June 2021 by Austin Woman Magazine

A HEIGHTENED STATE OF DRIVING Every Mazda is built to inspire, excite and most of all – bring people joy. We invite you to experience how the Roger Beasley Mazda family and the Mazda brand are doing things differently.

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When babies need special care before they’re born

Choose specialized care for you and your baby — only at Dell Children’s Medical Center Dell Children’s Medical Center and Ascension Seton are expanding to deliver even more advanced and specialized maternity and fetal care in Central Texas. Now more than ever, you have access to the highest level of care, close to home. New Comprehensive Fetal Care Center It’s the only center of its kind in Central Texas — connecting the dots across specialized maternity and pediatric care, and bringing together a highly skilled and multidisciplinary team to deliver advanced care for the most complex prenatal and fetal conditions. When you choose Dell Children’s and Ascension Seton care teams, you and your baby will have:

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FEATURE

BUSY AS A BEE BY DARBY KENDALL

FEATURE

EMBRACING YOUR MANE BY JENNY HOFF

ATXWOMAN.COM | 5

CONTENTS | JUNE

STAFF PICKS What did you want to be when you grew up?

FROM THE DESK OF Arooj Sheikh

COUNT US IN The Future is Female

SEE HER WORK Painter Catie Lewis

THE FEED Lynn Huynh

ON THE MONEY College Saving

I AM AUSTIN WOMAN Faith Avery

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6 | AUSTIN WOMAN | JUNE 2021

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ATXWOMAN.COM | 19

STAFF PICKS

WHAT DID YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GREW UP?

The Austin Woman team takes a trip back in time to talk about their childhood dreams.

ANNE COX

ALIE JUSTIS

PRODUCTION COORDINATOR

EDITORIAL INTERN

I didn’t have an exact career path carved out. In fact, I probably had about 17 different career paths that I wanted to take, and each one of them ended with superstardom. It didn’t matter how I got there: movie star, lead singer in a girl band, award-winning figure skater. You name it! I just wanted to get to wear pretty dresses and go to lots of parties, if we’re being honest. Which, funny enough, I get to do now with Austin Woman!

For the longest time, I wanted to be a zookeeper because I grew up watching too much Animal Planet. I thought it would be my dream job and I talked about it all the time, so for my eighth birthday my mom had an animal handler bring some animals to our house for a petting zoo party. But as soon as I met the tarantulas and snakes like that in person, I knew that zookeeping wasn’t going to be for me. My dad took this picture of me when they brought out the pythons.

PARKE BALLANTINE

Growing up I didn’t have much of an imagination around what I could be professionally, but I did really want to travel. I fell in love with the idea of freedom and being on the road, chance encounters while moving between towns and cities and learning more about the varieties of life. To date I have traveled mainly throughout the U.S., going on many road trips and living in six different states, although I have begun to travel to Europe now that I’m married to a German. I think little me would be thrilled.

20 | AUSTIN WOMAN | JUNE 2021

All photos courtesy of respective staff member.

DIRECTOR OF EVENTS AND BRANDING STRATEGY

OLIVIA HUNTLEY MARKETING SALES SPECIALIST

In junior kindergarten, I gave a report on dinosaurs, as one does. I was consumed with fascination about the plant-eating Apatosaurus and took it upon myself to become the 6-yearold expert on herbivorous late-Jurassic reptiles. I was going to be a paleontologist! I even had the round plastic-framed glasses to prove it. Long story short, I didn’t end up following in the footsteps of a scientist, but I still think dinosaurs are cool...and scrunchies came back in style. So it all worked out.

DAWN WESTON

CY WHITE

PUBLISHER

MANAGING EDITOR

I don’t think that I ever really had a strong draw to one career over another. Sure, I went through phases where when my interests changed, what I wanted to do changed. For a while it was a dancer. Then when I got a little older it was to own my own clothing store. To be honest when I enrolled in college, I started in a gen ed program where you didn’t have to declare a major till junior year. It was then that I declared my major in journalism with a specialization in advertising and marketing. My original goal was to be a top executive at an ad agency. Little did I know that the advertising sales position I took at the school newspaper my senior year would launch me into a career.

