A: I wasn't sure that I wanted to sit in a cubicle all day and not see the sunlight. Consulting just seemed so much more beautiful. They got to travel, they got to interact with different companies. Lo and behold, it was still the same.
Q: So next was education, right?
A: I ended up going over to Teach for America and working in their teacher preparation department and their administrative level. I definitely learned how to work hard. I also learned how to manage teams. At one point, I think I was managing like 27 people.
So from there I left and went to [Dallas Theological] Seminary, of all things. Usually the trajectory is to go get your MBA. But at MIT, we took classes at Sloan [MIT Sloan School of Management] with all the MBA students. So I went to seminary, I majored in media and communications. We learned every book in the Bible, but then I also learned how to preach.
When you're preaching, you have to take this complex scripture or complex curriculum and then teach it and break it down into parts. And then you have to break it down in a way that people are willing to listen and actually absorb it.
Q: Tell us about what you did next.
A: After working in ministry, I moved over to become an assistant principal of a charter school, elementary, in Dallas. I had a boss who had four bosses and they never agreed on anything. I was always between a rock and hard place. [In October 2016] my friend passed away. I was in this job that I hated and I was gaining weight, I was getting sick, my hair was falling out. And then he passed away. It just was, “Teri, you’ve got to do something different. Life is too short.”
I had already at that time been trading six years. I started practicing [trading] every day. My goal was just to make $300 a day to replace my assistant principal income. Eventually by 2017, I was able to quit my job and start traveling around the world, because I had learned how to make about $300 a day, on average. Sometimes you make money. Sometimes you lose money. But it was enough for me to feel good about traveling and affording things on my own.
Q: What led you to launch Trade and Travel?
A: Trade and Travel started because I was traveling around with a group of about 20 other people in a program called We Roam. And when we were traveling, some of the other people would ask me to go on coffee dates. And they would say, “Will you tell us a little bit more about trading?” So I decided, instead of going on these one-off coffee dates, I'll do a class at the local co-working space. I thought it’d be a one-time thing, but they loved it. And I loved it. It was this beautiful mix of all my skill sets.