Mentoring through the Unknown

RUIWAN XU ’11 Embracing Change, Adding Value

BY NATALIA ST.LAWRENCE ’16

The founder and CEO of CareerTu, Ruiwan Xu ’11 is changing how people ‘architect’ their careers.

“Your mentor only has one hour for you. What are you going to use it for?” Ruiwan Xu ’11 likes to ask young professionals. Her advice? Touch base with them during life’s big moments. And leave the conversation having added value.

Xu is the founder and CEO of CareerTu, an online school in digital marketing, data analysis and product design that has helped thousands of professionals land positions at technology firms including Amazon, Google, Tencent and Alibaba.

CareerTu’s success has been explosive. In 2019, the company earned an exclusive spot with YCombinator, the incubator that has helped launch Airbnb, Dropbox and Instacart. With headquarters in both New York City and Chengdu, China, the startup already has nearly 200,000 users and 500 recruiting partners.

Along the way, Xu has become a game changer in the marketing and advertising industry. In 2020, Forbes named her to their list of 30 Under 30.

Xu says that in order to make the leap and launch her own company, she relied on guidance from her mentors, who gave her clarity when she reached a crossroads in her career.

While working as a product-marketing manager at Amazon where she oversaw growth marketing for Audible, Amazon offered Xu the chance to join their expansion team in Australia. But Xu had already had her own idea for a startup. She had a successful blog about leveraging online tutorials to launch a career in digital marketing. At the same time, LinkedIn estimates suggested that the U.S. had a shortage of more than 150,000 people with “data science skills.” The market seemed wide open for online education and technical skills training.

Xu sought out her mentors, including vice presidents at Amazon and a startup founder who had previously sold their company to Google, to help her weigh her options. She says they were able to share guidance based on personal experience. “Amazon jobs will always be there,” Xu summarizes. “Your dreams won’t be.”

Now as a CEO and first-time founder, Xu has developed her own mentorship philosophy.

“The world is constantly changing. I have to lead my team to embrace changes. This year, it’s about being open-minded,” Xu says. “The future is unknown, but we have learned a few things about solving problems. The challenges will always be there. Our whole culture for that reason is about embracing the changes. Keep conquering.”

At the heart of CareerTu is Xu’s belief in the accessibility of knowledge. In China, she explains, there aren’t many pathways for professionals who want to continue their education. By creating a skill share platform, Xu hopes that professionals will be able to pivot more easily and follow their potential.

Xu graduated from Hobart and William Smith with her B.A. in art and architecture. After receiving her master’s from Simon Business School at the University of Rochester and joining Audible, Xu found a common language between architecture and product design. “People may think there is no connection between these two worlds, but it is not true. In both fields, you’re constantly talking about the user experience or user behavior. My architecture background gave me a strong foundation for understanding this way of thinking,” she says.

Classes with Professor of Art and Architecture Stanley Matthews allowed Xu to develop a creative approach to user thinking and problem solving. When she launched her startup, she also found herself thinking back to instruction with Assistant Professor of Economics Warren Hamilton and Professor Emeritus of Mathematics and Computer Science Kevin Mitchell, who taught her the foundations of microeconomics, accounting and making data-driven business decisions.

“I am so grateful to the HWS network, who generously offered opportunities and their time,” Xu says. Last year, she hired Kerui “Cary” Chen ’12 to become CareerTu’s Vice President of Product.

“Maybe your mentor has tried a couple of things in their career. By generously sharing that information, they can help you identify an opportunity,” Xu says. On the flip side, she emphasizes: “If someone generously shares their time with you, you need to be able to add value.”

“I am sure there will be students reading this article who say, ‘How am I going to add value to a CEO’s time?’ I think there is always something we can try and something we can do. Share your view, your thinking. Your generational perspective.”

