Ahriana Edwards

Vaila Shoes

Founder & CEO

Ahriana is the proud Founder and CEO of Vaila Shoes, where she provides women of forgotten shoe sizes (sizes 9+) with access to modern dress shoes that they desire and deserve. Vaila utilizes the trends of today to create a seasonal dress shoe line designed for the workplace and after-hours. Vaila is on a mission to achieve extended size inclusivity in the footwear space and help women look good while doing it.

Since college, Ahriana has been motivated by sales and entrepreneurship. She’s participated in business accelerators with notable organizations such as Black Ambition Prize, Digital Undivided, Future Founders, and Techstars to push the needle with the success of building Vaila. As a fresh graduate of college in 2021, she raised over $80K in non-dilutive funding from pitch competitions before Vaila launched. Along her entrepreneur journey, she’s had the pleasure to be featured by organizations such as Entrepreneur, Forbes, Black Enterprise, BET, Essence and Nasdaq (to name a few). In just under 2 years of business, she also launched her company into Macy’s and quickly became recognized on the “2023 Forbes 30 Under 30 Local Atlanta List” and her company became recognized on the “2023 Story Exchange “Brilliant Business Ideas” List.

As a sales and marketing enthusiast, her roles with industry leaders such as Toyota, Nestle, and Facebook along with previous work at multiple business centers have contributed tremendously to her expertise and success.

At her core, she is motivated by creating a generational legacy and aims to use her innovative mindset and creativity to create a social impact for the undervalued, underestimated, and underrepresented.