Working out: Angela Yong Sellers promotes Columbia while helping people get fit

Angela Yong Sellers arrived in Columbia in 2001 and has called the city home ever since. She and her business, Fit Columbia, have become a familiar and beloved part of the community.

Sellers is part of the Class of 2022 of Experience Columbia SC Ambassadors, and a chance encounter may have helped lead to her being chosen.

"One of the Experience Columbia SC employees came in for a stretch session," Sellers remembers. "She asked me, 'What do you think about Columbia?' and I immediately responded, 'I love it here.'"

Sellers' love for Columbia is not a secret. She founded Fit Columbia in 2011, and has overcome challenge after challenge to keep the small business thriving through dedication and hard work.

Fit Columbia offers innovative fitness classes taught by local instructors, and Sellers provides training and certification for other instructors. She has written articles for several local media outlets over the years, spotlighting other female business owners in the fitness realm around the Midlands, supporting and encouraging even the 'competition.'

She has also seized every opportunity to boost other local businesses, made countless friends, and has served as an unofficial ambassador for Five Points and Columbia for many years.

"I would be asked, 'Why are you doing this?' and would say, 'Because you deserve to be seen,'" said Sellers. She was also among the first customers when new restaurant Jack Brown's recently opened in Five Points and has found other ways to boost neighbors, including doing promotional photos for Fit Columbia at other local businesses.

"I tell people I love that even though we are getting bigger as a city, we still have a lot of mom and pop," Sellers says.

Sellers travels widely and said making Columbia home has made it easier to indulge her love of exploring.

"The economy here is ideal for me. On just an honest, hardworking living wage, I can afford my house," she says. "Everything is close. We are an hour and a half from the beach and the mountains and a 20-minute drive to the airport."

As a Korean American, Sellers is aware of negative stereotypes regarding the South but encourages people from near and far to experience her home city and see all the variety it has to offer and how much it is growing as a place that welcomes all.

"20 years ago, I was a vegan, and there weren't many food options, but that has completely changed," she says. "It's proof that we're changing and becoming more accepting because all kinds of restaurants and businesses are coming out."

Sellers said, as part of Fit Columbia's mission statement, that the better her clients feel, the more each client will be able to accomplish when they leave the studio. As an ambassador, she extends that philosophy to all who visit and live in Columbia.

The mission of Experience Columbia SC, which began as the Greater Columbia Convention & Visitors Bureau in 1984, is to inspire travel to the region to drive economic impact to local hospitality businesses like restaurants, hotels, attractions, shops, and more. In order to become an excellent destination for visitors, it is important to first appeal to local residents, which sparked Experience Columbia SC to create a Local Ambassador Program to help lead the charge.

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