Let me back up so you understand who you’re dealing with. My name is Alyssa Moore, and I wasn’t supposed to get here. I was born in 1964 in Atlanta, back when being Black and ambitious wasn’t just hard—it could get you hurt. My mother, Dorothy, cleaned houses in Buckhead six days a week. My daddy, James, worked at a garage off Simpson Road, the kind where you got paid cash and pretended you didn’t exist when the tax man came around. We lived in a two-bedroom apartment that smelled like Pine-Sol and my mama’s quiet regret.
Every night she came home with her knees aching and told me the same thing: “Baby girl, don’t you ever let nobody make you small. Not your husband, not your boss, not even your own family. You hear me?”
I heard her. I got myself to Howard University on loans I’m pretty sure I’d still be paying if heaven took credit cards. Studied marketing because I liked the idea of making people want things they didn’t know they needed. Met Harold Moore junior year—fine as sin, smooth as silk, and about as useful as a screen door on a submarine, but I didn’t know that yet. Married right after graduation because that’s what you did. Had Terrence when I was twenty-three, and Lord, that boy was perfect—seven pounds and six ounces of pure joy wrapped in a blue blanket.
Harold left when Terry was five. Said he didn’t sign up to be married to a woman who worked more than he did. Said it wasn’t “natural” for a wife to be the breadwinner. Said a lot of things, but what he meant was, “Your success makes me feel small and instead of growing, I’m leaving.”
So I raised Terry myself. Started Hayes & Associates in 1990 with that $8,000 loan from Grace Community Church’s credit union. Black churches preach humility on Sunday, but Monday through Saturday, they’re the only ones who bet on Black women. Every church mother who put five dollars in that credit union, every deacon who vouched for me—they’re the reason I made it.
The business grew slow at first, then faster. By 2000, I had twelve employees. By 2010, we were the go-to firm for midsize Atlanta companies trying to reach Black consumers without looking ridiculous. By 2020, I had offices in three cities and a client list that made competitors sweat.
But nobody tells you what empire-building costs a single mother. Every brick you lay at work is a brick you don’t lay at home.
I missed Terry’s school plays—not all of them, but enough that he stopped asking if I was coming. Missed his sixteenth birthday because a client in Charlotte “needed me.” Missed his college graduation because my flight got delayed, and by the time I got there, they’d already called his name. I made it to the reception with a Rolex he never wore and told myself we’d make it up later.
We never did.
There’s one memory I kept like a life raft: Christmas 1993, Terry was seven. Money was tight—rice-and-beans-four-nights-a-week tight. Payroll was due in January, and I couldn’t justify a $300 Power Rangers Megazord. So I made him a teddy bear. Stayed up three nights sewing fabric scraps, stuffed it with old pillow filling, gave it button eyes and a crooked smile.
Christmas morning he tore open the paper, and instead of disappointment he hugged that bear so hard I thought he’d pop the seams.
“Mama,” he whispered, “you made this just for me.”
“Just for you, baby,” I told him. “This is special.”
He slept with that bear until he was twelve. Took it to college. Said it reminded him of when we were a team.
I don’t know when he stopped being that boy. Or maybe—and this is what keeps me up at night—I was too busy building my empire to notice when he changed.w
Because if you blink at the wrong time, love can turn into leverage. That was the second hinge.
Let me tell you about Terrence Anthony Moore as he is now, not as he was. He’s thirty-eight and runs a graphic design company called TH Creative Studios. That sounds more successful than it is, and I say that because I bailed him out twice: $35,000 the first time when his biggest client went bankrupt, $28,000 the second time when his partner stole half the equipment. Both times he promised he’d pay me back. Both times he said, “Mama, this is temporary. You know I’m good for it.”
I never saw a dime.
