Award-winning plus-size model, influencer, and content creator Romi Chase opened her heart in a YouTube interview feature called, Romi Chase-From Riches to Rags, to Riches Again, Raw and Unfiltered (Exclusive Interview Part 1), where the Polish beauty reveals what makes her tick and why she has dedicated her life to the empowerment of women of all shapes, races, ages, and sizes.

Romi leads us through her life as a shy misfit who admired and loved her businessman father more than anyone in the world and then losing him in a deadly car accident, her mother 28 days later to drug and alcohol abuse and a very comfortable lifestyle to relatives who adopted her and her sister purely for financial reasons.

“We were neglected horribly, I went from everything you could possibly dream of to having nothing, literally starving at one point,” says Romi. “So, I had no choice but to move in with a boyfriend at age 17.”

But instead of moving in a bad direction, Romi went on to college and got her teaching degree, and that background has influenced her business coaching women about social media.

• You may follow Romi Chase on Twitter at @romi_chase.