Empowering Women
Founder
Jalaiya Johnson is a finance professional with a background in commercial lending and a degree in Accounting from Texas Southern University. Originally from Houma, Louisiana, she is currently pursuing her MBA in Financial Management to deepen her expertise and expand her impact. Her passion for mentorship and financial empowerment comes from personal experience, navigating life without a solid foundation and having to figure things out on her own. Those lessons shaped her belief that growth should be intentional, informed, and shared.
Young Ambitious Women (YAW) was founded to turn lived experiences into guidance, support, and opportunity for the next generation of women.
What started as one woman’s journey through adversity has become a mission to ensure that no young woman has to navigate life alone.
YAW exists for the young woman who is driven, capable, and full of potential but may not have been given the tools, exposure, or guidance to fully step into her future with confidence.
Our Why
Life does not come with a manual.
Many young women are taught how to succeed academically, but not how to navigate real life. Finances, inter-personal relationships, mental health, career decisions, and everything in between.
YAW was created from that gap.
Through personal experiences with mental and physical health, financial literacy, and inter-personal relationships, our founder learned life’s lessons the hard way. Instead of letting those experiences go to waste, she chose to turn them into a blueprint to help others.
Because the goal is not just to succeed. It is to make the journey easier for the next young woman coming behind you.
OUR COMMUNITY
Our community is rooted in Atlanta, Ga where we serve and empower young women through local mentorship, events and scholarship opportunities.