MUSTAFA SAYED ’11 The Art of Listening

BY ANDREW WICKENDEN ’09

Mustafa Sayed ’11 is the executive director of the Pakistan-China Institute, a think tank creating cultural understanding and reducing conflict.

Diplomacy is only as productive as each party’s capacity to listen. This principle, which Mustafa Sayed ’11 absorbed from mentors around the globe, serves as a model for his work as executive director of the Pakistan-China Institute.

Based in Islamabad, Sayed heads the think tank’s efforts to promote dialogue among Pakistan, China and neighboring countries. By informing and engaging government officials, educators, students and the general public, the Institute works to “reduce the chances of conflict, increase connectivity in terms of energy and infrastructure and … promote a better understanding of each other’s cultures,” Sayed says.

His curiosity about the “interplay of states and their interests” began early, inspired by his father, Mushahid Hussain Sayed, a former journalist who began his tenure as a member of Pakistan’s Senate in 1997. He has been “a professional compass,” playing “a fundamental role in navigating my journey in international diplomacy,” Mustafa says.

When the younger Sayed arrived at HWS, his perspective on public service grew increasingly nuanced. Professors encouraged debate and critique with the goal of “understanding the other person’s perspective … and where that perspective comes from,” he explains. “Difference of opinion was not shunned — it was welcomed … which I think was of immense value to my personal and professional growth.”

As Sayed learned during an internship with then Republican Florida Congressman Adam Putnam, this kind of deep engagement is inextricable from public service. With constituents vying for limited attention and resources, Sayed says it was vital to manage “expectations with what realistic deliverables they could be given and what realistic action could be taken in response to their requests.”

At the Pakistan-China Institute, academic research, policy debates and humanitarian concerns converge, revealing challenges but not always a clear or preferred path forward. As an independent entity adjacent to but outside of government, the Institute must “engage and keep the doors of dialogue open to find that common ground,” Sayed says.

On “multifaceted issues like climate change, like national security,” Sayed says, “being able to distinguish these nuanced differences and finding those areas of cooperation is something that certainly was honed in my work in Washington and certainly from the counsel of my father.”

In a polarized world, the “track II” diplomacy of think tanks like the Pakistan-China Institute opens vital avenues of communication and platforms for those who might not otherwise have a voice. “For countries in the developing world that have abject poverty and illiteracy rates, I think it is important to echo [their] interests … on the world stage,” Sayed says, “particularly in the COVID era where marginalized communities have been hit the hardest … [R]epresenting their interests in international and important forums is, I think, an important responsibility as a citizen, an academic and a think-tanker.”

Regardless of the stakes or stakeholders, Sayed says, “it’s important to engage, learn, read — and sometimes just to listen … and soak it in like a sponge.”

“Difference of opinion was not

shunned — it was welcomed … which

I think was of immense value to my personal and professional growth.”

MUSTAFA SAYED ’11, on his time at Hobart and William Smith

MONICA WAGNER ’78 Remembers the Notorious RBG

Working as a law school research assistant and clerking for the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg during her tenure on the U.S. Court of Appeals was the beginning of a lifetime of mentorship for Monica Wagner ’78

BY BETHANY SNYDER

Monica Wagner ’78 was a student at William Smith when she first heard of Ruth Bader Ginsburg — then a professor at Columbia Law School — through Professor Emeritus of Political Science Joseph DiGangi. With his encouragement, she began reading Ginsburg’s writings and soon applied to attend Columbia to study under her.

“I was very excited about who she was as a lawyer,” Wagner says. “We shared a passion for working in the public interest, for doing good in the world as lawyers.” In the summer before her second year at Columbia, Wagner began working as Ginsburg’s research assistant. Soon after, President Jimmy Carter appointed Ginsburg to the D.C. Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals; after earning her law degree, Wagner spent a year there clerking for Ginsburg.

It was the beginning of a lifetime of friendship and mentorship.