Despite growing up around music and being a lover of words, I declared at the mature age of 5 years old that I was going to be a doctor. Because I’d said it out loud and proclaimed it to everybody, that’s what I had to do. Period. No questions asked. The first and last time I strayed from that proclamation was in the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of undergrad when I both realized I wasn’t really passionate about it ( just doing it because I thought I had to), and when I was almost kicked out of school for falling below the required GPA. I changed my mind real quick after that, finessed my way back into school and redirected my life’s direction to my actual passion: words.

ATXWOMAN.COM | 21

FROM THE DESK OF

BE YOURSELF, BE GENUINE

Arooj Sheikh shares five ways to maximize your life. BY ALLIE JUSTIS

Arooj Sheikh is a shining star in the Austin business world, putting published author, Harvard keynote speaker, renowned business consultant and successful venture capitalist on her resume before even graduating college. Though she is only 21 years old, Sheikh has been in the business field for many years, chasing her dream of starting her own business, while also pursuing her passion for empowering world-changing ideas through venture capitalism. Her most recent pursuit has been writing her book, The Fundraising Strategy Playbook: An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Pitching, Raising Venture Capital, and Financing a Startup. “I’ve worked in the startup ecosystem from a number of perspectives,” says Sheikh. “What bothered me was that I saw a really big disconnect between founders and their investors. So this book is the advice that’s talked about in small groups but never openly discussed.” Sheikh credits much of her success to the support she received early on in her career, so to pay it forward she is sharing five ways to maximize your life.

ALWAYS HAVE THE AUDACITY TO ASK. You really have to start pushing yourself to take the long shot. I think that people are always afraid of inconveniencing other people or are always waiting too long because they haven’t done x, y and z yet. Just know that if people see that you’re passionate and see that you care about what you’re doing, they really will go pretty well out of their way to help you.

GET PEOPLE TO ADVOCATE FOR YOU. Everyone is standing on the shoulders of giants, and anyone that says otherwise is lying to you. I guarantee it without question. It really does come down to just being yourself and being genuine. That will get you so much further than anything else, and that’s a fantastic way to get people to advocate for you. Then you can take it a step further and advocate for other people as well.

KEEP FINDING NEW EXPERIENCES. I know it’s a little tough right now with COVID and everything, but I think that there’s more than one way to gain new experiences. For example, I think that books and travel blogs are a fantastic way. Reading a book, you get to learn so much, and there’s just so much more depth than what you get to experience in just your life alone. Borrowing from these other experiences is like stepping into another life, and it can be a good starting place for getting the confidence to pursue your own unique experiences. Everyone talks about how life is so short. I think life is really long, and I think that travel and finding these new experiences can lengthen your life.

TRUST YOURSELF TO FIGURE IT OUT.

NO ONE COULD EVER HAVE ALL THE ANSWERS. Over the years I have been extremely lucky to be around some really brilliant people. I think the number one thing I have noticed is that no one has all the answers. Everyone you look up to is also just figuring it out, and they don’t know what they’re doing either. Even Einstein felt his work got far too much attention. Even Maya Angelou spoke about how she suffered from imposter syndrome. If you realize they experienced it too, I think it makes it so much more natural and okay to have these feelings.

22 | AUSTIN WOMAN | JUNE 2021

Photos courtesy of Arooj Sheikh.

Failure is just a part of success, and it helps a lot of the time to do it early. For me, I had a very big fear of public speaking, so I decided to take a public speaking class. At one point I was so scared that I kept forgetting my own name. It was awful, but I forced myself to do it. Now because of my hard work, I have pitched my company to more than 1000 people, which was a 50x improvement from where I started. That confidence comes from every single occasion in which I got up and I spoke up. Now I regularly do speaking events, I’m a published author and I did a keynote at Harvard University. It comes down to doing these hard things. Because I did all these hard things before, I knew that I could trust myself to figure it out.

For the last 19 years, Austin Woman has been the heartbeat of women’s empowerment and advancement in Austin. Join our community and connect with like-minded women!

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COUNT US IN

THE FUTURE IS FEMALE

Young women are instrumental to the success of our future. BY MONICA GODINEZ ILLUSTRATIONS BY JESSICA WETTERER

60+ The Girl Empowerment Network, an organization that helps empower young girls from third to 12th grade by incorporating self-efficacy lessons into their curriculum, partners with 60+ schools in Texas to amplify learning outcomes in the classroom.

