BANZA June 2016 Issue | Page 87

S YOUR SAY ome women are go-getters. Others are business-minded. A select few use personal struggles as building blocks for personal success. Actress and music entrepreneur Lunden De’Leon is all of these women. According to dictionary.com, an entrepreneur is a person “who organizes and manages any enterprise, especially a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk.” It was then that she decided to chase her dreams and chase them she did. Homeless in Hollywood with a $200 price tag firmly clamped onto her name; De’Leon was in trouble. De’Leon’s embellishing smile would have accompanied this impressively quick definition in an ideal world. Through a roommate, De’Leon’s life was offset in ways she could never imagine; things began looking up. After attending a model calling, De’Leon —primarily motivated to overcome her ‘hungry and penniless’ state— booked the audition and scored a one-year modeling contract the very same day. Barbados-born and South Carolina-bred, De’Leon was entitled to her fair share of successes and failures before she constructed herself as the present-day powerhouse. Landing a brief stint as a Burger King employee during her teenage years was just the beginning. De’Leon soon succumbed to the entertainment bug after witnessing her gospel-singing father performing. Not long after that, De’Leon made her small screen debut on the hit series, Vital Signs, which was filmed in Los Angeles but broadcast in Germany. She starred as a young woman trying to make it in the United States — a storyline not too far off from the