I taught my first class in my mother's living room.

I grew up in Bed-Stuy in a family of dancers and singers. My mother taught choreography out of our living room on weekends. My first job at sixteen was leading a step class at the local YMCA. I never really stopped teaching.

I spent my twenties teaching at half the boutique studios in Manhattan. Cycle classes in dark rooms with expensive candles. Yoga in lofts. Strength classes at places that charged $40 a session and didn't pay their instructors enough to live in the borough they were teaching in.

In 2018 I opened my own studio in Crown Heights. Small footprint, fair prices, four formats, one instructor for the first two years. We've grown slowly. We'll never be a chain. That's the whole point.

I still teach about half the classes on the schedule. The other half is taught by women I trained myself. We're a small place — that is the point.