$1 million $5,000 The Young Women’s Alliance donated $5,000 in scholarships to the Girl’s Empowerment Network in 2020. The organization focuses on transforming communities by cultivating confident, supportive and empowering networks for career-oriented women to connect.

700 Haleema Bharoocha is a well-known Generation Z youth advocate. Bharoocha leads legislative and community advocacy for a #GirlsPolicyAgenda. She has trained over 700 individuals in topics related to gender justice, Islamophobia, diversity and equity.

24 | AUSTIN WOMAN | JUNE 2021

Katie Fang, CEO and founder of SchooLinks, has raised more than $1 million in funding. SchooLinks is a college and career preparatory platform with an engaging curriculum curated to aid in the post-secondary process.

100% The Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders (ARS) is an all-girls public school for grades six through 12. With a 100% college acceptance rate, ARS exhibits a commitment to ensuring their young students are prepared for college and even more so prepared to graduate from college.

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SEE HER WORK

FINDING YOUR WAY BACK HOME

Painter Catie Lewis finds blissful inspiration from her home in the Philippines.

The global pandemic still restricts international travel, but Catie Lewis’ new collection transports whomever feasts their eyes upon it. In these lush oil paintings, a warm breeze blows through palm trees stretched over islanders drinking from coconuts. To purchasers, the subjects in the paintings are no more than arbitrary figures. To Lewis, they were once strangers from a half-remembered place. The 23-year-old Austin muralist, painter and business owner doesn’t recall her adoption from the Philippines. At 1 years old she was brought to Connecticut, and while her childhood town boasted diversity, she was the only Filipino person she knew besides her adopted brother. In an exploration of her Filipino identity, Lewis chose to meet her birth family for the first time five years ago. Now they are no longer strangers, and the idyllic time on her family’s island paradise inspired her most personal work to date.

26 | AUSTIN WOMAN | JUNE 2021

Doodles in middle school stoked Lewis’ artistic fire, but societal whispers of career instability in the arts prevented her from considering it a viable path. The drowsy streets of Charleston, South Carolina, became her new home after high school, but she felt increasingly dulled by a life of work devoid of creative pursuits. Like so many increasingly burned-out yet hungry Gen Zers, she escaped a stifling existence and explored Asia for four months. “The collection I did of my life in the Philippines was the biggest turning point [in my career] because I really did not know how [the collection] was going to go. I had never done oil painting before. I had spent so long talking myself out of doing realistic stuff and breaking away from simple, safe pieces of art.” The risk paid off. After Charleston, Lewis relocated to Austin in 2019, newly motivated to pursue her art career dreams. Effulgent murals covering walls throughout the city and coworkers showcasing their art at markets inspired her. “When I got here, I couldn’t even afford a canvas. I would paint on cardboard boxes from Trader Joe’s.” She began offering free murals to people on the furniture-selling app OfferUp. She posted on Facebook groups asking a simple question: “Anyone want a mural on their wall?” Lewis explains vivaciously, “I hate everything that I make until the very end. I don’t believe it’s amazing until people say a painting or mural really resonated with them. I’m still trying to figure out what I want others to feel in my art and how I want to feel too.” Lewis’ varied collections of oil paintings, digital portraits, minimalist line drawings and large-scale murals showcase her raw talent unencumbered by formal art training. Her initial self-doubt and inexperience drove her prices to “pennies,” with shocked clients offering to pay more for this marvelous yet undersold work. It was no longer local salons contacting Lewis, but global corporations. Lexus’ 2020 “The Art of the Driveway” event commissioned budding artists across the United States to create exciting murals reflective of their communities. Lewis felt defenseless against the magnitude of communicating with these huge companies, spending hours rearranging three-sentence emails. Would she say the right thing? Would she be taken advantage of? How would she stay true to herself? The panic nearly drove her away from opportunities. Eventually Lewis did master the art of the email, and her desire to guide other artists walking through the forest of corporate communication resulted in Walls Talk Co. This collective of artists founded by Lewis onboards clients and provides support and resources to young muralists navigating commissions from imposing businesses. Her accomplishments at age 23 can make any reasonably successful person feel lazy, but only after battling crippling fear and a fierce inner critic has Lewis achieved her dream of making art a full-time career. She humbly offered her talents and asked for trust in return, drawing strength from clients’ confidence and positive feedback. Lewis continues to hone her craft with continuous experimentation and exploration. She encourages other young artists to do the same. “You realize that there are people who will enjoy whatever you make as long as you enjoy what you make,” she remarks. With each painting, she tells her story while being a voice for the people she wants to see more of in the art community: young women of color with their own stories to tell. With talent as formidable as Lewis’, it’s a comfort to know she’s just getting started.

