Interview 062 with Heather Kollar

Listen to Black American Heather Kollar — originally from The Bronx, New York and now living in Newark, New Jersey — share about living and working as an entrepreneur during the Covid-19 pandemic. Her company, h2ocleanse, specializes in state-of-the-art water and air purification. We are both alumna of Prep 9. Heather attended Philips Exeter Academy and I attended The Taft School. “I’ve always been an entrepreneur…" Heather shares. "So, I stopped working in my last corporate job, financial services, in April of 2019, and I had a company I had already that I was just growing, so… one reason or another I had decided to slow down my in person meetings, I think, before the pandemic, maybe the winter of 2019, I just started feeling unproductive running around. So, I actually made a really conscious decision to just work from home more. So, ironically by the time the pandemic hit, I was already in that work-from-home independent mode. That's for my company, h20cleanse, where we specialize in state-of-the-art water and air purification, ironically. So, I've been in the water space for 10 years now, and in air purification since 2017…” Heather shares about sadly losing a dear friend during the pandemic: “The first person that I lost was arguably one of the most beautiful people that I've ever met in my life… Sherry was the first person… She died at a point where nobody knew what was going on. It was like, she went in the hospital, and she died… My girlfriend — her brother died. She found out he died and was sick on social media. That was pretty horrible… yeah… I know several people whose losses were above 30 people... they were personally family members. Yes, so, you know, a lot of those people were inner-city people in close proximity…”