Tanna Lafleur owns Elite Evolution Skills and Training Center located on Highland Avenue.
BEAUMONT, Texas — One black-owned business in Beaumont is addressing the national health care shortage.
Tanna Lafleur owns Elite Evolution Skills and Training Center located on Highland Avenue in Beaumont. The center offers a flexible schedule for aspiring medical professionals.
Lafleur’s goal is to help people get through the door so they can train to become pharmacy techs or medical aides.
She has spent her entire professional career in the medical field since she was 18-years-old. Now 30 years later, Lafleur is fulfilling her dream as a business owner, giving aspiring students the same affordable opportunity she had.
“It’s always been a childhood dream,” said Lafleur.
Three years ago, Lafleur had a vision.
“My dream was always to be a nurse. Always to own my own school,” she said.
She knows firsthand what it’s like to to make something from nothing.
“Starting out at 18, nurses aide, I took various certification classes because I just wasn’t ready for college. Not everybody is college material,” Lafleur said.
Her training center offers, potential students the same opportunity she had.
“I wanted to reach back out into the community and offer them the same path that I took,” Lafleur told 12News.
That’s why she started Elite Evolution in March 2021.
The training center offers two to eight week courses for aspiring nursing aides and pharmacy technicians, online and in-person.
The center also offers affordable IV certification, CPR training and continuing education courses.
“For nurses aide, I don’t require a high school diploma. I don’t require a G.E.D…. I try to discount where I can,” she said. “They want to find somewhere to start. This is a start.”
Lafleur comes from a lineage of black business owners, including her father and grandfather. She says the memory of her late mother keeps her going and lives on through the training center’s graduation bell, which is inspired by her mother’s cancer journey.
“At one point she did ring the cancer bell, so not only is that bell in the memory of my mom, but it’s a graduation bell as well,” said Lafleur.
Lafleur tells 12News she is honored to dedicate her life to the community and proudly represent one of the many black-owned businesses in Southeast Texas.
“It means the world to me that I’m part of a black-owned business coalition. I’m part of doing something to help the community. I’m just overjoyed. So overjoyed,” she said.
Although certifications are done through various entities Elite Evolutions is not affiliated with any other schools or accredited yet, according to Lafleur.
Aspiring medical professionals looking for their start or wanting additional classes can get more information about scheduling and programs on Elite Evolution’s website.