8 Ransom Everglades LOG FALL 2025 After emigrating to the United States from El Salvador at age 7, Mejia grew up on Key Biscayne, where she had an outdoorsy and active childhood. Her interest in fashion started to emerge when her mother would “drag her” to the local seamstress to get garments altered – a process that fascinated and inspired her. “I think it was reimagining something,” Mejia recalled. “Seeing the power of a little tweak to change how the garment looked and felt. It blew my mind.” Those trips to the seamstress remained a creative outlet throughout middle and high school, to the point that they often felt like collaborations – for Mejia, an early taste of fashion design. But she became intensely focused on sports and academics. At RE she played soccer, volleyball and tennis, and she remembers volleyball boot camp, three weeks before school, as the place where she learned the kind of discipline that would propel her from RE to Princeton. She also remembers the quiet influence of social studies teacher and soccer coach Ken Farshtey, who gave her space to be creative and introspective. “He was very soft spoken, and very inquisitive, and he challenged me to see things differently,” she recalled. From the perspective of her classmate and best friend, Vanessa Chartouni-de la Serna ’90, Ali was the “all-rounder”– good at everything and Most Likely to Succeed. “She was an amazing student, a great soccer player, a great volleyball player,” Chartouni said. “She was very strong in so many different areas.” Even so, Chartouni saw glimpses of the creativity that simmered at the margins of Mejia’s hustle. “The place I saw it was in her love of fashion and writing,” she said. “I don’t remember if it was 10th or 11th grade, but she told me that, one day, she was going to either design greeting cards or make lingerie.” After RE, Mejia climbed a traditional yet dauntingly competitive path toward professional success, leveraging her excellent coursework at Princeton – where she majored in politics and Latin American studies – into a financial analyst job at a prominent Wall Street bank. She knew it wasn’t her passion. She also knew she’d worked too hard to get there to do anything else. But then, six months into the job, her entire team of analysts was laid off. She reached a turning point. While her colleagues found themselves scrambling to land a gig at any bank that would have them, she bought a ticket to Florence and wandered the cobblestone streets, drinking in the atmosphere of art, beauty and craftsmanship. “I thought, ‘Why am I not doing something creative? I need to live this life,’” Mejia said. “Florence is where I had my epiphany. That’s when I was quiet. I was listening within.” She found herself thinking back to her mother’s elegant European pajamas, which had fascinated her as a kid. Nothing in the American market came close. Victoria’s Secret lingerie was hypersexualized, almost pitched more to men than it was to women. At the other extreme, Calvin Klein was marketing androgynous PJs that draped the body shapelessly. “I wanted to educate the U.S. consumer that this is something that is really needed,” Mejia said. “I saw it as a feeling, an emotion connected with self-care and honoring the authentic. It was a difficult proposition at first. People didn’t get it. But I knew they would, eventually.” Mejia returned to Miami, moved back in with her parents, and started incubating a new idea: sleepwear for women, by women. She took a job at the direct marketing agency Wunderman Cato Johnson and spent every free moment designing a new line of prototypes that she brought to a pattern maker in Miami Beach. At lunch, she talked about them nonstop to her coworker Mariela Rovito. They shared similar backstories – Rovito, too, had grown up in Miami after emigrating from Argentina at age 7 – and a similar entrepreneurial itch. They decided to go for it. They wrangled over what to call their new company, seeking something unique and memorable. One night, the pair attended an African dance recital during which the performers chanted the word ebberrjeyyy. “We looked at each other and instantly knew – that’s the name,” Mejia said last spring. “It sounded French, had a melodic quality, and rhymed with ‘lingerie’ and ‘negligee.’ Later, Ali Mejia ’90 with her mother Ali Mejia ’90 playing girls’ soccer at RE Ali Mejia ’90 (right) with Mariela Rovito, Eberjey co-founder
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