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Eventually, she rejoined her mother in Washington, D.C., and married a Navy enlisted man. They spent three years in Bahrain, followed by an assignment in D.C., then onto San Diego, where she had two more children and took additional college courses. 

Their next move—to the San Francisco Bay area—brought a pivotal opportunity with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which Meyers joined as a budget analyst. Her talents quickly became apparent. Although she left the government multiple times over the years to raise her family, the FAA continued to bring her back to lead key projects, including developing security policy.

A manager recommended Meyers for a program that paid for her to finish an associate degree. This time, college stuck. The FAA then sent her to Oklahoma to train on air traffic systems, radars and voice switches, significantly expanding her technical skillset.

When her mother retired from the Air Force and joined the FAA’s Air Traffic Control System Command Center in Virginia. Meyers realized she could accomplish more as a contractor. With her mother’s encouragement, she transitioned into entrepreneurship, starting with a $6 million contract to hire retired air traffic controllers to train new ones. Meyers joined her mother’s firm and took charge of its operations.

“I started writing her HR policies and wrote her HR handbook,” she said. “I managed her payroll, and I managed her lines of credit—all of that with no training, no experience. I just did it.”

She helped expand the organization, becoming vice president of corporate services. She enlarged the company’s infrastructure, built HR systems and nurtured pivotal business relationships.

“So, fast forward. My mother and I started talking about how we build generational wealth,” Meyers said, “because you don’t see it in [the black] community. How do we create legacy businesses?”

That conversation sparked the creation of JLAN Solutions, named after Meyers’ four children—Jamie, Lenae, Asia and Nia—to inspire entrepreneurship and ownership within her family. Jamie, a talented basketball player turned coach and trainer, now runs a business helping others improve their game. Lenae earned her MBA and launched a virtual assistant company. Asia, a finance graduate, is involved in JLAN’s accounting operations. Nia, currently studying digital journalism at Penn State, supports her mother’s marketing efforts.

“I have a little whiteboard where I talk to them about each of their strengths in marketing, business and finance,” Meyers said. “I tell them, you all can support each other in your businesses, and then you can all have clients within your specific lanes.”

Meyers also serves on several nonprofit boards, including the DC Chamber of Commerce, Dreaming Out Loud to support food entrepreneurs, and Bishop McNamara High School, where she is the first woman to chair the board. She has testified before the U.S. Senate on small business issues and continues mentoring aspiring entrepreneurs.

With all this success, why go back to school?

“That degree is for me. It’s not for anybody else,” she said. “I don’t know if you want to call it imposter syndrome, but I would walk into a room and everybody in there is educated—masters and PhDs—and I’m sitting there with my associate degree. But does anybody know it? No, because it’s the perception. I have a business, so people assume I must have a degree.”

She also wanted to sharpen her skills in business development.

“I didn’t really know a lot about growing a business. Finance and accounting were not my strengths,” she said. “I needed to learn the strategic management and human resources portion of it as well. How do you manage people? What are the laws behind it? Now I understand.”

But her biggest reason is legacy. “I wanted to inspire my children to go to college so they wouldn’t have to wait nearly 40 years like I did.”

Today, she also shares her story with teenage girls.

“I let them know that, hey, if you have a child at a young age, you still have options in life,” she said. “I’ve come from being a teenage parent on welfare to a CEO of a multimillion-dollar business. If you put forth the effort, the fruits of your labor will come to fruition.”