Zicklin MBA Student Seeks to Break Down Barriers to Black Wealth

Briana Goings has always had an entrepreneurial streak.

As a high school student in Jamaica, Queens, she used to ask her dad to take her to Costco or BJ’s to buy boxes of assorted candy bars, which she then took to school and resold to her classmates for a profit.

“I’d buy a box of thirty candies for fifteen dollars and resell them for a dollar each, so I’d make fifteen dollars on each box,” she recalls, adding that she came up with the idea on her own after noticing how often her classmates bought candy from the school vending machine.

Briana went on to earn a BBA in business administration and management from City College, while keeping up a side hustle making and selling gift baskets for birthdays, Easter, and other special occasions. After graduation she landed a job as an administrative assistant at American Express, in two years working her way up to law clerk.

When Briana decided she wanted to go back to school for her MBA, the Zicklin School wasn’t on her radar at first. “I’ve always been interested in my history as a Black woman and in lifting up my community,” she says. At City College she had minored in Black studies and psychology, and she wanted to round out her CUNY experience by attending a historically black college.

But a conversation with her grandfather, E. Thomas Oliver, changed her mind.

Briana and her grandfather both attended the School of Business.

Oliver, an MBA and financial services professional with a three-decade career in higher education, had earned his BBA from the School of Business in 1972. The resources were “amazing,” he told his granddaughter, and professors and staffers were very flexible in helping him balance school and family commitments. In fact, he told Briana, he wouldn’t have been as successful in life if he hadn’t gotten his start at the School of Business.

Briana was sold. Today she’s enrolled in Zicklin’s Evening MBA Program while still working at American Express as a law clerk. She plans to start her own company combining her business knowledge and legal experience to promote financial literacy and help people in her community start their own businesses. “I want to help others break down barriers to becoming wealthy,” she explains. “A lot of people don’t know about investing, creating budgets, and saving for the future. I didn’t know these things myself.”  

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