Don’t underestimate Carla Hall

By Kelvin Childs

Celebrity chef Carla Hall (’86, BBA) has lived many careers —dancer, fashion model, TV personality. Yet she credits studying accounting at Howard University — an early detour in her intended path — with giving her a solid grounding.

Hall recently completed the debut run of “Please Underestimate Me,” a one-woman autobiographical show. It is co-written by Hall, Lori Kaye & Leslie Thomas and directed by Lili-Anne Brown. With lots of humor and audience interaction, it shows Hall coping with difficult relationships and sexist TV workplaces while learning to trust her inner voice and finding the strength to obey it.

One moment in “Please Underestimate Me” has Hall in the guise of a Howard professor, sporting a kente cloth academic cap and stole and lecturing the class on Black respectability. But Howard wasn’t on her mind when she was a “theater kid” in Nashville, Tennessee, who spent her summers at theater camp. 

Hall intended to study theater at Boston University but wasn’t accepted. Heartbroken, she came to Howard along with her sister, on the guidance of school counselors who figured that she liked her accounting teacher so she should pursue the topic in college.

Hall’s counselors did not direct her to Howard’s theater offerings, and she was so set on Boston U. that she didn’t look for programs elsewhere. She had her mother’s assent to take up accounting, saying, “It offers a steady paycheck,” Hall recalled. Also, “My mother knew Howard was a husband-hunting ground,” Hall said.

Her first sight of The Yard, however, changed things. “I had never seen so many Black people ever,” after coming from predominantly white Nashville. “To see all those Black people, I was like, ‘Wow.’ I did not long for Boston once I got to Howard. It was just an incredible experience to see so many Black people, so many educated Black people.” 

“I’m still friends with a lot of people that I met at Howard that freshman year,” she said.

At the time, the School of Business was on Sherman Avenue. Hall studied hard, determined to make the best of it in a major she didn’t really want “because my friends were accounting majors and I’m competitive; I didn’t want to be the lowest man on the totem pole with the grades.” 

Hall modeled in campus fashion shows and poured her creative energies into dance, under Sherrill Berryman [Miller] Johnson, PhD, the professor who established Howard’s BFA dance program. “There are things that she taught me and that I think about to this very day in terms of working hard and caring about something,” Hall said.

With her certified public accountant license, Hall worked at Price Waterhouse in Miami but left after two unhappy years and did a stint in Paris as a runway model. Homesickness led her to try making the kinds of dishes her grandmother used to make, and that led to her career in cooking. After Hall’s return to the U.S., her grandmother paid for her to attend L’Academie de Cuisine in Gaithersburg, Maryland; however, she didn’t live to see Hall graduate.

Hall said her Howard studies in accounting and dance taught her something more: perseverance. “It helped me, working really hard at something and getting to the other side of when you’re working really hard,” she said. “I mean, like this place, it’s freaking hard. But when you’re on the other side, you’re like, ‘Wow, I did that. And I can do another hard thing.’”

To ensure today’s students benefit, she said, “I think we collectively, including myself, need to do a better job in creating the culture of giving back to our schools. If you have the culture, if you create that culture of giving back, it doesn’t have to be a lot of money.”