Chioma Ikejiani is not a guidance counsellor or social worker. Yet, three years ago, she left a six-figure salary to talk to teens about their problems, raise questions and lend an ear. Now she is continuing her mission with a new talk show and Web site.
Up Front Entertainment, a Toronto-based TV production company, shot a pilot of Up Close with Chioma last month at Fairview Mall. The show has not been picked up yet, but more tapings are planned. As for the Web site, www.chiomatalks.com, kids are already e-mailing Ikejiani about their concerns. "It's so amazing to hear them say that I've made them think," she says. The kids listen to her because she has a talent for public speaking and an inspiring story to tell.
Ikejiani had no experience, no contacts and no car when she got her real estate license in the early 1990s. But within a few years she was selling million-dollar homes. After her rags-to-riches story was published in The Star in 1995, she began to get phone calls from high schools, asking her to be a speaker. "I just thought I had something I wanted to share with them, and say, 'Look, you may be going through some hard times, other people are going through hard times - this is how I did it.'"
Torn between a healthy career and her new-found passion, she flew to Chicago in 1997 to meet Oprah Winfrey - without an appointment. "Oprah made me understand the benefit of using your energy for positive, for doing good," Ikejiani says. "I knew that with the kids, I could make a difference."
Last year, Ikejiani devoted herself entirely to visiting schools full-time. She lives on savings from her former career. For her visits, schools pay her an honorarium. "People thought that I was crazy when I said I was going to leave the real estate business," Ikejiani says. "But they don't understand that it's not about the money." Ikejiani has spoken to youngsters at more than 50 schools in Greater Toronto.
Her style, her candid nature and a certain charisma seem to be making teens listen, but it is the simple delivery of Ikejiani's personal story that is getting the message across. "Talking about the problems I've faced is making these kids talk about theirs," she says.
Her story includes growing up with an absent mother (who lived in a mental institution), overcoming sexual abuse from a family member, dealing with ethnic stereotyping after being smuggled out of Nigeria with her family during the Biafran war in the 1960s and living in poverty when she moved to Toronto. "Sometimes teachers can make you feel like an idiot," says Julie Edwards, a student at Woburn Collegiate Institute. "But when she told us about her life, it seems like she really understands."
Respect, restraint and responsibility are the three R's Ikejiani teaches students. "I took a look at my own life and all my blessings, and I realised that everything boiled down to these three things," she says. "I know what it's like to be a victim of abuse and poverty. And I know that without the three R's, I could have gone the other way."
It is still her real estate story that students seem to find the most inspiring. More than 20 years ago, Ikejiani was fired from a sales job as a Yorkville haute couture store after they refused to give her commission. "I would take a blanket and sleep in the park to avoid my landlord," she recalls. "He couldn't throw me out if he couldn't serve me papers. So I played hide and seek with him."
At one point, she found herself on welfare. She decided real estate could turn her life around and made it her goal to make at least 50 contacts a day. "People laughed at me," Ikejiani tells her audience. "But I wouldn't give up." Thirty real estate companies rejected her until Canada Trust agreed to give her a chance - and a $500 loan.
Riding the TTC to work and sometimes walking or riding a friend's bike to show houses, she sold 70 homes before joining Prudential Sadie Moranis Real Estate in 1994. Two weeks later, her first sale was a $1.9 million dollar home. "I would walk around neighbourhoods and knock on doors asking people if they wanted to sell their house," Ikejiani says. "And the Bridle Path was no different." Except that one day, someone assumed she knocked because she was applying for nanny work.
That anecdote that makes the students at Woburn laugh. "There are obstacles to overcome in life, but you can't blame your past, your background or your colour," Ikejiani says. "Because being black has been a major bonus for me. Because for every person that has said no to me, there has always been someone who has said yes."