In 2024, I stepped down as the director of a DEI consulting firm I co-founded to develop websites full-time and help Black women start, build, and revamp their businesses. My passion for website design began in college, where I started creating websites for friends and family to support myself. While working as a student assistant at Mount Holyoke College's Disability Services Office, I built a website to replace the manual note-taking accommodation system. The new system allowed note-takers to upload and deliver notes anonymously to students with disabilities while tracking hours for payment. The system’s success raised legal and ethical concerns, as I, a student worker, had created a tool that would typically be developed by IT. I was asked by the administration to sign paperwork, and the site is still in use today.

Despite my talent for web development, I double majored in Africana Studies and International Relations, as I was passionate about social justice, world history, and the political predicament of people of African descent. These passions led me to enroll in law school, create a summer study abroad program to Ghana, and eventually, to become a DEI consultant.

By 2024, I had spent eight years running a successful DEI consulting company. Our clients included the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, local district attorney’s offices, hospitals, and municipalities. My team’s work—through research, audits, workshops, detailed reporting and policy revisions—brought measurable improvements to Massachusetts' legal and health systems. While I take pride in our accomplishments, such as helping hospitals eliminate eugenics-based kidney function tests and prompting district attorney offices to track racial demographics of defendants sent to criminal court versus diversion programs, I found myself miserable and burnt out. Years of buttoning blazers, code-switching, and gathering evidence to convince those in power that racism is real made me feel as though I was living the very distraction Toni Morrison warned of when she said: "[The] very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being…None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing."

The birth of my second child brought profound clarity to my life. I realized that the only part of my work that I truly enjoyed was the graphic design tasks—creating online calendars and registration pages, typesetting reports, creating marketing materials, developing slideshows, designing branded banners for events, and these projects enabled me to create a cohesive brand identity with consistent colors, symbols, and logos, while ensuring user interactions were intuitive and visually appealing—ultimately reinforcing my company’s professionalism and sophistication at every touchpoint. My consulting company was my second entrepreneurial venture (the first being a summer service-learning program in Ghana I ran for five years), and I realized I’d been serving as the in-house graphic designer for both. I realized that what fueled me wasn’t a desire for social change as much as a passion for creating digital designs that made such change possible.

Two things became clear: First, my entrepreneurship needed to center my creativity. Second, I needed to work with Black women. As an Oakland transplant living in Western Massachusetts and working in a sector where I was often the only Black person at the table, I needed to cure my cultural isolation and prioritize my spiritual well-being. These realizations led to the creation of New Growth Website Design & Business Solutions.

Through New Growth, I combine my business acumen and design expertise to help Black women-led organizations, small businesses, and artists thrive. Since formally establishing New Growth in 2023, I have built platforms that have empowered my clients to realize their dreams, monetize their passions, raise their service prices (allowing them to work fewer hours), and receive their flowers, such as having their art featured in gallery exhibitions, winning photo contests, and being invited to give keynote addresses. I create websites that help Black women win. I create websites that empower entrepreneurs to pursue their passions and survive capitalism on their own terms. I create websites that move missions forward. Since “quitting corporate” I have found my freedom and I can’t wait to work with you to help you find yours.