*Atlanta restaurant owner Aisha “Pinky” Cole, CEO of The Slutty Vegan, is helping recent graduates of Clark Atlanta University launch their own businesses.
During Saturday’s commencement ceremony, Cole surprised over 800 graduates of her alma mater by announcing she was gifting each 2022 graduate a limited liability company, or LLC, Black Enterprise reports.
“I have partnered with Varo Bank to provide every single graduate in this audience with a new LLC and a path to entrepreneurship,” Cole said. “Every single graduate in this audience will leave this stadium as a business owner,” she proclaimed.
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“It is a full-circle moment to have Ms. Aisha Pinky Cole serve as Clark Atlanta University’s 2022 Commencement orator. We are excited that Pinky — as we affectionately call her – will serve her alma mater in this capacity,” said CAU President Dr. George T. French Jr.
“Pinky Cole had a business and lost everything,” Cole said during the address. “My car got repo’d, got kicked out of my house, went flat broke, almost lost my mind — and almost four years later, she now owns and operates at $100 million vegan brand. She found aspiration in the losses,” she said. “You think I was gonna give up because of some failure? Hell no. And neither will you.”
Per a press release from the university, Cole graduated from CAU in 2009 with a major in mass communication/media studies. She was Miss Clark Atlanta in 2008 and was initiated into Delta Sigma Theta sorority. She runs a non-profit called the Pinky Cole Foundation which provides financial literacy and entrepreneurship training.
Cole started selling vegan burgers out of her apartment in 2018 and expanded into a food truck before launching multiple Slutty Vegan locations.
“I’m telling this to you, the class of 2022, that I want you to fail. I want you to fail so hard you become an expert in failure and you get a PhD in failology. I want you to fail because failing is not failing at all — it is finding aspiration in the losses,” she told the 2022 CAU graduates.
As reported by 11Alive, the total cost for the LLCs was over $400,000.
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