Anthony Brooks

She was well on her way.

But here's the thing.

She never felt completely at home in the world of corporate law.

She always was more interested in acting and the arts, as she told me.

And she said that she was the first black attorney at the firm in Chicago and only the second woman to work there.

And so that had a lot to do with why she didn't want to keep being a lawyer, why she never really felt comfortable in that environment.

So she decides to quit.

Then she became an entrepreneur.

She worked in the cable TV industry for the city of Chicago.

She eventually started a home shopping channel.

But the cable TV industry was in flux and in decline, so that didn't end up working out.

So as Juliana told me, she was in midlife, out of a job, and lost with no idea what to do next.

Classic midlife crisis.

Right there.

And the right there for Juliana was to return to that passion project she started at Brandeis to set up a company that would record and archive oral histories of Black Americans.

So how old was she at this point?

So she's in her late 40s when she makes this big decision.

So the idea was to set up something that she called History Makers.

It's an archive of video histories of Black Americans.

But the plan had a huge flaw.