Photos by Kayla Davis.

BY MADELYN GEYER

“”

You realize that there are people who will enjoy whatever you make as long as you enjoy what you make.

ATXWOMAN.COM | 27

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30 | JUNE 2021 30 | AUSTIN SPECIALWOMAN PROMOTION | ATXWOMAN.COM

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hayda Torabi is the co-founder and CEO of Restart CBD, Texas’ premier cannabis brand. Born and raised in Austin, Torabi founded Restart in 2018 alongside her two younger sisters after using CBD for years to personally help manage her pain after an auto-pedestrian accident in 2015. Since launching, Torabi and her sisters have earned the name #CBDsisters, becoming one of the leading educators and retailers of cannabis in the industry. In fact, Torabi was recently named Best Hemp Warrior/Advocate/Influencer at the 2021 Texas Hemp Awards as well as winner of the 2021 Best CBD purveyor by the Austin Chronicle Best of Austin awards. She is also the host of a cannabis and marketing podcast called To Be Blunt. Torabi is passionate about helping build great consumer brands in the cannabis industry. She leverages her background in technology and marketing to help navigate the cannabis industry in order to connect the consumer with highquality cannabis products and education. restartcbd.com

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VIRGINIA VISSER

A M E R I C A N H E A R T A S S O C I AT I O N , I N C O M I N G B O A R D C H A I R ; W O R K P L AC E R E S O U R C E L LC, P R I N C I PA L

esigner, businesswoman and local philanthropist Virginia Visser will assume the role of chair of the board of directors for the Central Texas American Heart Association in July 2021. Visser has been an active volunteer with the organization since 2017, having served as the 2018 Go Red for Women® campaign chair and creator of the “Red Chair Tour” designed to spark conversation among Austin women about their greatest health threat—heart disease. As principal and managing member of Workplace Resource, Visser provides high-performance interior workplaces. Workplace Resource products, planning and design services support interior environments ranging from corporate offices to clinical health care environments, and higher education institutions to government agencies. The Austin Business Journal 2020 list of womenowned businesses recognized Workplace Resource with a #1 ranking. She and her husband, Steve, became owners in 2008 after long tenures with Herman Miller, a premier contract furniture company. heart.org/austin

32 | JUNE 2021 32 | AUSTIN SPECIALWOMAN PROMOTION | ATXWOMAN.COM

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PHOTO BY ANNIE RAY

BUSY AS A BEE

With a fresh perspective on the world, teenage CEO Mikaila Ulmer is leading the way in social entrepreneurship. BY DARBY KENDALL, PHOTOS BY RUDY AROCHA STYLED BY PARKE BALLANTINE WITH INSPIRATION FROM NORDSTROM, PAVEMENT AND WOOD & ROSE, MAKEUP BY EMILY KAY LAI SHOT ON LOCATION AT LADY BIRD JOHNSON WILDFLOWER CENTER

When 4-year-old Mikaila Ulmer found herself wanting her cousin’s toy, her parents offered to buy her the same one under the condition that she help pay for it. When not immediately given what she wanted, Ulmer didn’t throw the tantrum many at that age would have. Instead, she decided to make and sell a product to come up with the money. Now 16 years old, Ulmer has traded in her childhood toys for homework and a learner’s permit, but the enterprise she started 12 years ago has blossomed into a lemonade business sold in over 1,500 stores nationwide. In many ways, Ulmer is your average teenager; she’s currently finishing her junior year of high school, she enjoys rock climbing with her friends and rollerblading around South Austin, and her mom, D’Andra, can’t wait for her to get her driver’s license so she can take her little brother to school. On the other hand, Mikaila has a resume that would outshine many adults’. As the founder and CEO of Me & the Bees Lemonade, Mikaila has over a decade of experience running her own company. She’s traveled the country giving talks while educating kids and parents alike on small business and environmental advocacy; at 11 years old, Mikaila pitched her lemonade on Shark Tank and secured a $60,000 investment from Daymond John; in 2016, she introduced Barack Obama at The United State of Women Summit. Combining an insatiable joy for life with a remarkable drive to execute her ideas, Mikaila is unlike any other. Of course, any business founded by such an individual has an inspirational and impactful twist. Initially created as a lemonade stand to help Mikaila fund her toy hunt, Me & the Bees Lemonade has done much more than provide her with a lifelong education in entrepreneurship. The brand, which offers multiple flavors of bottled freshly squeezed lemonade made with Texas wildflower honey and flaxseed, was designed by Ulmer with built-in beneficence. “After I decided I was going to do a lemonade stand, I fortunately got stung by two bees in one week,” she says. “I became terrified of bees. My parents said, ‘Why don’t you do some research?’ I learned that bees are responsible for the food that I eat, and that bees are dying at an alarming rate. So I decided, ‘Okay, I’m already going to do a lemonade stand. What if I do one that helps the bees?’” Once the stand was up and running, Mikaila began to regularly donate a portion of her sales to the Texas Beekeepers Association. Today, her environmental activism goes well beyond her monetary donations to a variety of local and international orgs that benefit bees. Branching off of Me & the Bees’ success, she founded the Healthy Hive Foundation, a nonprofit that works to save the bees through education, research and protection.

