Tara met Shervonne Cherry in Baltimore in 2012. At the time, Shervonne was working as a designer and social media strategist, but today, she's the Director of Community & Partnerships at Spark, a growing Coworking organization with spaces in Baltimore and Kansas City.

Shervonne gives incredible insight into how to build local community resources that support Black entrepreneurs (without tokenizing or making it some sort of quota-filling exercise). Her comments on urban design were particularly poignant.

Shervonne on social media:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/srcherry/

https://twitter.com/NoOrdnryCherry

Spark:

https://spark-bmore.com/

This week, Tara and Stef speak to Nate Nichols. Nate is the founder of Palette Group, a commercial creative agency that focuses on community, which he runs with his life partner. He's also the co-founder and creative director of Allyship & Action, a collective that works with vendors and agencies to actively promote diversity within the industry. 

For Nate, everything he’s passionate about is deeply rooted in empathy and the circumstances of his upbringing really influenced how he sees the world and his approach and the importance of what he calls decentering. This episode on empathy and decentering is essential listening if you want to be an effective leader and really bring about positive change.

Nate on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thenichols/

Nate on Twitter: https://twitter.com/thenichols

Nate on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_nichols/

This week on the podcast, Tara and Stef sit down with Danica S. Nelson, Senior Product Marketing Communications Manager and travel enthusiast. But Danica does multiple jobs with her organization. She not only has a senior marketing role, she also works on the DEI (diversity equity and inclusion) initiatives. She balances all of these with ease...but found herself burning out last year and took an extended leave to recharge. Unfortunately, this was cut short by COVID-19.

In this conversation, Stef and Tara discuss the multiple hats Black professionals need to wear as well as the importance of representation.

Links:

Danica on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danicasnelson/

Danica on Twitter: https://twitter.com/danicasnelson 

Website: https://watchdanicawork.com/