The political science major, now serving as deputy chief of the Environmental Protection Bureau in the Office of the Attorney General of New York, maintained correspondence with Ginsburg throughout her storied career, with the justice sharing wisdom, offering advice and providing perspective.

“One of the things she gave me is her view of me,” Wagner shares. “She wrote to me that I never let the bad guys get me down. It’s not something I’d thought about myself, but it’s true. I try not to let the terrible things in the world get me down. She reminded me of that.”

Wagner credits Ginsburg’s example for helping to shape her career, which includes practicing environmental and employment discrimination litigation with Terris & Sunderland in Washington, D.C., opening her own practice handling real estate transactions and family law matters in Great Barrington, Mass., and serving as a member of the Clinton Administration transition team.

“She inspired me to practice the law the way I still practice law,” says Wagner, explaining that Ginsburg “was a very careful legal thinker … never a person who engaged in anger or strong emotions either as a lawyer or when she was a judge. I litigate for a living and I take a very careful approach. I tell the judge what my case is about, what the facts of my case are and how the law applies to the facts of my case in a very quiet way — which was the way that she taught me.”

When Ginsburg’s body was lying in state at the Supreme Court, Wagner was one of many of her former clerks invited to stand vigil on the court steps. “It touched my heart to see little girls there,” she says. “One woman, probably in her 20s, knelt at the bottom of the steps to honor RBG. That was because she became a cultural icon. It was a wonderful development.”

When Wagner was turning 40 and the two arranged to have lunch at a club in Washington, D.C., Ginsburg showed up with a happy birthday banner. “Here she was on the U.S. Supreme Court and she brings a happy birthday banner and tapes it to the wall of the dining room in the club,” recalls Wagner. “She was a lovely person in my life. How much I miss her! It was a huge personal loss for me as well as a huge loss for our country.”

The last letter Wagner received from Ginsburg, dated Aug. 18, 2020, ended: “Stay well, and continue to thrive in your work and your days.” “I cried when I got that, because I knew she was saying farewell,” says Wagner. “I cherish her last words to me.”

DANIEL BORNSTEIN ’95 Building Resilience

BY KEN DEBOLT AND BETHANY SNYDER

At the Citadel, Daniel Bornstein ‘95 prepares tactical athletes — military service members, firefighters, law enforcement, emergency medical service workers and veterans — for the physiological, behavioral and cognitive aspects of their jobs.

Daniel Bornstein ’95 learned the importance of resilience at a young age: When he was 11, a fall resulted in a life-changing back injury. But it was that very accident that put him on a path to a leadership role at the Citadel and with the National Physical Activity Plan.

Broken ribs, fractured vertebrae and herniated discs not only shifted Bornstein’s life from one of activity and athletics to immobilization and recovery, it introduced him to what would be two fundamental components of his life: public service and physical fitness.

The firefighters who came to rescue Bornstein when he fell on the stairs left an indelible imprint. At 18, he began volunteering with his hometown department in Bedford, N.Y. “It gave me my first taste of community service and public service,” he says. When he came to HWS, he volunteered at Geneva’s Nester Hose Co. #1.

Bornstein’s fitness returned through a steadfast dedication to physical therapy, piquing his interest in sports medicine and leading to a job in the clinic where he’d spent years in rehab. As a high school senior, he reached out to the late HWS Coordinator of Sports Medicine Doug Reeland P’09, P’13, who hired him as a student trainer for the Hobart football team. Bornstein describes his time working with the Statesmen and being mentored by Reeland as “probably four of my most favorite years of my life.”

After graduation, the psychology major moved to Tucson, Ariz., and founded two fitness companies. It was fulfilling work, but that sense of service, of making an impact on a broader scale, was missing. Bornstein entered a Ph.D. program in exercise science at the University of South Carolina, where he “learned about the importance of physical activity in improving population health and of environment and policy in shaping individual-level behavior,” he explains.

The idea of improving health and fitness on a broad level led Bornstein to think about the impact of physical inactivity and low fitness on military readiness and national security. “When I had the chance to do research in that area at a military college, I jumped at the opportunity,” he says.

