Suited for Success: Growing Nonprofit Helps Low-Income Women Improve Image, Job Prospects

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In the mid-1980s Susan Walton learned of the Bottomless Closet, a program in Chicago that provided clothing for low-income women to help them improve their image and employment opportunities.

As a single mother, Walton could see the need for a similar program in Oklahoma City. Her idea hung in the closet for several years before she incorporated Suited for Success in January 1995.

Walton then began working to have Suited for Success certified as a nonprofit agency, but her plans took an almost fatal turn - for she was a customer at the Federal Employees Credit Union in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building at 9 a.m. April 19, 1995. The bomb that destroyed the …