Released on October 11, 2023
September 15th through October 15th is Latinx Heritage Month, and to commemorate today we are highlighting an Afro-Latina business owner, Noëlle Santos! Noëlle is the owner and creator of The Lit. Bar, the only independent book shop in the Bronx. Continue reading to find out more about how she produced her organization.
Noëlle Santos was born and raised in the Soundview community of the Bronx district of New york city City and got a bachelor’s degree in business/accounting and a master’s degree in personnels management from Lehman college in 2009 and 2012 respectively. After getting her degrees Noëlle operated at an IT company in Tribeca making 6 figures a year. An internal battle appeared around that time, where she started to see herself as a “coward” for determining her success by how far from the Bronx she got. She wished to reconnect to her home town.
She sees books as her tool for financial movement and as her primary type of home entertainment as a kid. When she discovered in 2014 that the only book shop in the Bronx, a Barnes and Noble book shop serving over 1 million homeowners, was going to be closed down, she was frightened by the possibility of those really tools, that assisted her a lot, being eliminated from kids and teens in the Bronx. So, she threw down the gauntlet. She signed up with over 3,000 protestors to sign a petition requiring the structure owners to extend the book shop’s lease. The petition succeeded, however the lease was just extended for another 2 years, with Barnes and Noble closing its doors in 2016. The Bronx was left with no book shops and Noëlle fixed to do something about that.
Over the next 2 years Noëlle was identified to find out whatever she might about running a book shop. After work she would get on the train and go to book shops in Brooklyn. Noëlle asked to work for totally free to acquire a much deeper understanding of what enters into running a book shop. She did this for over 2 and a half years while running an Indiegogo crowdfunding project to money the production of her book shop. On April 27th of 2019, National Indie Book Shop Day, Noëlle opened The Lit. Bar, a mix book shop, white wine bar, and neighborhood area in the Bronx, which to this day stays the only brick-and-mortar book shop in the district.
If you have an interest in finding out more about Noëlle’s journey, you can listen to a podcast interview with her done by Essence publication here: https://www.essence.com/news/money-career/noelle-santos-the-lit-bar-bookstore/ If you have an interest in owning your own organization and desire assistance or guidance, make a visit with among our Profession Coaches
Picture thanks to Noëlle Santos– https://www.linkedin.com/in/1stnoelle/
