Lifting others as I climb

I understand what it means to seek out a life other than the one you’ve been given. While I spent most of my childhood in Okeechobee, a small town in the heart of Central Florida, I was in and out of the foster care system until I was 10 years old. This lived experience has shaped how I move through the world and who I am today. The power of one stable adult in your life is real thing. Thanks to the mentors and advocates who showed me that life could be stable and that it could be different than what I was born into, I was able to shape my own future. As an advocate and philanthropist, I have worked to turn my personal experience in the foster care system into positivity wherever possible and to create spaces where women, particularly women of color, can thrive personally and professionally.  

I understand what it means to find yourself as an adult. Being mixed raced raised by a loving white single in a largely segregated town, meant that my world was predominately white. Black life, history, and culture wasn’t tangible to me beyond what I learned and experienced in school. It wasn’t until I left home for college that I began the journey of learning about myself and in many ways, loving my Blackness.

I understand what it means to cultivate family. I met my partner, Reid, in college at Florida State University. In Spring 2011, we finished graduate school and got married under a canopy of oak and pine trees. We packed up and moved to Austin, Texas that summer and began our greatest adventure. There we became involved citizens, built a strong and nourishing community, and became parents to two wild and beautiful humans, Miles and Zuri. After 12 wonderful years in the Lone Star State, we relocated to Raleigh, North Carolina in 2023 to be closer to family.

I understand what it means to choose joy. Cooking for my loved ones and being outside brings me immense happiness. Sundays are traditionally reserved for projects that require our life to slow down – making large pots of simmering meals, gardening, canoeing or going on a long run. How Miles and Zuri might describe me to others, plays in my head often. I’m hopeful they’ll say with pride, their mother is loving and warm, dedicates her energy to lifting others as she climbs, smiles frequently, and seizes every opportunity to grow – for us and her community.