneurship program. Cornbread Hustle’s mission is to walk alongside the ex-inmates to provide employment guidance, and its resources are shared with prisons across America. In 2021, 1,200 clients have found jobs amid a pandemic. “People who have lived with nothing are the ones that give the most, and those are my people.” — Catherine Rosas
C H OW C O U R T E S Y O F A T & T ; G A R C I A C O U R T E S Y O F D A N N Y C A M P B E L L P H O T O G R A P H Y
Chow quickly became hooked on the novelty and intensity of the sport. “What I do love about it is that it requires incredible focus physically, mentally, and emotionally, and it serves like a complete release,” she says. It has also helped her build a community. “I’ve met some of my closest friends in Dallas [through the sport],” she says. when ceo of at&t business anne chow “I call them my ‘boxing besties.’” She has attendmoved to DFW in 2015, she needed an emotional ed professional boxing matches and UFC fights outlet. “I had all of the life stressors happening all with this group, and once even had dinner with Muhammed Ali’s daughter, Leila. “These are at once—a geographic move, new job, new house,” things that never in a million years would I have she says. “And I was also rolling up to a milestone thought would be part of my recreation that I birthday.” Chow had hoped when she reached would still enjoy,” she says. that birthday, she’d be fit and healthy. “It was the At the beginning, Chow embraced the sport exact opposite,” she says. So, she went searching perhaps too enthusiastically, training daily. for a means of re-grounding herself, discovering “There was a point back then that I was going it at the grand opening of a Title Boxing Club every day, which is probably not great because I near her home. She could only do few of the boxing moves demonstrated in that first class, but she tore my rotator cuff,” she recalls. The possible culprit? Her favorite move, the right hook. “I feel like still signed up for a year-long membership on the spot. “It was just a realization that I needed to do it’s my best, most-powerful punch,” Chow says. The surgery and recovery were brutal, knocking something for myself,” she says. training out of her regimen. “The reason why I was crying so badly was because I realized that I would not be able to do boxing for a while,” she adds. Now, after making a full recovery, Chow says boxing helps keep her leadership skills at their best. “I find that when you are feeling good physically, and when you are feeling grounded physically, that is the foundation for bringing your best self to work,” she says. Chow works with her personal trainer and takes classes a few times weekly, but she BOUNCING BACK Anne Chow is getting hopes to up her cadence. “I’d back to boxing after a rotator cuff ear love to get more dedicated time temporarily knocked and work on my technique even her out of the ring. more,” she says.
DCEOMAGAZINE.COM
2/2/22 11:26 AM
