After graduating from college, Yaslyn Lora felt like she was going through a midlife crisis.
"I wanted to know my purpose in life, and I just didn't," the New Jersey native tells AL.com.
After graduating from Rider University with a master's in public health, Lora "saw the opportunity of giving back to the city that I come from," she says, but it wasn't until she moved to Philadelphia that she began to realize what she really wanted to do with her life.
That's when she started Lula's Empanadas, a company that makes and sells hand-made empanadas in her native Dominican Republic, as well as in the US.
"Even throughout my funk in my apartment in Philly, every time that I cooked or I was in the kitchen, that's when I felt the livest," Lora says.
Her inspiration for starting the business came from her grandmother, who taught Lora "how to cook, cut vegetables, I would always be mashing with the mortar and the pestle, making homemade spices," she tells AL.com.
"She just did it as a means of survival," Lora says of her mother, who raised 11 children on her own.
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