Women's entrepreneurship

Janna Rodriguez has always been an active leader in her community—when she was 16, she began volunteering for political campaigns, from her local school board, all the way to presidential elections. In 2018, her entrepreneurial spirit led her to establish the Innovative Daycare Corp. in Long Island, New York. Her mission is to ensure that minority children in her community have the resources and privileges that children in other communities experience.

Vanessa Avalos noticed a need for bilingual education for young children in her community, and she immediately decided to execute on it. She launched Luna y Cielo, a play café and Spanish learning center to aid Latino and Hispanic mothers in raising bilingual, bicultural and biliterate children. 

Full-time health policy advocate and part-time doula Knetta Adkins is striving to make the Georgia healthcare system more accessible for everyone–especially families of color.
 
Knetta started practicing as a doula three years ago in Alabama, but soon after she relocated to Georgia and started her own practice, Douwella, where she supports parents through their pre and postpartum journey.
 
She says, “It’s important to me that I ensure that the families I work with have agency over their birthing story.”

Although Shirley Modlin plans on giving her manufacturing business, located in Powhatan, Virginia, over to her son in the next two years, she is nowhere near retirement. In fact, she is handing over her current business so she can start a new one and open a vocational center in the rural area of her town. 

When Tricia M. Arce’s grandmother passed away, she began making recipes with marshmallows to ease her grief. Once she realized how popular her inventions were among her coworkers and close friends, Tricia and her wife Hazel decided to launch the Toasted Mallow, a line of handcrafted marshmallow desserts for every taste, locally available in Gilbert, A.Z.

During this Pride Month, Joanis Duran and other LGBTQ small business owners in Florida are fighting to be heard as their state policymakers enact anti-LGBTQ legislation.

“We feel that we have a government that is trying to remove us.”

Sayuri Tsuchitani began her career as a hairdresser in New York, and her work launched her into opportunities to travel the world. As a Japanese immigrant, she says her career goal is to bring Eastern techniques of relaxation to help alleviate stress in Western cultures. Although her entrepreneurial journey hasn’t always been an easy one, especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, Headspa EN in Beverly Hills, Calif. continues to prevail.

Children admire their parents’ careers, and often emulate the kinds of jobs they perform: they want to be firefighters, police officers, teachers, doctors, lawyers and so forth. This was also the case for Celia Rudder, who wanted to be like her father from an early age and become an entrepreneur in Greensboro, N.C. Although she wasn’t encouraged to follow in his footsteps, she eventually took over her father’s business after he passed away.

Lauren Fontaine’s small business, Blackscriptions, is a quarterly subscription box full of goodies from a selection of Black-owned businesses. What’s different about this subscription? There are a couple of things, the most significant being its objective. Lauren calls her boxes a conduit, connecting others to Black-owned businesses needing further support and sales. 

“I launched Blackscriptions out of my desire to economically uplift and empower Black-owned businesses,” Lauren said. 

For Lisa Marsh, owner and founder of Ms. P’s Gluten Free, going gluten free changed her health. Her acid reflux and digestive issues went away, and she felt better than she had in years. Yet, this change in diet meant having to explore alternative recipes for treats normally full of gluten, like cakes and cookies. 

Lisa recalled finding triple chocolate chip, gluten-free cookies that can be baked at home. She was so eager to try one, Lisa couldn’t wait long enough for them to cool down.