Paula Marshall, CEO of Bama Companies and founder of the Paula Marshall Foundation, to discuss how becoming a teen mom at 19 shaped her life, leadership, and goals. Marshall shares a tumultuous upbringing marked by her father’s alcoholism, her early relationship struggles, domestic violence, and later a second marriage impacted by addiction and abuse. She explains how motherhood altered her education plans, how she balanced parenting with work and college, and why financial independence and education are key to escaping cycles of poverty and “spiritual poverty.” She emphasizes counseling, learning to set boundaries and say no as a parent, and advocating for supervised visitation when needed. Marshall also describes global travel experiences that changed her perspective on women’s rights and explains how a Ghana mission trip inspired her school-building foundation to combat child trafficking through education.