Dress for Success Tampa Bay empowers women with career apparel in the bay area. Next Year, Dress for Success will celebrate 25 years of serving the apparel needs of career women who are either entering or reentering the workforce.
We sat down with Katie McGill the Executive Director of Dress for Success Tampa Bay.
“We like to empower women,” said Katie. She went on to say, “It all starts with a suit. What we try to do at Dress for Success is when women come in the door, we give them the
confidence that they need when they go out looking for a job. We customize based on the type of job they are looking for. If they are looking for a job we give them suits, shoes, even purses & jewelry. We make sure all our purses have a personal note in them to encourage them. Once they get the job they can come back and get a week’s worth of clothing. Years ago I realized women were coming in and didn’t have a bra. A bra is a big deal, so we worked with Dillard’s, Victoria’s Secret & Vanity Fair. Now every woman gets a new bra. We get more thank you notes for the bras than we do for the clothes.”
Another thing Dress for Success gives out is medical grade scrub uniforms.
Katie also shared, she realized especially during the recent pandemic that a lot of clients were losing jobs, yet gaining employment in the Healthcare field. So the new Healthcare workers ended up having to buy scrubs and scrubs were hard to come by because they were in high demand. So Dress for Success obtained a surplus of medical grade scrubs for these job seekers and newly placed Healthcare workers.
If you would like to donate new or gently used clothing to Dress for Success Tampa Bay, items are collected on Thursdays at the South Tampa and St Petersburg Dress for Success has 3 locations; the original boutique is 1705 Howard Ave in South Tampa, another inside Career Source Tampa Bay Building located 9215 N. Florida Avenue next to I-75 and their newest location in St. Petersburg, FL inside the Sanderlin Family Center Complex on. Raymond James funded all that was needed for the St. Petersburg location. To learn more about Dress for Success or Katie McGill visit https://tampabay.dressforsuccess.org., or call (813)259-1876
By: Ernisa Barnwell - Contributor