Three Owl Communications Inc.: Reinvention as a Business Model

Cenita Johnson-Jackson has navigated more pivots than most people attempt in a lifetime. Now she's built a company around helping others do the same.

Cenita Johnson-Jackson was living a five-minute walk from the ocean in Santa Monica, balancing a 29-year career in fashion modeling and entertainment, a growing 4-year social media marketing side business, and a YouTube show in the works. At the time, she believed Los Angeles would be home forever.

Then her father began to decline due to Alzheimer's disease.

She uprooted her life and moved to Dallas, the closest major city outside Alabama to where her father lived. After a year, she realized it wasn’t the right fit. A practical question emerged: where could she land that felt livable—not as far from Alabama as Los Angeles, yet still within a day’s drive of the ocean?  

She landed in the Old Town Alexandria in the summer of 2018, not knowing a soul in the DMV except distant relatives in Baltimore.

"I moved here with job interviews scheduled," she says, "and I just took the first thing I got." That turned out to be sales—steady but miserable work. What kept her going was the same instinct she'd always had: build something of your own, even while you're doing the thing that pays the bills.

Caregiving, Creativity, and a YouTube Show Called Midlife Leap

After a year, she settled in North Bethesda and moved her father in with her as soon as the COVID-19 shutdown lifted. They eventually moved to Leisure World, the retirement community in Silver Spring. She took on two part-time remote jobs so she could stay home with him, and in the process launched a YouTube show—both as a form of self-therapy and a way to reach and inspire women 40 and older. 

It started as Midlife Leap. It's now called Aging with Purpose.

The concept grew out of her own experience: the upheaval of caregiving, the disorientation of midlife reinvention and the frustration of not finding resources for women her age going through massive life transitions. So she became a resource. Her weekly episodes cover finances, career, health, retirement, and anything else women 40 and over need to navigate – brought to life through conversations with guests across disciplines.

The show has grown to more than 4,400 subscribers. It has continued to serve as her most important marketing tool. 

"My show became my much needed creative outlet," she says.

Her father passed away after three years in her care. Cenita gave herself time to grieve, then made plans to return to digital marketing – work she’d once loved, and now again had time for.

Back to Business: This Time, Built to Last

The passion for social media marketing that Cenita germinated in California never fully went away. She'd kept her skills sharp through the discipline of producing and promoting her YouTube show: writing, posting, building an audience, learning what resonates. By the time she was ready to re-launch in earnest, she had a portfolio hiding in plain sight.

She incorporated Three Owl Communications, a marketing and communications company that operates two distinct brands: Digital Vault Media, her boutique social media marketing practice, and Aging with Purpose, her lifestyle media brand for women over 40.

The dual structure wasn't immediately obvious to her. When she first joined the AMBER Fellows Program in the fall of 2025—the Montgomery County Black Collective's business accelerator—she felt scattered. "I felt like I was pulling myself several ways," she says. But her AMBER coach helped her see that the two directions weren't as separate as they felt. One brand serves clients who want to grow their businesses. The other serves an audience hungry for very similar conversations. The throughline is reinvention.

He gave her what she describes as "the language" to integrate the two brands, and the ability to explain what she does clearly, concisely, and in a way people understand.

What Three Owl Communications Offers

Digital Vault Media is a boutique social media marketing agency. Cenita takes on a select number of clients: personal brands, nonprofits, therapists, wellness businesses, and mission-driven organizations of all kinds. She is deliberate about fit: "I prefer a business that has a core mission beyond just making money – where, somehow, they're having a positive impact on the community. That's what drives me, and that's what gives them the richness in their content."

Her current client list includes Rebuild Metro, a Baltimore-based nonprofit that revitalizes vacant homes and rebuilds communities. As a subcontractor, she also creates social media content for the Montgomery County Black in Business Awards and the Montgomery County Black Collective, including the Collective’s recent series highlighting historic Black towns throughout Montgomery County.

Aging with Purpose runs as a weekly YouTube lifestyle show, with Cenita as host and producer. She actively seeks guests across fields—finance, health, career, retirement—who can speak to the experiences of women navigating midlife and beyond. She also welcomes sponsors whose products or services are relevant to that audience, a demographic she notes is high-earning and heavily involved in household financial decisions.

After an eight-year break from the industry, she signed with The Artist Agency in D.C., in the late 2025 – this time as a 50-plus model. For her, the return is less about career ambition and more about personal reclamation. “It’s really about getting back to me,” she says. “If I only get one modeling job a year, I’m good.”

Rooted in Silver Spring, Connected Across the Ecosystem

Cenita came to Montgomery County on a hope and a prayer. Eight years later, she's embedded in its business community – an AMBER graduate, a subcontractor with an organization at the center of the county's Black business ecosystem, and has started to build a networked presence at DMV business events. 

Born in Brooklyn, raised largely in Michigan, she is an Air Force veteran who served as an electronics technician and holds a bachelor’s degree in business. A former resident of New York, Miami, and LA, Cenita has lived, as she puts it, pretty much everywhere. Silver Spring is where she has finally chosen to stay—newly married and settling into her next chapter.

Three Owl Communications Inc. is currently accepting new social media clients. Cenita is also actively seeking sponsors and guests for Aging with Purpose. 

Digital Vault Media and Aging with Purpose both operate under the Three Owl Communications Inc. brand umbrella.