I'm a 36 year old black woman race car driver. If you read the blog, Vision for Racing, you got a glimpse of how I acquired Orange Julius (OJ) and built it into a competitive race car. I want to use this post and future posts in my personal blog to uncover some of the challenges, rewards, and experiences of being a 1-of-1 team in an industry that is dominated by men.
Education
I have a Computer Engineering degree with a minor in Mathematics. Thus, creating, building, and programming was my focus during my undergrad years. Later, mathematics dominated my focus and career. With hands-on experience and curiosity, it didn't take me long to mesh my fascination with driving fast and my joy in solving problems. I bring this up because when it comes to tuning OJ and reading data logs, I feel like my understanding of it was a lot easier as I had experience with coding. Not to mention, my understanding of basic mechanical things grew from having to fix cars I've owned or from experiences of others. In efforts to save money, I began to conduct some of these repairs myself. This gave me a better understanding of how cars work and what helps it generate power.
Career
I'm a high school math teacher and veteran. We all know public school teachers are overworked and underpaid. However, I enjoy my career but it's not sustainable in funding race car driving. Thus, it is my goal to showcase my dreams and aspirations for my company so that I may get sponsors, donations, and generate sales from my online store. This will help me tremendously in reaching my goals and allow me to pursue racing full time.
Orange Julius Racing, LLC
I started Orange Julius Racing to compete in different drag racing classes across the country. I anticipated winning a lot of money from these competitions. Did I have to create an LLC to do this? No. However, I wanted to be taken seriously. This is not a hobby but rather something I would love to turn into a full-time career. I see different motorsports teams and it's an amazing thing to see. However, I do not have the same luxury. As a sole owner, I do everything from researching and entering competitions, car prepping, vlogging, logistics, creating website/merchandise, reaching out to different vendors/stores, etc. It's not easy and because I'm new in this industry, I'm learning while I juggle the many great things I have going on in my life.
It's not common in my community to race professionally or even compete in local competitions. In my community, car shows is common. I also wanted to encourage other young women and girls to get interested in car racing - especially young black women/girls. Thus, I'm always looking for women who like or own race cars to get interested in drag racing. I'm hoping I can help create opportunities for others to embark on the same journey.
