Carmen started her company Elevate as a protest to the lack of diversity and inclusion in Birmingham, Alabama. Gifted with a powerful instinct to discern systemic gaps that too often hinder communities, Carmen has vision. She actively seeks out opportunities to expand equity within underinvested legacy neighborhoods and forges ahead with solutions. Carmen has developed blueprints that have been successfully leveraged by community leaders and partners to bridge equitability gaps and promote economic empowerment and transportation access. 

She brings this intuitive approach and ardency for action to all of her work, including her first foray into entrepreneurship as the founder of Elevators.

Entrepreneur, producer, strategist…LaToya Stirrup gets things done. With over seventeen years of experience in advertising and marketing, LaToya is able to bring a wealth of knowledge to any business challenge. She’s the co-host of Tech, Beats & Bytes, and co-founder of KAZMALEJE, a company she started with her two sisters to create hair tools and accessories for the textured hair care market. 

LaToya shared her founder story during our Founders to Funders kickoff mixer.

Ashley “Peach” Brown creator of Sledge Scarves. Determined to find a way that she could wear a scarf style and have it not slip off her head while sleeping, Peach created Sledge Scarves.  Listen to her story of how she’s worked hard to build her business full-time in less than two years!

LaRaine Henry has been working in the food and beverage industry since she was a teenager. Together with her husband Larry she has worked in every aspect of the food and beverage industry. They've owned restaurants, a catering company and now their latest venture Plates EDU they have created proprietary technology and a platform that offers a convenient, safe and affordable to offer a virtual culinary experience. Listen and share her story. 

By now most have heard or read about Greenbook and how it served as a way for Black people to travel safely. Meet Tracey Hobbs creator of Vanter. Vanter is Greenbook meets Trip Advisor. Vanter is a digital travel assistant to ensure diverse communities can travel safely. Listen to her story and contact vanter.co to learn more. 

Fallon has an incredible story of seeing a need and creating a solution. When her mother suffered a back injury and was prescribed opioid for pain management. Concerned about the side effects including addiction, Fallon went to work searching for an alternative. Listen to her founders journey. 

Judith's founder story is a love story.  Judith and her husband were regular spa goers and found there was not a place for just men. A Man's Cave  is a Pop Up Spa where Grooming and Kings meet. We are intentional about helping men prioritize their quality of life so that their health is not compromised.  We are a one stop total health and wellness space for men.

Monique Curry-Mims has over 15 years of business and leadership experience in both the nonprofit and for-profit sectors. She is a social impact professional skilled in strategic planning, collective impact, community relations, fundraising, and capacity building. Through her consulting and philanthropic work, she provides innovative strategies that help organizations meet their mission and goals.

As Founder and CEO of Empact Data Solutions, her leadership provides a wealth of analysis and strategy insight for the organization and its clients - ensuring our team and solutions are effective and impactful.

This month our focus is Resilience!  Our guest for our six month anniversary is Ashlee Ammons founder of Mixtros. 

Mixtroz is a SaaS company providing CaaS "Community-as-a-Service" driving attendees from phone to face-to-face in real time while capturing custom data. Users download the app, complete a virtual name tag and survey customized by organizer.

Named to Entrepreneur Magazine’s inaugural list of “100 Powerful Women” in 2019; Kerry Schrader and Ashlee Ammons are a dynamic Mother/Daughter duo in the new wave of entrepreneurs creating services to make work and play simpler and more satisfying. Without formal tech backgrounds, they’ve blazed trails in the male-dominated tech startup space with their company Mixtroz, which increases engagement and collects data at gatherings.

Following remarkable progress in 2017, Team Mixtroz kicked off 2018 by joining Alabama’s prestigious Velocity Accelerator and starring on an episode of A+E ‘s series “Rooster & Butch.” In May 2018, the duo was selected to pitch to AOL Co-Founder Steve Case during the Rise of the Rest tour stop in Birmingham, AL and secured a $100,000 investment from Cases’ Revolution Fund. The team went on to close a $1M round of funding, making them the 37th  and 38th black females to ever close a $1M+ round of funding.

This month our focus is Systems! By definition a systems is a set of things working together as parts of a mechanism or an interconnecting network. Procedures according to which something is done.

We had an absolute blast with Charisse McGill, the owner/producer at Lokal Artisan Foods who in a little less than two years her French Toast Bites are the talk of the town in open air markets and is the first Black-owned business in Philly's popular summer hang out Spruce St. Harbor Park. 

Our other guest Judy Wicks  is widely known as founder of Philadelphia’s iconic White Dog Cafe and a pioneer in the “Buy local food movement”. Judy runs the Circle of Aunts & Uncles, a micro loan fund for local entrepreneurs and has won numerous local and national awards. She dropped some gems! Take a listen.