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“” Recently, we also added teaching about social entrepreneurship, because I realized that if more companies also did good in the world or solved a problem, then we’d be in a much better place. “Although we donate a portion of the proceeds to the community, I wanted to start something that was all about saving the bees. Getting unbiased studies on what’s really affecting the bees is the research part. The education is the teaching workshops and starting the apiary so kids, and people who want to learn more about the bees, can. The protection part is doing partnerships, turning regular land into bee-friendly land, things like that; so actually going out and protecting the bees,” Mikaila explains. “Recently, we also added teaching about social entrepreneurship, because I realized that if more companies also did good in the world or solved a problem, then we’d be in a much better place. Especially in my generation as we are looking to see how does this brand affect the world environmentally or in terms of human rights? I think if I also encourage people who are starting businesses to look at those things, we’d be in a much better place.” Striving to leave the world a better place than she found it is ingrained in Mikaila’s business ethics. Advocacy is an essential part of her day-to-day life. “My favorite part of advocacy is doing the work. For example, making effective bee homes and teaching people how to do that, or going and making batches of seed bombs, or getting my hands in the mud and making compost.” Her impressive feats of founding a nonprofit and environmentally beneficial business were made possible by the immensely supportive family backing her up. Every member of the Ulmer family has a role supporting Mikaila in her ventures. D’Andra wears many hats within the business, but her background lies in marketing and public relations. Mikaila’s father, Theo, who has worked at Dell for over 20 years, oversees the finance and operations. Older brother, Khalil, who lives in San Francisco, works on IT for the business. And her younger brother, Jacob, uses his interest in photography to help take pictures for Me & the Bees. “My family has always supported me by allowing me to make a decision and learn, while not shutting down the idea,” Mikaila says. “My mom taught me most of what I know about marketing, from the experience from her own business, and my dad taught me a lot about finance and operations, bringing it from his current job. It’s a huge time commitment [for

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them]. Even though a lot of the stuff that we do is fun, it’s also making sure that I’m ready to speak at an event. It’s spending time away from their work to take me to be able to accept this opportunity. Then when I’m in school, and it’s finals week, or when I want to do something like a camp of friends, it’s keeping on top of Me & the Bees while I’m going and being a teenager.” Speaking with D’Andra, it becomes immediately clear that she wholeheartedly believes in her daughter and has embraced Mikaila’s dreams from day one. “Being Mikaila’s mom, well it keeps me on my toes. I wouldn’t change it for the world. I think she makes me an even better person,” she says. “Sometimes when I’m tired or I don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel or I’m afraid, I channel her fearlessness. I think she definitely makes me a better mom and a better person. I’m very proud of her, not because she’s a founder and CEO, but because of the person she is. She’s very kind. And I’m not saying that because I’m her mom. She works with kids, she goes to stores and buys gifts for her friends and she’s always considerate of others.” Family ties go deep in Mikaila’s business, beyond the immediate support of her parents. The original inspiration for her lemonade stand came from a cookbook handed down by her Great-granny Helen, including a recipe for flaxseed lemonade. “It was really old and tattered, and it had ingredients like lard in it. They were old recipes, but to me, it was just weird stuff,” Mikaila says. “My parents were thumbing through the book and they found a recipe for flaxseed lemonade, so we tried making it. I didn’t know what flax was, but I liked the recipe.” With Granny Helen’s recipe in-hand, Mikaila launched her lemonade, and now thanks to the support of her two immediate grandmothers, Me & the Bees is a bestseller around the country. “Even both grandmas support her! The cities the grandmas are in have our top-selling stores, in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and Buffalo, New York,” says D’Andra. “The grandmas are at those stores, telling them about their grandbaby and talking to the church. They even go in and put coupons on the bottles.” Support has also come in the form of mentors, backers and

