LaShonda Steele Allen is a loving, devoted wife, mother and creator of Balō first™ - a revolutionary food blowing device that helps your little one enjoy mealtime with less tongue burn, and it's available for purchase online at www.balofirst.com. She also develops advertising campaigns with some of top agencies in the world and major Fortune 500 companies. Her achievements, which are great and varied, include copywriting and spearheading some of the most successful television commercials and most memorable tag lines.

Yolanda and her husband runs the creative agency Distinct Life, whose work ranges from consulting and social media management for the social services agency Wolverine Human Services in Detroit to consulting for Comedy Central's show "Detroiters" — they designed the show's logo and produced and wrote the theme song.

Their creative partnership started in 2004 when the couple got married while still attending college at Oakland University. In 2007, her husband, Rick took over ownership of Burn Rubber sneaker store in Royal Oak and built the brand into an international phenomenon through his collaborations with New Balance and Reebok.

In 2013 Cream Blends started out of Yolanda’s sheer curiosity of natural products and how they affect the skin. She says, Reading labels is difficult and many of the words we can't even pronounce let alone understand how the chemical composition will affect our bodies in the future. At Cream Blends they want to maintain the integrity of their brand by providing products with simple ingredients from the Earth that do complex things for the body. The skin is the largest organ in our bodies and the first thing that people see, we should guard that and make sure we are always using products that help heal, restore and nourish our skin.

www.creamblends.com

My hair journey began when I was a small child, in the late 1980s. I remember sitting on the stool in my grandmother’s kitchen, staring at the Blue Magic jar as I braced myself for the hot comb that was about to touch my scalp. I feared that I would get burned, but I knew that my grandmother was a hair-pressing ninja.

As I grew into a young lady, the thick hair grease that I had always used to silken and straighten my coils of hair was no longer giving me the look I wanted. Overwhelmed by the textures of my natural hair, I experimented with perms, cornrows, braids, sew-ins, and even revisited the pressing comb. The result of which amounted to heat damage, split ends, and inconsistent hair growth throughout my mane.

I felt defeated by my hair! Needing a solution for retaining and maintaining healthy tresses, I began researching how best to achieve this goal. On May 10, 2013, I finally made the decision to do the BIG CHOP – I cut all my hair off to let it grow back fully natural!

The ILL brand not only represents natural hair and beauty but also embodies my childhood memories of graffiti, food, fashion, boomboxes and cassette tapes! Naturally ILLustrated is a celebration of all black women; of our past and modern culture, marrying the best parts of the 1980s with today in a special filigree/graffiti artistic style. Naturally ILLustrated not only embraces our hair but also exhibits our power as black women and men.

Sherrie Savage is the illustrator, designer, event planner and blogger of Naturally ILLustrated. Naturally ILLustrated celebrates natural hair and black culture through original drawings and illustrations.

http://naturallyill.com/

Kim‘s second favorite thing to do in the world is talk to people, the first is eating yummy food. Kim is a straight shooter who is honest to a fault and incredibly insightful. She is hardworking and innovative, with a rare, creative eye towards design.

She is the co-founder of CurlMix, the first DIY brand for curly hair. Her innovative take on Do–It–Yourself hair products has won her praise from top industry publications such as Refinery29, Essence Magazine, Ebony Magazine, Hype Hair Magazine, and Naturally Curly. With a Bachelor’s Degree in Logistics & Marketing from the University of Illinois, Kim has taken the DIY spirit to heart, building CurlMix from the ground up.

Kim was a runner-up in the Black Enterprise Pitch Competition and the winner of the Association of Women Inventors and Entrepreneurs Pitch Competition.

www.curlmix.com