Valerie Washington was the first in her family to get a college degree, and she continued her education to earn a doctorate. Her husband had a business degree, and many others in Kerry’s family had gone to college, so she always knew that she would. She attended George Washington University (GWU). There, she learned that she didn’t know how to do a lot of basic chores, like laundry or cooking. Her mother later told her it was because she wanted to give Kerry time to follow her passions.

Her scholarship at GWU required that she audition for every show. She learned to see auditions as a vehicle to try new approaches and apply what she was studying in her classes, and she learned to separate herself from the results.

The summer after her sophomore year, she took a required class titled “Acting as a Business,” in which she learned about actors’ unions. She realized that, at any given time, most actors in a union are unemployed. She also discovered that being an actor did not mean one had to become famous. Since she had a hard time being herself, she decided to become “a worker among workers” (134), a goal she still has.