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LOCATION: LADY BIRD JOHNSON WILDFLOWER CENTER The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center is a botanic garden in southwest Austin that focuses entirely on plants native to Texas. Its 284 acres feature nearly 900 species of plants representing the state’s major ecoregions. It is also home to an award-winning family garden, a gorgeous arboretum showcasing a diverse collection of Texas trees, and miles of scenic nature trails, all of which provide unique views and experiences as the seasons shift throughout the year. Part of The University of Texas at Austin, the Center carries out its mission to inspire the conservation of native plants through its gardens, research, education and outreach programs. In doing so, it improves water quality, provides a habitat for wildlife and enhances human health and happiness. In 2017, it was officially designated the Botanic Garden and Arboretum of Texas. The Center publishes an award-winning member magazine, Wildflower, boasts the most diverse living collection of Texas native plants in North America, hosts an invaluable online native plant database and recently won a “Best of Austin” readers choice award from the Austin Chronicle for Fortlandia, its fall exhibition of creative, custom-designed forts. wildflower.org

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“” Some of my favorite parts of seeing Mikaila grow with the business are her insatiable dreams and her knowledge. the city Mikaila calls home. As a burgeoning business owner, growing up in Austin provided her with the perfect location to get her start. “Austin is a very entrepreneurial city, so we’re in good company,” D’Andra elaborates. “We’ve even received funding from the city. It’s the fact that we’re here and the fact that Mikaila has been speaking at SXSW since she was about 9, so we have international platforms. I know it seems so small, but even when she first started, she went to these businesses like Central Market and H-E-B and said, ‘Hey, I have a lemonade stand. Can we barter?’ And they would say yes! I think just having a city that’s engrained in entrepreneurship made it good timing for us.” When Mikaila published her business memoir, Bee Fearless: Dream Like a Kid, in the midst of the pandemic last summer, local business BookPeople also stepped up to the plate to help her promote in this new, strictly online landscape. They hosted an event with her via Zoom and the book became a top seller at their store. Though the marketing for Bee Fearless was not as Mikaila had initially pictured it, she still gained plenty from the experience of writing a book. “They were right when they said it’s like a marathon, not a sprint, because the process took two years,” says Mikaila. “A lot of that work was concentrated until last year, especially the summer. And it was, ‘Okay, the books done, time for final edits. Now you record the audiobook, now you do interviews, and virtual book signings, and catch up with mentors or people who have interacted with you in the past to get them to read it.’ It was a lot.” But the hard work paid off immensely as reviews for the book rolled in. “I guess I was a little bit surprised. It was one of those ‘oh, little old me’ things. I would think, ‘Okay, I can see middle schoolers really liking this book.’ But when I saw that adults genuinely liked it, and little kids really liked hearing it as a bedtime story, that kind of blew my mind.” Though Mikaila may have been surprised by the book’s widespread success, D’Andra has always believed that her daughter is capable of whatever she sets her mind to. “Some of my favorite parts of seeing Mikaila grow with the business are her insatiable dreams and her knowledge,” D’Andra states. “She is really smart, and not just on a surface level, but many layers deep, and that’s so important. You can tell when you ask her a question that’s about ops or about finance. It’s not just a surface answer. Her answer shows that she understands the functionality of the business. So it’s her expertise, it’s her insatiable dreams and all at the same time, it’s her humbleness.” From an early age Mikaila has had an innate drive to learn and create, from plugging bananas into circuit boards as an on-the-go piano, to teaching herself American Sign Language with extra downtime during the lockdown, to brainstorming up an ice cream-centric skin care brand with her friend, naming formulas after sundae toppings. Her drive is inspiring, but it does beg the question, how does a 16-year-old juggle working as a CEO alongside the looming senior year at a private school, while also maintaining the hobbies and social life that just come along with being a teenager?