Bornstein has been at the Citadel, the military college of South Carolina, for more than eight years. An associate professor in the department of health and human performance, he is also director of the Center for Performance, Readiness, Resiliency, and Recovery, which offers programming for those who work with tactical athletes (military service members, firefighters, law enforcement, emergency medical service workers and veterans).

“Just like you need to prepare a sport athlete for the demands of their sport, we need to prepare tactical athletes for the physiological, behavioral and cognitive aspects of their job,” says Bornstein. “We’re protecting and serving those who protect and serve.”

Bornstein also serves as chair of the expert panel developing a military sector for the National Physical Activity Plan (NPAP). An effort to increase population levels of physical activity to prevent chronic conditions like heart disease, diabetes and certain cancers and infectious diseases, the NPAP is organized around societal sectors including education, health care, transportation, urban planning, sports and the military.

Bornstein’s work with the NPAP allows him to be of service, which he describes as one of the most important life lessons. “Service was part of the HWS experience and part of my firefighting experience,” he explains. “Giving back is one of my guiding principles.”

The man whose life has been well served by mentors is now a mentor to many. “Educating students who make a difference — helping them to be ready and resilient for their challenging jobs — is by far the most rewarding aspect of my job,” he says.

Key to serving and protecting those who serve and protect is instilling in his students the message of resiliency that Bornstein learned at a young age. “Resiliency is the ability to get up after you’ve been knocked down,” he says. “It’s inevitable that we’re going to be knocked down. The question is, how do we respond to that?”

TAMARA PAYNE ’88 Following the Facts

Tamara Payne ’88 is the principal researcher and coauthor of The Dead are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X, a collaboration with her father – the late Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Les Payne P’88. When Les died in 2018, Tamara completed and published the epic biography. In 2020, The Dead are Arising won the National Book Award. In 2021, the book won the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in the category of Biography/Autobiography.

BY NATALIA ST. LAWRENCE ‘16

In the American imagination, author Tamara Payne ’88 contends, “it’s as if Malcolm X sprung out of nowhere. He has been presented as angry and fully formed.” Unlike Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., for example, who has a well-documented upbringing and family life, it is “as if Malcolm had no childhood. As if he had no trajectory,” she says.

When Les Payne met Malcolm’s brothers, Philbert and Wilfred Little, he identified the erasure, and began to ask questions. Who was Malcolm X as a child? What was his family like? He knew, Tamara says, that this information would be powerful in helping to understand the human rights activist. “He also knew that in the process of learning more about Malcolm, we would better understand ourselves,” she says. How do our families influence us? How are our lives shaped by the world we are born into?

The influence of family in Tamara’s own life is unmistakable. She says she always knew she wanted to be a writer. That she would grow up to write, alongside her father, what NPR has called today’s “definitive biography on Malcolm X,” may have germinated while listening to the “Ballot or the Bullet” speech or “A Message to the Grassroots” as a child.

“Malcolm X has always been in my life. My father admired him, and he would play speeches at home. I was five or six years old, I didn’t know what a ballot was, but when you listen to Malcolm’s critique, his analysis and the way he uses language, you learn from him… Malcolm was a master of the English language.”

At the Colleges, where Tamara majored in English, her time as a student coincided with a literary boom of Black women writers. “Because of the freedom we had in our studies, I was able to spend a lot of time with Black women writers like Alice Walker, Toni Morrison and so many others,” she says. “One of my favorites was, and still is, Zora Neale Hurston.”

As she took courses in a variety of subjects and studied abroad in China, Tamara incorporated writing and research into her everyday life. When the opportunity came to work alongside her father, Tamara was ready to accept.

“I knew this was going to be an important story, because no one had heard the story like that before from Malcolm’s brothers, [and because of the kind of journalist my father was]” Tamara says, remembering how Les Payne’s first interview extracted astonishing details and launched his nearly 30-year journey of writing The Dead are Arising.

