Krista Bray suffered from severe back pain five years ago, while she was starting a career in advertising. Missing a lot of workdays because of doctor appointments, surgeries and physical therapy cost her job advancement opportunities, but it also led her to a new career. She became a certified physical therapist and dreamed of having her own practice.
“I was working for someone else,” she says. “I had really limited credit. I had surgery without insurance while I was between jobs. So I pretty much lost everything financially [because] for several years I was in chronic pain and I wasn’t able to work full time. So, starting out my own studio was kind of an impossibility.”
When she learned from a friend that she could start her own business with a microloan from Women’s Initiative for Self Employment, she jumped at the chance.
“I checked it out,” she says. “It was the first time that I believed I could start my own business. It wouldn’t matter if I had terrible credit. They would actually look at my potential instead of my credit score.”
