RÉSUMÉ RUNDOWN

How four former interns found purpose, power and sisterhood at ESSENCE

- By Danielle Wright

Before they were founders, editors and media darlings, they were dreamers—young Black women hungry to tell stories that mattered. For Brianna Arps, Taryn Finley, Maya Allen and Sylvia Obell, that hunger led them through the iconic doors of ESSENCE magazine. What they found inside wasn't just opportunity. It was a transformation.

Each of them came to ESSENCE at a pivotal moment in her life, drawn not just to a brand but to a legacy. "ESSENCE was the whole ball game," says Obell, who finally landed her internship in 2013, after multiple tries. "It was my dream job—the reason I even wanted to be in this industry. It was my first taste of purpose."

Allen agrees. "ESSENCE was the first magazine where I saw myself represented—my hair, my skin, my story," she says. "My mom and I used to read it together. It was a ritual. It gave me confidence, before I even had language for that."

Such deeply personal connection, derived from stacks of glossy pages in their childhood homes, would one day carry each woman to Time Inc., then the parent company of ESSENCE. For Finley, it was never a question of where to intern. "I was in the ASME program with all these big names—Vanity Fair, People and Harper's—but for me, it had to be ESSENCE. I grew up on Susan Taylor's editor's letters. That was nonnegotiable."

After she got the ESSENCE confirmation, the summer of 2015 was magic. "We were all hungry, but we weren't competing," she recalls. "We were rooting for each other. It was one of the first media spaces where I didn't feel like I had to shrink myself to fit in."