Olandria Carthen did not cry in front of people. Not because she was cold, but because she had never once seen a woman in her family do it either. Her mother, a single parent raising three girls on 12-hour shifts, would leave the room, lock the door, or slip out to the car. She wept where no one could witness it. That inheritance of composure is the same force that powered Olandria out of a small town in Alabama, through college as a first-generation graduate, into a sales career she built from scratch, and eventually onto a global stage where millions of people are still trying to figure out how she got there.
When watching your mom work through numbness becomes the only motivation you need
The clearest line in Olandria’s story runs directly through her mother’s hands. Diagnosed with lupus and arthritis while her children were still young, there were mornings when she could not undo a bottle cap. And yet she went to work. She stood on her feet for 12 hours. She came home and made sure her three daughters had the Rocawear, the Apple Bottoms, the Baby Phat, the PSPs, the Nintendo DS, the PlayStation, and the Wii. All three girls had their own systems. ‘She stressed herself so bad to where she was like, I am going to provide for my kids,’ Olandria said, her voice catching. ‘You could have just gave us just enough to live. She went above and beyond.’
That image, a woman physically unable to open a water bottle who still showed up for a full shift, made excuses feel structurally impossible for Olandria. Her father was incarcerated. Her parents were teenagers when they had her. Education was not a family tradition, not out of indifference but because a fast food wage is immediate and a degree is a waiting game. Olandria knew exactly what her life would look like if she did not take school seriously. She chose the A.
The elevator job nobody expected to teach her everything
She was the first in her family to graduate both high school and college. After fielding three job offers in a difficult market, she followed the one that sent her to Houston, a sales role at an elevator company she nearly walked past at a campus career fair. The work terrified her. She had never taken a sales class. But she learned quickly that an angry customer does not want an argument; they want someone to meet them where they are and find the solution. That discipline, staying calm while someone else loses it, trained something deeper than a sales technique.
One client, furious over an erroneous billing dispute, came to the meeting with bloodshot eyes and saliva at the corners of his mouth. The building, Olandria soon learned, was a homeless shelter for women and children. Easter was days away. She went back to her manager, then maxed out her credit card buying baskets for the kids, looped in her whole office, and showed up to deliver them. The man hugged her. ‘You went beyond your job,’ he told her. ‘Even though I canceled on you and I was so pissed, you still showed up for me.’ That capacity to absorb someone’s worst and respond with their best is what now reads as poise on a podcast stage or at a panel.
A friend who bought a cheesecake for 13,000 followers
In Houston, before the platform and the penthouse, Olandria and a close friend were ‘in between blessings.’ When Olandria hit 13,000 followers and was too low to feel it, her friend took her to dinner, produced a small slice of cheesecake that read ‘Congrats on 13K,’ and handed her a bouquet of flowers. A celebration for a number most people would scroll past. Her longest friendship is 20 years, started in first grade. Another goes back to middle school. A third she found on Bumble BFF after moving to a city where she knew no one.
When she finally bought her penthouse, her friend Dez walked in with her, took one look around, and started crying. Dez was going through what Olandria described as probably the worst time of her life. She still showed up and started praying over the apartment.
Olandria turned down Love Island the first time it came to her. And the second. By the third approach, the dating scene in Houston had sufficiently humbled her and she knew, finally, who she was. ‘I did not know who Olandria was yet,’ she said of the earlier offers. ‘So how can I introduce y’all to y’all?’ She took the platform, went straight back to her alma mater, and started pushing HBCUs and education. That was step one. Step zero was everything that came before it.
The slice of cheesecake is still out there somewhere
A small dessert plate with ‘Congrats on 13K’ written across it in icing, carried into a Houston apartment by a friend who decided that 13,000 was absolutely worth celebrating.
Olandria Carthen is 28. She said she is proud of the progress she can see so far, and she still has so much more to do. The woman she always wanted to become, she said, is the woman she has been watching her entire life: showing up anyway, even when every reason to stop was right there in front of her.
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