Through diligent reporting, Les and Tamara learned about the influence of Malcolm’s parents in his life. Followers of Marcus Garvey, Malcom’s mother would sing songs to her children in French and cared about their schoolwork. Malcolm’s father instilled a strong work ethic in the children. He also took young Malcolm to some of his meetings. They also uncovered information that scholars and reporters had previously described as unattainable, including what happened at Malcolm X and Jeremiah X Shabazz’s 1961 sit-down with the Ku Klux Klan and a momentto-moment account of Malcolm X’s murder in the Audubon Ballroom.

As the principal researcher, Tamara combed through primary documents, including Malcolm’s many journals and letters. She tracked down people in his various circles, including family, friends, classmates, sworn enemies, FBI agents, Nation of Islam figures and political leaders from around the world, and would often join her father during their interviews.

Les would interview people multiple times over the course of several years and would always cross-verify the facts. As Tamara penned in the biography’s introduction, he had an “investigative persistence and skill in obtaining truth from reluctant sources.” Through his mentorship, Tamara says she developed a journalistic approach to her work.

“You may think you’re writing a story that’s going in one direction. Then the facts push you in another direction — maybe even the opposite direction. You have to go where the facts go,” Tamara says. When writing about Malcolm X, Les and Tamara had to unpeel layers of obfuscation.

“The goal of this book is to put Malcolm finally in the context of American history, and to give recognition to how important he really is,” Tamara explains. “After he died, people all over the world were turning to him. Even here, he never left the stage. When navigating white supremacy, people turn to Malcolm, because [of the way] he critiqued it. He gave clear expression to what it was like to be oppressed in such a system. He offered solutions in how to confront it: [gaining] control of economic development, embracing one’s own beauty, self-defense. He was preaching that.”

As a mentor, Tamara says her father’s approach was instructional. “He wanted to make sure I was learning these lessons,” she says. “And I wanted to practice this craft.” A founding member of the National Association of Black Journalists, Les Payne’s legacy of mentorship includes a current membership base of 4,000 journalists.

As Les’ partner on this project, and as his confidant, Tamara encouraged her father to bring

his own experience to the book. “He didn’t want to insert himself, so I had to really encourage him to put himself into this work like when he saw Malcolm speak in Hartford, Ct.,” she says.

In the months since its publication, The Dead are Arising has garnered glowing critical praise. Time Magazine named the biography a “Must-Read.” The New York Times Book Review said the book is “brimming with detail, insight and feeling.” In the citation for the National Book Award, the judges describe the work as an “intensely human portrait” “written with a dedicated beauty and uncompromising detail.”

Amid the reception, Tamara says that, for her, the impact of the biography is personal and political. “To complete the life’s work of Les Payne, that was huge, and would not have been possible without the support of my family,” she says. “I’ve heard from people who’ve read the book who said there was stuff about Malcolm they never knew before. This isn’t just Black history. The Great Depression happened and the Great Migration happened: to Americans. The reverberations of those periods happened: to Americans. Not just Black Americans, not just immigrant Americans. We have to put these stories into the context of American history.”

JEFF VUKELIC ’88 What Would Dad Do?

Jeff Vukelic ’88 learned firsthand from his father and grandfather how to lead a company through challenging times. Now, steering the fourthgeneration, family-owned beverage company through the pandemic, he reflects on the key lessons that have guided the business in safety, success and good spirits.

BY ANDREW WICKENDEN ’09

Jeff Vukelic ’88 is president and CEO of Saratoga Eagle Sales & Service, which distributes beer, cider, wine, spirits and soft drinks across northeastern New York. The company’s parent, Try-It Distributing, was founded in Lackawanna, N.Y., by Vukelic’s grandfather. Initially a soft drink bottling company during Prohibition, Try-It began selling beer in the Buffalo region after the 21st Amendment passed in 1933. The company acquired an Anheuser-Busch distributorship after World War II and later expanded under Vukelic’s father Gene. Since Jeff joined the company in 1992, Try-It has formed the subsidiary Balkan Beverage and, in 2005, acquired Saratoga Eagle, which delivers more than five million cases annually.

