How This Café Ambassador Empowers Women to Thrive

For Barbie, a Capital One Café ambassador in Chicago, frequent visits to a Capital One Café took her on an unexpected career journey—one that also unlocked her financial freedom. As a Cafe ambassador, she shares her journey and inspires others in the community to gain financial independence. She shares how the cafés feel like family, helped her achieve financial stability, and how she builds powerful bonds with customers and the communities she helps.

Barbie’s mom is her inspiration. She’s seen her try new things, seek new opportunities and be resilient, in light of all the hardships she faced. Because of the financial hardship her family faced, Barbie attended a college in Chicago that offered her a need-based scholarship. She’s one of the few people in her family to have gone to college. “After college,” she shares, “finances were really tight. I found myself honestly facing homelessness.” Because of her mom, her inspiration, she decided to do something completely different. She moved halfway across the country to the northeast to become a nanny for a family she’d never met.

Once she was in Boston, she needed a checking and savings account and went to a Capital One cafe for the first time. She opened her accounts, but she found so much more. She found herself spending more and more time at the Downtown Crossing cafe location—it felt like she was going to see family. The Ambassadors encouraged her to apply to the cafe, joking that she spent so many hours there that it was basically a shift. So she did, and she got a job at the Harvard Square location.

Barbie has since returned home—now back in Chicago at the State Street cafe. Since becoming an Ambassador, she’s been able to travel, invest and buy her first home. One person who has had the greatest impact on her is Christy, a Cafe Coach. She shares, “Christy has empowered me to be brave, to have fun and to give back to those in need. I connect with and empower other women at the cafe by being transparent and vulnerable about my story and offering space to talk with them and encourage them.”

Barbie shares these words of encouragement to women who face similar difficulties that she’s had, “Remain resilient and know that you are worth so much. Your story has value.”