Pretty and Black Owned is a celebration of brilliance, beauty, and bold business moves. This series spotlights Black women who are building powerful brands, creating impact, and owning their lane with confidence and purpose. From passion to profit, these women represent what it looks like to lead, thrive, and win.

Dr. Tru is a PhD, CEO, author, speaker, luxury marriage and life strategy coach, podcaster, and dance educator with more than 15 years of experience helping people transform their lives from the inside out. Raised in the church and later healed from deep church hurt, she bridges biblical truth with modern insight—teaching faith in a way that feels honest, relevant, and actually doable.

A proud Detroit native, she brings grit, heart, and humor to her work, blending academic depth with the lived experience of parenting, remarriage, and navigating a beautifully chaotic blended family.

In her heyday, Dr. Tru was known to teach dance classes through it all, including while eight months pregnant, a few times with a fractured toe, and countless bruises and ankle braces—we’re talking full-out leaps, turns, floorwork, and all—which tells you everything you need to know about her commitment to excellence and her complete disregard for other people’s panic. When she’s not coaching, teaching, or writing, you’ll find her watching anime with her kids, cracking jokes with her husband, or side-eyeing her client’s excuses while sipping her coffee.

What inspired the start of your coaching and speaking career, bridging biblical truth with modern insight?

I was inspired by my career as a dance educator. Having coached fellow educators, many of whom were also believers, I realized just how intertwined the Bible still is with modern life, even though the world would try to convince us otherwise. I especially enjoyed the breakthroughs that took place when someone I was coaching was able to overcome the trauma of a biblical lesson that was taught incorrectly, opening them up to an even deeper relationship with God, one that they didn’t know was possible. The more colleagues I worked with, the more I realized I was repeating a lot of information (meaning I was hitting on common points) and that I was blessed to have a way of translating messages that, while they were clear to me, others needed another perspective… and I was able to provide it.

What has been the biggest challenge of balancing your PhD, CEO roles, authorship, and family life?

The biggest challenge I’ve faced with balancing all of my roles has been learning to say no. As I stepped more fully into my role as an entrepreneur, I had to be ok with no longer giving away my time with wild abandon or allowing people to always pick my brain for free because it created strains in relationships and took time and resources away from my family and my assignment.

How does your background as a dance educator inform your coaching style?

I coach exactly how I taught, in that I won’t watch someone struggle needlessly; I’m determined to help my clients see results. I’ve worked with many coaches who disagree with my approach, insisting that I focus more on asking questions or giving vague examples, but my time in the classroom taught me that that approach is a waste of everyone’s time and effort. It is possible to give someone an answer without doing the work for them. If I notice a client doing something detrimental to their progress, or they keep hitting the same roadblock, I’m not going to ask them a bunch of questions for them to struggle to get to the root of the issue on their own. Instead, I’m going to point out the issue and provide some solutions for consideration. There’s a time for questions, and there’s a time for hard answers; I believe that if a client has trusted me enough to invest in working with me, they deserve both. I want to ensure they achieve every goal and then some, and that means sometimes, I need to give answers and not just a reflection prompt.

How can women benefit from your luxury marriage and life strategy coaching?

The first benefit is growing closer in relationship with God via a deeper understanding of His word, both on a personal/individual level and then as a wife and mom. Second is learning how to prioritize their marriage without neglecting their children or losing themselves in the process. I am a huge proponent of self-care, healthy boundaries, and time management skills being so intricately woven throughout every area of my clients’ lives that they can’t help but feel seen, heard, cared for, and empowered.

Where do you hope to see your brand in the next 3-5 years?

Within the next 3-5 years, I hope to see my brand making an impact on faith-rooted marriages globally. I want to see more marriages thrive, more families remain connected, and more women fully step into their God-given assignment.

What advice do you have for the next generation of entrepreneurs who have experienced “church hurt”?

Do not let the errors of man cause you to lose sight of God. This is not to minimize your experience, but to help you put it in perspective: man hurt you, man failed you, man lied to you, man let you down… not God. Many of us have heard the phrase “God is good all the time, and all the time, God is good,” but unfortunately, it was often tied to a struggle and utilized as a way to ignore the root of the problem. That factual statement is exactly that, a statement of fact. You see, God absolutely IS good… but man isn’t. God doesn’t twist His own word for His personal gain; man does. God doesn’t love you less and treat you differently based upon emotional responses; man does. God doesn’t want to see you hurt and turned away from Him in an effort to exert His power over you; man does. God still sees you, He still hears you, and He still only wants what’s best for you. The only reason some people are allowed to continue with their foolishness is that God loves us all and is giving everyone a chance to choose the right path, which unfortunately means it’s possible to choose the wrong one. And since most of us don’t live in a vacuum, that means someone else’s poor choices can have a negative impact on you, even though the choices you personally made were right. So, put your faith in God, not man… even the ones in the pulpit. They have their own assignment, and if they mess that up, they will have to answer for that. Your job, however, is to focus on God. Do that and trust He will guide you to the right church family, the church family that is actually of Him.

What does being “Pretty and Black Owned” mean to you?

To me, being “Pretty and Black Owned” means I’m exactly where God told me to be. I know I am made in His image and thus fearfully and wonderfully made. God makes no mistakes, so I know His decision to have me born as a Black woman was divine design… and I love that for me! I also know that I have been called to be a Kingdom Financier (because someone has to finance things within the body of Christ!), and to be entrusted with that level of responsibility, as an entrepreneur with a Kingdom-focused business, is so heavy, yet such a major honor. Being “Pretty and Black Owned” means I show up– for God, for myself, for my family, for others– and I show up in such a way that God’s love and grace is exemplified through my very presence.

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