1. REFLECTIVE LEADERSHIP: “If you talk to most leaders, they surround themselves with people who are smarter than they are,” says Vukelic, who is “always looking to get better through education and learning from others.” A lifelong “student of leadership,” he turns to his business coach, his peers, his employees and the examples his father and grandfather set as they guided the company through the Great Depression, World War II and the beverage industry’s evolution during the 20th century. “My dad is a leader I always look up to,” Vukelic says. “Even now that he’s my coworker and friend, even now that he’s coming to me for advice, there’s not a decision I make that I don’t ask, ‘What would dad do?’”

2. COMPETITIVENESS: While running a soft drinks bottling company during Prohibition, Vukelic’s grandfather Stephen was also making moonshine and ferrying Canadian liquor across the border. Years later, when his grandson heard the stories and asked how he was never caught, Stephen said, “I had the fastest boat in the river.” Although competition in the industry looks a little different today, Vukelic and his brother Paul, who runs Try-It, have always answered when opportunity has knocked. Since the 2005 acquisition of Saratoga Eagle, Vukelic has brought four additional companies under their umbrella and expanded distribution into 13 counties.

3. TRANSPARENCY: Saratoga Eagle has operated as an essential business throughout the COVID-19 lockdowns. Alongside revised delivery schedules and safety measures like contact tracing and quarantining, Vukelic says the company’s culture of transparency has been critical to maintain service and keep customers and employees safe: “During COVID, we were happy to have people working, but we have to keep our stakeholders healthy — that’s first and foremost. Our people want to know they are going to be ok, so we are in constant communication about the short-term and long-term solutions.”

4. PERSPECTIVE: “What I like about the liberal arts is the perspective it gave me on business — and outside of business,” says Vukelic. “It rounded me out.” In his personal and professional life, he has relied on a balanced outlook that was nurtured at HWS, where he studied economics and political science with Professors Emeriti Pat McGuire, Joe DiGangi and Craig Rimmerman, ran cross-country under the tutelage of Coach Ron Fleury, and met his wife Elaine Bruno Vukelic ’91. As Vukelic leads Saratoga Eagle through uncharted waters, he says balance is critical, especially in the beverage industry, because “when you’re selling beer, you have to have fun.”

5. TEAMWORK: With nearly 200 employees, Vukelic says Saratoga Eagle’s success depends on a “hungry, humble and smart” team working toward the same goals with the same energy. During the pandemic, he has been able to depend on “people filling in and stepping up. Our core values revolve around our will to win — doing the right thing when no one’s looking, working hard, paying attention to details, failing fast and learning from it. We had a goal of growing organically and exponentially, which has been rewarding and challenging, but most importantly we’ve done it as a family business.”

FEVEN YOHANNES ’04 Divine Messages

BY BETHANY SNYDER

Feven Yohannes ’04 and her identical twin sister Helena have always seen beauty as a way to connect with other women. For the Eritrean refugees born in a camp in Sudan, makeup was a way to form relationships in their predominantly white neighborhood in Rochester, N.Y., and how Yohannes built friendships on the Hobart and William Smith campus.

Connection is at the heart of the twins’ new company, 2.4.1 Cosmetics, which works to empower women by enhancing their natural beauty. And two of those connections — in the form of tweets, posts and online direct messages, or what Yohannes calls “divine messages” — have allowed the twins to form mentor relationships with two of the biggest names in beauty: Diane von Furstenberg and Bobbi Brown.