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“” There’s so many people that say, ‘Let me know how I can help.’ I think that’s what makes us fearless.

“It’s just working hard. Working hard, especially when it was in person, before the pandemic, and I was traveling in person to do meetings and presentations, I would have to catch up. I would have to go prepare for my speaking engagement or my presentation, fly there, give the speaking engagement and come back. And either on the plane or when I got back, make up however many days I missed in every single one of my classes at my college preparatory school, which is really rigorous. It required me to stay on top of a lot of things and also get used to being behind, like realizing that I can’t be good at everything,” Mikaila explains. “It’s also having a team that can pick up different tasks when I’m in school. So it started as just my family, and now we have a PR team and sales team and a finance team and distribution and ops, who can make sure that the company is running smoothly when I’m swamped with school, like I am at the moment.” As Mikaila’s gotten older and her schoolwork has increased, her experience with running a company has grown right alongside it. “I think she has more input now. She has 16 years of experience, so sometimes she is the expert,” says D’Andra. Mikaila elaborates that as she’s gotten older, her role in the company has gotten larger, but now that she’s preparing for her future post-high school, “I’m spending a little less time on business and more time on figuring out what I want to do next. “I’m already doing stuff with Me & the Bees, so I have to make even more time to do my hobbies. It’s probably going to take me a little longer to do enough things where I can figure out what I want to do in life. But based on what classes I enjoyed in high school and middle school, I’m interested in biology and tech design. I’m taking robotics and engineering next year, and also bio II; I’m taking a lot of sciences. I like the lab, creative, testing and investigating part of it. I still don’t know what subject that would fit, but I’ve seen it the most in entrepreneurship and then also in science,” Mikaila says. “I pretty much want to try as many different subjects as I can and then try to figure out a way to lead entrepreneurship to that area, so find a subject or an industry that I’m really excited about and bring my entrepreneurship there.” Looking to the future of Me & the Bees, Mikaila once stated in an interview that she hopes that her business can one day be “the Hello Kitty of lemonade.” When asked to expand on that, she explains that she admires the way Hello Kitty has such a vast portfolio of products, all while maintaining the same appealing brand of the original character. “I want to make Me & the Bees have a bunch of different products. At this point, I think it would be cool to continue with the lemonade but have many other kinds of drinks, have snacks or have skin care. We have lip balm, but other types of skin care would be cool.” The opportunities available to Mikaila after high school are far and wide, and D’Andra is open to all of her ideas, both personal and professional. Be it expanding Me & the Bees to a beauty-adjacent line or agreeing with Mikaila on a gap year before college, D’Andra is there to encourage. “The support that she’s received, for Me & the Bees specifically, from her city in particular, from her investors, from her friends, from her strategic partners—what she’s doing, they’re not risks. They are the execution of dreams with support. There’s so many people that say, ‘Let me know how I can help.’ I think that’s what makes us fearless.” Though Mikaila may not know what her future holds as she enters her final year of high school, her determined drive and solid support system will surely lead her wherever she is meant to be.

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EMBRACING YOUR MANE Two women are out to untangle a convoluted industry. BY JENNY HOFF

When D’azhane Cook and Ariel Lee first met at the University of Texas, they weren’t exactly friends at first sight. The two women have distinctly different personalities: Lee is an artist with an extroverted streak, and Cook is a more data-driven maven. However, as the only two Black women in their course at UT Austin’s Product Prodigy Institute in the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, they were drawn to each other when it came time to partner up on a project. As luck would have it, they discovered at least one thing they had in common: a lifelong, somewhat tangled relationship with their natural hair. It was this commonality that gave birth to their business Remane, a data-based subscription site that aims to educate Black women and men on how to take care of and embrace their natural locks with highquality product recommendations, professional advice and a supportive community. But before they could start that journey, the co-founders had to smooth out their own differences. “I think in the beginning, more than becoming a business, we had to become friends,” recalls Cook. “You need that psychological safety of working together as a team so you can do anything.” Lee is in full agreement. “When you go into business together, it’s like you’re getting married to that person!” she exclaims. “You’re signing a contract together.” Lee and Cook now have the kind of dynamic that allows them to build on each other’s thoughts without having to finish each other’s sentences. Instead of one trying to take charge of the conversation, they grant space so the other can also share her ideas. However, like most partnerships, it’s an ease that came only after a lot of hard work. In this case, it was their actual homework. “We spend the first month and a half on leadership and trust,” explains Rubén Cantú, the executive director of the office of Inclusive Innovation and Entrepreneurship and the creator of the Product Prodigy Institute. “I’m not teaching them about accounting and balance sheets. I’m teaching them how to work through conflict. Everything is built on trust.” The Product Prodigy Institute is a competitive program that discards methods of traditional business classes—which often train students how to work for someone else in a corporation—and instead throws them feet first into the waters of entrepreneurship. To get in the program, students need to show the ability to think quickly, pivot when needed, embrace failure and be comfortable with discomfort. Skills that have proved especially crucial in the middle of a pandemic. When Lee and Cook first paired up in class, their business idea was a curated subscription box full of natural hair-care products and styling tools, made especially for Black women in their same situation. They knew it would not only fill a gap in the market but tap into a highly profitable industry. According to a 2018 Nielsen data report, Black consumers spend 9 times more than non-Black consumers on ethnic hair and beauty products, and spend $473 million per year on all hair-care products, not counting expenses at a salon.

