Walda Laurenceau, Acupuncturist

My family is from Haiti, but I was born in Atlantic City—and I grew up mostly in the Bronx. When you grow up in a Caribbean household, you think that you have to become a lawyer or a doctor or an engineer. So, after I finished school at Rutgers, I thought I’d become a lawyer.

I went through the whole process of preparing for the LSATs, and then… I failed them. I was so confused because there was all this momentum I had built emotionally towards the idea of becoming an attorney. But then something clicked and I turned to writing—I ended up creating a small lifestyle magazine called Everything Goes and made three quarterly issues. I enjoyed it so much that I went back to school and got a master’s degree in publishing at Pace University.

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