I am Monique Bell and I picked René Walker to be my hero because she's a good friend. I met her through Brava (Women in the Arts) because I did an internship with them. So my friend Julia who I used to work with hooked me up with René and that's how she became my hero. I did an internship with René because I wanted to be a designer, so I did 60 hours and I got $600 dollars. She taught me how to sew and work on all types of stuff that has to do with design, like shopping for clothes.

And it was with plays, it was making up costumes. Since then, I've been real cool with her, she's been a close friend, she's helped me through a lot of stuff, she really lifted me up. She said, "You want to be a designer, go for it! Don't let nobody bring you down! You know, that's what you gotta do." So that's what makes her my hero. She's a cool person, real down to earth, she keeps it real. If I needed to talk to her about anything, or if I had problems with my boyfriend, I used to go and tell her. She used to tell me, "If he don't want to be there for you, you don't need him." She is like a second mom, and I really look up to her; she's a great person.

A hero is somebody that you look up to, you admire them. René is a down to earth person, some people these days are not down to earth, they're very phony, but René is a cool person. Her appearance, how she acts, she's about business, she's very about her stuff. She's on top of it and that's what makes me like her so much because I'm the same type of person: I'm about my stuff. Besides teaching me how to sew while I worked on plays with her, I also went to see different plays with her (Grease and the play she was working on). She worked on my Winter Ball dress, and she taught me how to hem and sew on buttons. I have two heroes, but I'm picking René because she really helped me do what I want to do in the future -- be a designer. She really helped me because I wasn't going to do that, I was going to be a lawyer instead of being a designer. René she taught me do something that will make you happy, so that's why she's my hero.