Post-Women of Color Symposium, Scholarship Recipient Has New Definition of Success

Trinity Davis wrote a book when she was a senior in high school. For most people, that would be a lifetime achievement and a clear sign to become a full-time author, but Trinity is forging her own path. And she’s just getting started. Instead of studying English or Journalism, Trinity is a freshman Finance major at Texas A&M University.

She is also a recent recipient of one of Forté’s Undergraduate Women of Color Leadership Symposium Scholarships, which supports undergraduate women of color with a one-time cash award to apply to professional development.

The Power of Choice

Trinity’s inspiration came in the form of literature, fittingly, The Road Not Taken, a Robert Frost poem. She decided to write a book, in honor of Black History Month, about a slave who arrived at a mental crossroads in his journey to freedom. As Trinity explains, “I really believe that no one is too young to make decisions” about their futures.

Trinity is an embodiment of that belief. Through the process of getting her book published, she says she “fell in love” with handling the financial side of book publishing and found it “eye-opening.” She chose to major in Finance, and before she stepped foot on the Texas A&M campus, she received an email from Forté about an upcoming Fast Track to Finance Conference. After an “impactful” experience at that conference, she says, she knew she had to attend the Women of Color Leadership Symposium upon hearing about it.

An Expanded Definition of Success

The Symposium featured successful businesswomen of color, which imbued her with confidence because “it’s not common to see women of color in these roles,” Trinity explains. “It’s one thing for someone to generically tell you that you, too, can be successful in this life, but when those words come from the mouths of women whose skin looks like yours, you have an epiphany.”

Trinity experienced another epiphany during the conference. Initially she was focused on her needs and what she could get out of the event, but one of the conference speakers, Adrienne Franklin, said something that stopped her in her tracks: “If you’re the only one, make sure you’re not the last one.”

Trinity’s eyes opened to the wider possibilities of her career journey. “I left thinking that I could do something, be something,” she explains. She also saw herself as part of a “puzzle to a much bigger picture where gender and racial diversity should be commonalities in the workplace,” she says. “Adrienne’s emphasis on leading an entire movement helped me grasp the bigger picture.”

While she is only in her first year at Texas A&M, Trinity would like to become an investment banker, a choice she says was inspired by her affiliation with Forté. Whatever Trinity does next, it seems certain that she will contribute to #morewomenleading, partly a result of her experience at the Symposium where, she says, “I realized that my idea of success could not be secluded, but instead needed to be shared.”

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