STRATEGIST · FOUNDER · AUTHOR
For more than three decades, I’ve built expertise across financial services, technology, and business strategy while building businesses and platforms of my own. Today, as Founder & CEO of HerSuiteSpot®, a TEDx speaker, bestselling author, and entrepreneur, I use that experience to create greater access to leadership, capital, ownership, and opportunity for women. I believe women should have more than success. We should have options.
BUILDING WHAT’S NEXT
Experience gave me expertise.
Ownership gave me options.
My career began in financial services and technology, where I worked with Fortune 500 companies and FinTech startups while developing expertise in business, systems, and strategy. That experience taught me how organizations operate, how decisions get made, and how to take complex ideas from concept to execution.
At the same time, I was building something of my own. In 2015, I founded HerSuiteSpot® to give women entrepreneurs greater access to the resources, relationships, business education, and capital they need to grow. What began as a platform and community has grown into an ecosystem that has supported more than 20,000 women and provided more than $500,000 in non-equity grants and business development support.
For years, those two worlds existed side by side. I was building expertise and credibility inside corporate America while learning firsthand what it meant to build, fund, position, and grow a business of my own. That dual experience shaped the way I think about entrepreneurship and leadership today. Strategy matters, but so do relationships, visibility, capital, and the ability to make decisions from a position of greater ownership.
When my corporate career eventually ended, I wasn't starting over. I was carrying decades of experience into something I had already spent years building. More importantly, I had the ability to decide what came next.
Today, I continue to build across business, leadership, philanthropy, and consumer products. Through HerSuiteSpot®, the Yva Jourdan Foundation, HerRise MicroGrants, and YvaMarie New York™, the work takes different forms, but the purpose is connected: creating greater access, ownership, and possibility for women and the next generation.
I've learned that success is about more than what you accomplish. It's also about what your experience, relationships, resources, and ownership make possible.
Strategy. Leadership. Capital. Visibility.
THE BELIEF BEHIND THE WORK
Women should have more than success.
They should have options.
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Building opportunity takes partnership.
I've never believed meaningful impact happens in isolation. Through HerSuiteSpot®, I've partnered with corporations including Chase, AT&T, Microsoft, and National Grid to develop programs that connect women entrepreneurs to business education, leadership development, capital, and resources that help them move forward.
That commitment extends beyond entrepreneurship. Through the Yva Jourdan Foundation, we're investing earlier—creating experiences that expose young people to STEM, college and career pathways, entrepreneurship, financial literacy, and possibilities they may not otherwise see for themselves.
Service is also personal to me. I'm a proud member of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Incorporated, whose principles of Scholarship, Service, Sisterhood, and Finer Womanhood align deeply with how I approach leadership and community.
Across all of these spaces, the philosophy is the same: what we build matters. What we make possible for others matters even more.
MOMENTS THAT SHAPED ME
My path hasn’t been defined by one role or one turning point. Corporate leadership, entrepreneurship, motherhood, and service have each shaped how I think about success, ownership, and the responsibility that comes with creating opportunities for others.
Thirty years in financial services and technology taught me to understand systems, know my craft, and trust my experience.
Building businesses changed how I think about risk, opportunity, money, and freedom.
Becoming a mother changed how I define success and what I want to make possible for the next generation.
My work has shown me that talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not and I want to help change that.
Still building. Still becoming.
FROM THOSE WHO KNOW THE WORK
I’ve known Marsha for many years, and I’ve always supported her organization because what she does for women of color in the entrepreneurship world is simply amazing.
Jacqueline Gathers, Owner of Pillar To Post Home Inspections
AT HOME
Beyond the businesses, stages, and work, I’m Joshua’s mom. Motherhood has changed how I think about ambition, time, and legacy and has made me even more intentional about what I build and why. He reminds me that success isn’t only about what we accomplish for ourselves. It’s also about the example we set, the opportunities we create, and what we make possible for the people coming after us.
Everything I build
is bigger than me.It’s about what we make possible
for those who come next.
Recognition
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