These two college roommates just became business partners.

Davonne Reaves and Jessica Myers first met in the early 2000s when the two became roommates at Georgia State University. Now, they are making history as business partners who just closed on a historic $8.3 million hotel deal.

Back in college, the journalism and hospitality majors probably couldn’t have fathomed that by age 33 they’d be hotel owners.

According to Black Business, the deal is said to have made them the youngest Black women to ever co-own a property in a major hotel chain.

Reaves and Myers created their own hotel ownership group of mostly Millennials and partnered with Nassau Investments to acquire Home2Suites by Hilton located in El Reno, Oklahoma just about 30 miles from Oklahoma City.

“I never thought by the time I was 33 that I’d be a hotel owner, but I admit that it feels great to have accomplished that at this point in my life,” Reaves said, according to Black Business. “Making history in the process, well that’s just icing on the cake!”

Reaves — who spent the majority of her professional career in the hospitality industry event planning, working in restaurants, and multiple mid-level management and rank-and-file hotel positions — says that this is a dream come true.

“I have done just about every job possible and worked every shift,” Reaves said. “The only thing I haven’t done is unclog a toilet.”

Myers, on the other hand, has experience working within the advertising and communications industries for names like Outfront Media and CBS. She got her start in ownership when the consumption of too many HGTV episodes led her to flip single-family properties.

Eventually, her side hustle led to a full-time gig and pushed her to a career goal of “owning over 1,000 doors in the commercial real estate space” — something she refers to when flipping those single-family properties.

The two maintain their own companies, It’s Jessica Myers and The Vonne Group, and in 2019, in an effort to collaborate on commercial real estate ventures, the two formed Epiq Collective.

“We’re so proud to bring that ‘Black girl magic’ to the commercial real estate industry; this is just the beginning,” Myers told Black Business.

Home2Suites by Hilton

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