Simone Hufana understood the assignment, then she sold it

The day before her 22nd birthday, Simone Hufana picked up the keys to her first apartment. Her mom, sisters, and partner were there to share the moment with her. Simone had already seen the place, but she wanted them to see it, too. She wanted them there for the part where the plan became physical.

In the Bay Area, moving out in your early 20s isn’t a casual milestone. Simone had saved for the deposit, kept herself on budget, and found a little studio that felt like hers. Now she’s standing there with her family, holding the keys. “I did this,” she remembers thinking. “I worked for this. I paid for this.”

She was, in her words, “all up in my main character energy.” For Simone, that apartment wasn’t just a place to live. It was proof that she could make a plan, stick with it, and come out the other side with something real.

Filling in the white space

Color Herstory started in high school, in an entrepreneurship class where students were asked to build a business around a problem they cared about. At first, Simone worked on an idea for wrestling apparel. She’d wrestled through middle school and high school, so the idea made sense. It just didn’t feel like something she wanted to keep building after the assignment ended.

So she kept working it out in her journal, making lists, circling ideas, and trying to figure out what she actually cared about. Then one day after school, she saw her youngest sister coloring and wondered what it would be like to make a coloring book centered on influential Black, Brown, and Indigenous women of color. It could teach history, make the learning interactive, and introduce young people to women Simone hadn’t learned about in school. 

At the heart of the project was a simple idea: “She looks like me, therefore I can be.”

Initially, Simone wasn’t sure the concept was enough. She wondered if it was too simple or if anyone would take it seriously. But the people around her kept encouraging her to keep going. They told her she was onto something. Eventually, Simone listened. The seed was planted; now she had to see what it could become.

Sixty copies, zero books

At 17, Simone brought Color Herstory to BEASTMODE-A-Business, a three-day entrepreneurship boot camp hosted by Shopify and Marshawn Lynch in Oakland. She went home one night, made her first prototype, came back, pitched the idea, and won. Before the book was even finished, one of the judges placed an order for 60 copies for his nonprofit program. Simone had her first customer—but she didn’t have a finished product. “Oh, shoot,” she remembers thinking. “My first order, but also, the books aren’t even real yet.”

Suddenly, Color Herstory wasn’t just a good idea. It was something Simone had to deliver, which meant learning the practical stuff as she went, like how much the books would cost to make, where to print them, what to charge, how to create invoices, and how quickly she could get everything done.

She looked for tips online, watched YouTube videos, asked her parents questions, and leaned on a former entrepreneurship teacher. The order was already in motion, so Simone had to learn the business side while building the book itself.

The part nobody colors in

That first order gave Simone a crash course in the not-so-glamorous side of doing work she cared about. She needed to know how much money came in, how much went out, and how much to set aside for printing more books. She learned to track orders and expenses, and she had to open separate bank accounts for herself and Color Herstory to keep the money separate. Simone took on each new responsibility as it came, learning on the fly by asking questions, writing stuff down, and figuring out just enough to keep moving.

That same learn-as-you-go rhythm followed Simone into college, where she was trying to juggle Color Herstory with classes and a job. She’d also planned to wrestle, but she knew she couldn’t be half in with both the business and a college sport, so she chose Color Herstory. 

That choice gave the business more room, but it didn’t give Simone more time. She was still a full-time student, working at In-N-Out and feeling the pressure that came with being an eldest daughter and first-generation college student. On weekends, she sold books at pop-ups around the Bay. After shifts, she packed books into her car, filled orders, replied to customers, and tried to keep her one-woman business moving.

When orders ran late, she apologized, offered a discount, or added something extra to make it right. She didn’t explain everything she was carrying to the customer on the other side of the order, but she felt it. At times, she wondered if she should put Color Herstory on the back burner. But her community reminded her that being overwhelmed didn’t mean she had to stop.

Her money, her move

Sticking with Color Herstory meant the money questions she’d been asking for the business started to feel personal, too. They were no longer only about the next order or the pop-up, but what Simone wanted her own life to look like.

Money hadn’t always been easy to talk about. Simone says it was almost a taboo topic in her household, so she had to piece a lot of it together herself. Credit felt especially confusing at first. She remembers sitting with her dad, trying to understand what it was and why the points felt scary. But she kept at it, doing research, listening to podcasts, making lists, budgeting her paychecks. Over time, she started to see what consistency could make possible.

That’s how moving out became a real, tangible goal. As she saved, Simone started to picture a life beyond the walls of her childhood home. Once she had enough for a deposit, she started looking for a studio. She wasn’t moving out because she had to. She got to choose a place for herself, on her own timeline, after working to make it possible. The apartment became proof that she could make a plan, follow through, and trust herself with what came next.

You don’t know what you don’t know

Getting the keys didn’t mean that Simone suddenly had every aspect of her finances figured out. She still wanted a way to keep track of where she stood and understand what needed her attention. That’s where Credit Karma helped. For Simone, it made credit feel less like something hovering over her head and more like something she could start to make sense of. 

“Credit Karma, I feel like, takes a lot of weight off of my shoulders,” she says. “I can just check in about where I’m at, what do I need to do?”

When Simone recommends Credit Karma to people who are starting their own credit journeys, she doesn’t turn it into a lecture. She starts with the feeling. Credit can seem like a “big, scary monster,” she says. But she doesn’t leave it there. She reminds people that they don’t need to know everything before they start; they can use what’s available and learn from there. 

“It’s okay,” she says. “We have tools. We have resources.”

She talks about taxes with the same practical energy. She doesn’t pretend everyone already knows what they’re doing, but she also doesn’t want people to treat the tax filing process as if it has to be harder than it is. “Girl, you do not have to do everything pen and paper,” she says. “You better hop on TurboTax right now, or Credit Karma. I’ll do it with you. I’ll show you.”

That’s what Simone keeps coming back to. The resources are already there. The videos, the tools, the tutorials—all of it is close enough for anyone to reach for when credit, taxes, or the next money task starts feeling unfamiliar.

Yeah, she’s been there

That instinct to share what she’s learned carries into Simone’s full-time work as the program manager at the Oakland site of the Young Women’s Freedom Center. She works with system-impacted young women across Oakland and Alameda County, many of them young Black and Brown women in the same city that raised her. Her day includes facilitating circles, supervising young people, handling logistics, having hard conversations, and learning how to lead a team.

Some of the folks she supports are only a few years younger than she is, which adds another layer of responsibility. Simone is still figuring out her own leadership even as others look to her for structure, support, and direction. For Simone, that overlap feels personal. “That’s like me,” she says. “That’s literally me serving my younger self.”

The job is also teaching Simone skills she wants to bring back to Color Herstory. She’s always imagined the business growing beyond just her, and now she’s learning how to manage people, hold space, make decisions, and keep the work moving.

Simone always keeps copies of Color Herstory with her, too, because she never knows who she might meet. Her connections through the center have helped those books reach people from New Jersey, DC, Portland, and beyond.

Impossible starts looking doable

Simone’s goals are still getting bigger. She wants to run Color Herstory full time, bring more people into the work, and keep growing beyond the Bay Area. She’s already started expanding outside her home market by organizing community events and filling rooms. She also has early ideas for a larger summit for women-of-color entrepreneurs and creatives.

Simone can picture milestones beyond the business, too. She wants to replace Bamba, the 2006 Honda Civic she’s driven since she was 16, with a car she researches, finances, and puts in her own name. After that, maybe she’ll buy a home. Nobody in her immediate family owns one, so buying a house in the Bay Area never really felt like an obvious goal. But seeing people in her community do it made the idea feel less impossible. Now it just feels big. 

Shaking hands with her future

Simone compares financial confidence to stepping onto a wrestling mat. Before a match, it was easy to look across the mat and assume her opponent was stronger or better prepared. But none of that reliably predicted what would happen once the match started.

“You never know what the outcome is until you’re actually stepping on the mat and shaking their hand,” she says.

Moving out brought up a similar feeling. Simone had a goal and no guarantee that things would work out the way she hoped. She had to stay disciplined, keep herself accountable, and avoid spending the money she’d saved. It was, as she describes it, like “you’re shaking hands with your future.” Getting the keys felt like a win she could carry forward.

That future still comes with bills, business expenses, taxes, and all the regular stuff that comes with building a life. But Simone now has more proof than she used to. She has her first invoice, the books, the apartment keys, and, most importantly, the experience of doing something that once felt far away.

“My experience is my expertise at this point,” Simone says. “I lived it, and I did it.”

She’s still taking it step by step, but she’s not waiting for the next goal to feel small before she moves toward it. She’s building the confidence as she goes, one invoice, pop-up, and paycheck at a time.