From High-End Sneakers to Apparel Pop-Ups, SWVA Native Entrepreneurs Co-Headline UVA Wise Lecture Series
DeAndra (Dee) Thacker Ayers, owner of Lynette Boutique, and Unique Sneaks founder Hayden Sharitt will share their journeys creating successful businesses Monday, April 24, as part of an entrepreneur lecture series at UVA Wise.
Ayers and Sharitt will speak at 1 p.m. at the C. Bascom Slemp Student Center. The Alfred and Shirley Wampler Caudill Lecture in Entrepreneurship is free and open to the public.
Both speakers are native Southwest Virginians who established innovative start-ups.
Ayers, a Wise native, graduated from UVA Wise in 2011 earning a bachelor’s degree in communication studies.
She worked in pharmaceutical sales before pursuing her college dream of starting a women’s boutique. In 2019, four months before the Covid-19 pandemic struck, she started an e-commerce women’s clothing store, Lynette Boutique. Now in Chattanooga, Tenn., Ayers’ online boutique is thriving with monthly pop-up shops.
Sharitt is a 25-year-old businessman who has always had a strong entrepreneurial spirit. As a child, he sold candy bars, popcorn and even socks to fellow students in elementary and middle school.
When Sharitt graduated from Union High School in 2017, he launched Unique Sneaks. He traveled around the world building his high-end sneaker business before opening his store in Nashville.
Paying Forward the Entrepreneurial Spirit
Don Caudill established the Alfred & Shirley Wampler Caudill Lecture in Entrepreneurship series in 2012 to honor his mother and late father, who instilled the values of hard work when he was young. Caudill has been a generous supporter of the College creating several endowed funds including awards and scholarships.
“My mother and dad made a lot of sacrifices. They made them and now I am paying it forward, especially for first-generation students,” said Caudill, who himself was an entrepreneur as a young man selling newspapers, cutting lawns and establishing a mail-order business as a teen.
Caudill wants to pass on his belief in the importance of an entrepreneurial education. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Berea College, master’s degrees from Morehead State University and University of Memphis and a doctorate from Virginia Tech.
Caudill, who devoted his career as a professor educating the next generation of business leaders, is still an entrepreneur himself, owning rental properties and managing several businesses including an advertising agency.
He hopes the lecture series will bring “real-world” entrepreneurs to campus and students will be inspired by them.
“I believe and am living proof that education is the way out of poverty or any bad situation,” Caudill said. “I’m convinced that entrepreneurship education is even better since a person can invent their own future through a business of their own.”