dIGITAL DIALOGUE
February 11th
VALENTINE’S DAY GIFT SHOW
speaker line-up
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co-HOST
MULTI-PRENEUR
Tawana Bain
Tawana Bain, CEO at NAC, manages business development, market research initiatives and strategic direction of the firm. Tawana is a leading marketing strategist and visionary with a niche in streamlining outsourced services. In addition to NAC, Bain is Founder and Curator of the Derby Diversity & Business Summit (DDBS), an organization designed to drive innovative strategies to attract diverse consumers while promoting the intersection of best in class diverse business leaders within the Executive Workforce and Global Supply Chain.
She is also the proud owner of Encore on 4th, a Southern Coastal Booze Room with Live Music, situated in the heart of downtown Louisville, known for serving as an intersection for various cultures to network, enjoy good food and shake a tail feather. Not only is she a force to be reckoned with on the entertainment scene, but she’s the founder of one of Louisville’s hottest curated boutiques’ - AFM Threads, located in both Oxmoor and St. Matthews Mall known for its trendy, chic and unique head to toe wear.
Bain has been featured in Savoy, WE CEO, Tops Louisville, Voice Tribune, Diversity Professional and many other publications for her work and success as an African American, multi-preneur.
She is the proud mother of two handsome and talented Men –Ty and Jeff and her furry companions, Biggie Smalls and Busta Rhymes.
co-HOST
Programming, Community Building, Diversity & Inclusion
cherena fox
Cherena Fox is a University of Louisville graduate and holds a bachelors degree in Sports Administration and minor in Communications. She also holds a degree from Indiana University Southeast. In her recent history she served as the Programming Manager at Story Louisville where she helped to create programming focuses on creating diverse, inclusive and empowering programming for the startup community. Through her position with Story, Cherena had the opportunity to execute finding founders and highlighting their achievements and expertise through moderating fireside chats (in -person and virtual) and executing networking events.
She creates programming for startups to gain access to mentorships, communities, resources and education that prepares their businesses to scale. Cherena is also the co-founder and co-facilitator of The Elephant in The Room diversity and Inclusion workshops. With emphasis on race, we strive to create comfortable spaces to have uncomfortable conversations within the workplace.
Specialties: Programming, Community Building, Diversity & Inclusion
Justin & kAREN Wright
Co-Founders / COO & CEO,
The Wright Group Limited & BlkBox Gifts
Karen Wright and her son, Justin, are the Co-Founders of The Wright Group Limited / BlkBox Gifts where she serves as CEO and he serves as COO. The Wright Group Limited LLC dba, BLKBOX, is a luxury curated gift box business based in Danbury, CT that solves gifting problems. They serve both individual and corporate clients with hand-selected gifts for holidays and all gifting occasions.
Yvonna Kopacz-Wright
Beekeeper & Owner of
Lomar Farms
Yvonna Kopacz-Wright is a beekeeper who is extremely passionate about educating others on the current situation of the honey bee, including what we can do to help them from extinction. She takes care of her own hives, volunteers at kids schools and community centers teaching the youth about the importance of bees in our eco system, and uses social media as a platform for spreading her knowledge. Yvonna recently turned her passion into a business by selling hand-made beautiful beeswax candles and other products from the bees naming it Lomar Farms, after her 2 beautiful daughters Lola and Marley. . It is her first venture into entrepreneurship and she would love to transform her 100 year old barn on her property in Palisades NY into a wellness and education center. Specializing in yoga classes , classes about bees and farming. Her dream is to bring kids from The inner city out to her farm to educate and inspire.
Yvonna is also very dedicated to inspiring and uplifting women in her community and around the globe. She has hosted several wellness retreats with her sister Anita and 3 other coaches and healers made up of The Goddess Wisdom Council geared towards healing and empowering women and helping them step into their higher purpose.
sita lewis
Founder & CEO, Mama Sita's Miracle Butter Cream
Sita Lewis, AKA "Mama Sita" began her career as a TV Producer, producing nationally award-winning shows for cable and network television. Daughter of famed Boxing & Entertainment Promoter, Butch Lewis, Sita has produced everything from live talk shows, including BET's "Teen Summit", "BET News", & "Heart & Soul" (where she also appeared as a beauty and culinary correspondent) to, later, producing syndicated TV show's like "The Ananda Lewis Show" and "The Bethenny Frankel Show". Naturally, she transitioned to variety and talent shows like "Showtime at The Apollo" and "America's Got Talent" and even reality TV's popular "Love & Hip-Hop NY".
Eventually, Sita mixed her personal passion for cooking with her TV career and became a culinary producer, working with the likes of Celebrity Chef and Home Expert Martha Stewart and a host of others. Not long after, Sita was selected and appeared as a finalist on the Food Network's popular reality competition series, "Food Network Star!" Season 11.
That push led to Sita taking her culinary passion and expertise into to the classroom, educating NYC's inner-city youth. Healthy cooking was the focus of Sita's culinary lessons. After noticing that many of Sita's high school students suffered a great deal from eczema and other skin irritations, Sita decided to teach and share her own personal hand-made all-natural body cream recipe with her class. Even though it was not a food recipe, the class embraced the project and created hundreds of jars of this formula and immediately put it to good use. After a few weeks of use, many of the students who had eczema reported that their symptoms never felt such incredible relief. Some even reported that their symptoms had disappeared completely. Some noticed increased hair growth and 24-hours of hydrated skin, and many more incredible results.
Sita, in turn, shared her formula with friends and family and received nothing but praise about it's miraculous results. After months of friends urging "Mama Sita" to share her creation with the world, she decided to take her naturally- inherited entrepreneurial skills and make her product available for all to enjoy and reap the rewarding benefits of MAMA SITA'S MIRACLE BUTTER CREAM...
Mama Sita desires to not only help educate her former Harlem high school students on healthy eating and introduce them to healthy skin care products that they can create themselves, but she also desires to financially empower those students who want to help her grow the business and expand the product to as many as possible. That is why Mama Sita has given some of her former students the opportunity to become independent "Shop Owners" by allowing them to make a profit from this God-given product.
Sita's SOUL PURPOSE is to help empower others with the same love and generosity that she receives through her faith in God, and she stands firm on these words from Romans 8:28...