In 2015, Feven won the “How I Became the Woman I Wanted to Be” contest sponsored by House of DVF, a reality television show that followed the life of fashion icon von Furstenberg. Entries were accepted in the form of 140-character tweets and a recent photo posted on Twitter; the prize was a new car, painted in bold colors reminiscent of von Furstenberg’s iconic wrap dresses, a style that had long been one of Yohannes’ obsessions.

Her winning entry read: “From Eritrea to a refugee camp in Sudan, I carry the pride of my people & the strength of my mother,” and was accompanied by a photo of Yohannes in a geometric-print dress standing in front of a backdrop with a strikingly similar print, taken at the DVF Journey of a Dress Exhibition the previous year. The dress may have looked like a DVF original, but it was one Yohannes had made from fabric purchased at the Makola Market in Accra, Ghana.

von Furstenberg awarded Yohannes the car, along with shoes, a signed handbag and one of those iconic dresses. After their meeting, Yohannes struck up an email relationship with her idol, and eventually formally asked von Furstenberg to be her mentor. They now have monthly check-ins, where von Furstenberg has counseled her to be intentional and to speak from the heart. “Diane reminds me to be authentic, to always remember the story of where I came from and to share that story,” Yohannes says. “I carry that lesson in everything I do.”

The second mentor connection for the twins began in 2018, when Yohannes’ sister Helena tagged makeup maven Bobbi Brown in a post on Instagram after listening to Brown on an episode of the NPR podcast How I Built This with Guy Raz. “We realized we look at makeup the same way, which is a practical solution to enhance natural beauty,” Yohannes explains. “Hearing Bobbi was an affirmation of what we already believed.”

Soon after the Instagram post, Brown reached out to Helena through direct message, and Helena began cultivating the relationship. “We thank God for Twitter and Instagram,” says Yohannes. “This is where social media is amazing.”

The twins had been communicating with Brown through Instagram messages for about a year when they launched 2.4.1 Cosmetics, at which point they sent her samples of all their products. Brown subsequently posted about them on her account, resulting in a wave of new customers for the sisters.

The relationship was taken to the next level during the Black Lives Matters protests when Brown — whose makeup ventures have always focused on inclusivity — asked Helena to jump on a call, part of an effort to connect with entrepreneurs of color working in the beauty space. At the end of the call, Brown said she would like to mentor the twins.

“Bobbi is a breath of fresh air and a wealth of knowledge,” says Yohannes. In the summer of 2020, when their lip gloss collection was selected as part of Oprah’s Favorite Things annual holiday gift list, they reached out to her. “We were worried about what would happen if we couldn’t fulfill certain orders, if we had an avalanche of sales,” Yohannes explains. “Bobbi was very firm: ‘It’s okay, just create a wait list.’” The lip glosses quickly sold out, the twins created a wait list and six weeks later, they were able to fulfill those orders, just as Brown predicted.

Today, the sisters communicate regularly with both von Furstenberg and Brown in an organic way. “When we’re experiencing something with the business, we reach out,” Yohannes explains. “Because they’ve already been there, they provide us with perspective and advice. It’s so important to ask the people who’ve made it and are coming back to give us a lesson.”

When it comes to establishing mentor relationships with successful people, Yohannes suggests having specific questions to ask. “Any time you have the opportunity to connect with someone who has achieved in their career what you’re hoping to achieve, write down three goals or three questions,” she says. “This helps you focus the conversation and won’t waste the mentor’s time — especially if you have that one shot.”

As 2.4.1 Cosmetics continues to grow, Yohannes hopes to connect with — and perhaps establish a mentor relationship with — another of her idols, Oprah. In the meantime, she looks forward to being a mentor herself. “I want little Black girls to look at me and say, ‘I can do it, too.’

Feven Yohannes ‘04 and her twin sister Helena are headed to the top of the beauty empire with 2.4.1 Cosmetics and the help of mentors like Diane von Furstenberg and Bobbi Brown, and recent inclusion on Oprah’s Favorite Things gift list.