I am Loreal Sarkisian.

I ran the 100 meter hurdles from the time I was five years old, through college at North Carolina A&T, then professionally, and then I coached at the collegiate and professional level. Hurdles teach you things you can’t learn anywhere else.

That the fastest way to lose a race is to spend it looking in somebody else’s lane.

That form under fatigue is the whole event, because anybody looks good in the first thirty meters.

that nobody is coming to do it for you.

The line I ran by every day was that mediocrity isn’t an option. It came with me into everything after.

I dress women now. Mostly for the rooms that decide something. The pitch, the board presentation, the first time she’s the one standing at the front. Twenty years of sport taught me what a body does under pressure, and what changes in a person when she’s prepared instead of hoping.

That turned out to be the entire job.

Here’s what I believe, and it runs through everything I’ve built. She is not the problem.

Most of this industry sells a woman a better version of herself. I think she’s been soldthat long enough. She’s already decided who she is before she puts the jacket on. The jacket only stops the room from arguing with her about it.