“Obedience doesn’t limit you — it liberates you.”
There’s a quiet command in the way Toi Salter moves through the world — one built not on ego, but on purpose. For decades, she’s balanced entrepreneurship, mentorship, and philanthropy with a grace that feels effortless but is anything but. Her story reads like divine choreography — every twist, every risk, every reinvention guided by faith and conviction.
“I’ve always known God had His hand on my life,” she says softly, her tone both calm and absolute. “I didn’t always know what the next step looked like, but I knew I wasn’t walking it alone. Every time I thought something was ending, it was really just God moving me into position.”
That quiet certainty has carried her from her grandmother’s beauty salon to boardrooms where millions of dollars move through her stewardship — and to grand ballrooms where she’s raised millions more for education and equity. Her life, at its core, is not about chasing success; it’s about obeying purpose.
Salter’s foundation was built at home — in the industrious hum of a family of entrepreneurs who made things happen long before “self-made” became a slogan. Her mother, Jacqueline Walker, was a successful entrepreneur, but Salter gravitated toward her grandmother. Her grandmother ran a beauty business from her basement, a one-woman force of confidence and craftsmanship.
“She had long nails and such pride in her work,” Salter recalls. “I used to sit there and just watch her — how she handled her customers, how they lit up around her. She made people feel beautiful and important. I knew I wanted that same feeling — that ability to create something that brought people joy.”
After college, when Salter’s father offered to buy her a car, she surprised him. With her counter request, “Don’t get me a car, get me a salon,” she recalls. “A car could take me from point A to B,” she laughs, “but that salon could take me for life.” With that single decision, she changed her trajectory.
In 1983, Salter opened her nail salon in Hyde Park — one of the first of its kind in the city. It was an instant success, but more than that, it became a gathering place.
“You’d be amazed at who came through those doors,” she says. “Writers, stylists, radio hosts — the energy was electric. We talked about everything from business to love to what was going on in the city that week. It wasn’t just a salon — it was connection. It was community.”
If social media is about creating engagement, Salter was doing it long before hashtags and timelines. “We were our own network,” she says. “You could feel it. People there believed in something — in themselves, in possibility.”
Even then, Salter’s instincts were teaching her how connection, purpose, and commerce work together. She just didn’t have the language for it yet.
After several years of success, Salter began to feel a restlessness she couldn’t ignore. “It’s not that I didn’t love what I was doing,” she says. “It’s that I started hearing that whisper again — that inner voice saying, ‘You’ve done this part. Now let’s move on.’”
So Salter did the unthinkable. She sold her business, went back to school, and decided to start again — from scratch.
Salter’s uncle, the late Roger Salter, an entrepreneur and mentor, helped point the way. He showed her his February check — seven figures, she says, eyes widening even now at the memory. “I said, ‘Okay, I understand what obedience looks like in motion.’”
That obedience led her into finance — not as a pursuit of wealth, but as a pursuit of stewardship. Salter wanted to understand how money works, how it could serve others when managed with care.
“I saw how many professional athletes were making millions and losing it all,” she says. “Not because they weren’t smart, but because they didn’t have guidance. I thought, if I could just be that steady voice — the one that says, ‘Let’s plan before we spend, let’s build before we buy’ — maybe I could help change that story.”
Today, as CEO and Founder of Salter Financial Management LLC, Salter manages and oversees the financial and business affairs of professional athletes and media personalities. Her approach is part mentorship, part management, and part ministry.
“Entrepreneurship has never felt hard,” she says. “When you’re walking in passion, you’re being carried. I’ve learned that when you work in your purpose, the work itself becomes the reward.”
Salter pauses, then adds with a laugh, “That doesn’t mean it’s easy. But it’s grace-filled. There’s a difference.”
If entrepreneurship was instinct, philanthropy was destiny. Over the years, Salter has helped raise more than $12 million for organizations that empower youth and strengthen communities — especially through the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) and the Chicago Urban League.
But this was never about chasing wealth. It was about stewardship — understanding how money works, and how it could serve others when managed with care.
Salter’s leadership with UNCF Chicago is now the stuff of legend. In 2019, she raised $1.1 million for the organization. Then came 2020 — a year without a gala due to COVID — yet through a few phone calls to her clients who had always given, she helped raise $1.7 million.
“There was no event to attend, no ballroom to gather in — just the genuine desire to contribute and make a difference,” she says.
Altogether, her efforts brought in nearly $3 million for UNCF.
Then, in 2024, the Chicago Urban League called. Their annual Golden Fellowship Dinner — the organization’s largest fundraising event — needed a chair. The goal: $3 million.
“They said, ‘Toi, can you do it?’” she recalls, smiling. “I thought to myself, this is light work, and rose to the occasion.”
By the end of the night, they had raised $4.3 million — a record-breaking total.
“I didn’t go looking for that role,” she says, shaking her head. “It found me. And when God sends something your way, you don’t negotiate — you obey.”
That philosophy defines Salter’s approach to giving. Fundraising, she insists, has little to do with transactions and everything to do with transformation.
“People think fundraising is about asking for money,” she says. “It’s not. It’s about telling a story that moves the heart. If you can remind people that their giving changes lives — not in theory, but in real time — they’ll give every time.”
Salter leans forward slightly as if letting you in on a truth. “You have to connect people to the mission emotionally. When I talk about UNCF, I talk about the students — the faces, the families. When I talk about the Urban League, I talk about opportunity. Because we’re not raising money — we’re raising possibility.”
Salter’s voice softens. “And you can’t ask people to give to something you don’t believe in yourself. That’s why I show up. That’s why I pick up the phone and call people I know could be doing more. It’s not pressure — it’s partnership. We’re in this together.”
She pauses, smiling. “Sometimes I’ll call and say, ‘I know you said you were going to give $10, but what about $25?’ And then we both laugh, and they do it anyway. Because when it’s for the right cause, people rise to it.”
She sits back. “That’s how I know this is it. When you can make people feel seen and inspired — that’s ministry. Whether it’s through faith or finance, I just want to be in service to something bigger than me.”
Salter doesn’t chase change; she obeys it. “God wants me to stretch,” she says. “To come out of my comfort zone so He can show up and show out in my life. My job is to be obedient.”
When she says “obedient,” it doesn’t sound submissive — it sounds strong. It’s a word she’s reclaimed as strategy.
“Obedience doesn’t limit you,” she says. “It liberates you. It teaches you to trust the timing, even when you can’t trace it.”
Right now, that obedience looks like balance. “The chapter I’m in,” she smiles, “is transformative and obedient.”
When asked what she hopes young women take from her story, Salter answers without hesitation.
“Think like a child,” she says, “but have grown-folk execution.”
Children believe everything is possible. Grown people know how to make it happen. You need both.
She pauses — the kind of pause that carries weight. “There’s nothing new under the sun,” she adds. “You don’t have to reinvent the wheel — just put your spin on it. That’s what makes it yours.”
Her life, of course, has always been about grace, grit, and giving. From her grandmother’s basement to the grandest ballrooms in Chicago, Salter has lived a life guided by faith and fueled by purpose. She’s built not just success, but wisdom — not just wealth, but significance.
“When you move in purpose,” she says, “you don’t panic when doors close. You trust that God understands doors and directions. You trust that what’s meant for you will find you — and that you’ll be ready when it does.”
Salter radiates a calm confidence as she moves through the room — earned through time, tested through faith. She’s learned the power of stillness, the wisdom of listening, the grace of knowing when enough is enough.
“This,” she says, almost to herself, “this is peace.”