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Photos courtesy of Remane.

D’azhane Cook and Ariel Lee, co-founders of Remane

Jess Gaffney, CEO and executive director of BEAM

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Lee and Cook’s idea took off. They won their first pitch competition at UT Austin and were accepted into the highly competitive Target Accelerators program. They found the products they wanted and the customers willing to buy. But just as they were about to place their first order with a factory in China, the world economy came to a standstill. COVID-19 caused a massive rupture in the supply chain and left Lee and Cook at a crossroads—give up or get creative. As they modified their presentations for mentors and investors in a secret room at the Capital Factory in downtown Austin, Lee and Cook knew the future of beauty would be datadriven and decided that would also have to be the future of Remane. The co-founders didn’t know much about leveraging data yet, but they knew by learning how to gather it and use its power, they could provide a unique service to their customers by giving them highly individualized recommendations, regimens and product tips for their specific hair needs at a fraction of what it would cost consumers to get those services from a haircare professional. “During the process we were like, ‘Okay, I

REMANE AT A GLANCE: Website: remane.co Current users: approximately 100 Service: Individualized and data-driven hair and skin product recommendations and hair-care regimens for Black women and men.

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think this is what we’re going to do, this is the logical next step,’” says Cook. “But there was a lot of panic, imposter syndrome, especially when we didn’t have a product yet.” They got right to work, learning how to gather data and harness artificial intelligence into a system that could grow with the company. Cook, in her element with numbers and spreadsheets, built the site, as Lee got to work on design and marketing. They joined a women in AI group to learn how to “game-ify” tools on the site to better engage consumers, while also building a roster of hair-care professionals and dermatologists who could step in as an added resource for customers who require more in-depth consultations for specific issues. Instead of buying or creating their own products, the duo decided one income stream could come from earning revenue through their recommendations of products that met their standards for health and performance, while another could come from premier subscriptions with more elevated services. “We are incorporating habit tracking as well as stylist and hair professionals into the platform,” says Lee. “Our goal

Cost: Free for basic membership and recommendations, $7/month or $60/annually for premier membership and access to more tools.

“” I think in the beginning, more than becoming a business, we had to become friends. You need that psychological safety of working together as a team so you can do anything.

Looking back at your entrepreneurial journey, what’s something you wish you would have known or done differently? Lee: Hire slow, fire fast. I wish we would have known how to fire people faster. A lot of companies die because they don’t know who is not serving them. I also wish we would have gotten our first dollar a little bit faster. I think we had this idea [that] we didn’t deserve to make money yet. We were intimidated by it because it’s hard, but that’s why you should do it. Cook: I think invest in the people in your team. Get to know each other as individuals. We had situations where we worked with people, and it felt more transactional. It wasn’t the best for the company or for us. I think if I could go back I would think about our team differently. Reframe how I see the relationship. How hard is it to raise capital? What have been your strategies? Cook: We bootstrapped it from the beginning. We specifically sought out programs where we could develop our skills and programs with grants and funding, for no equity. When it came to getting help, we would encourage college students or recent grads to work with us to get real-world projects for their resumes. We were part of a program through Bubble where we got some help from a developer. What is your next goal for Remane as you grow your customer base and refine your product offering? