Always excited to get nerdy about many things, including new and divergent ways to build equitable systems, intentional communities, and the next generation of humans (of which I have two). My career path has been winding, full of the privilege of following interesting opportunities as they came my way. Eventually a pattern emerged with roles that leveraged my knack for understanding and elevating the needs of others while developing mutually beneficial projects that create value for all parties. Strategic partnerships at the intersection of business development and marketing for impact-oriented organizations is how I often sum it up. In the beginning of 2020 I dove entirely into a project I’d been dreaming of - an online resale platform that tackled both sides of the massive environmental impact of fast fashion (creation + disposal) by making it as easy to buy secondhand clothes as it is to buy new clothes. I envisioned that with the right funding model and a cooperative ownership structure, the platform could also deliver profits back to the people at the heart of its eventual success - its community of users. I gathered a steering committee and set out to design a structure that would apply the principals of cooperativism to a platform of scale. StyleCrush was born. We were selected as a member of the 2022 Start.Coop accelerator, and built and iterated on an MVP marketplace for over a year while developing key partnerships with influencers promoting secondhand style. Ultimately, the path to profitability was too long, and we put StyleCrush on hold in early 2024. Still deeply interested in being a part of organizations pursuing equitable economic models, I joined the team at Change Please, a social impact company using 100% of profits from commercial coffee sales to fund programs that find new and meaningful ways to support people experiencing homelessness through career development. Being part of a small US team tasked with translating a successful model from the UK has been an exciting challenge, allowing me to support our Trainees through direct workforce development while also building the kind of relationships with our customers that go far beyond selling a product, creating active partnerships in support of our larger mission.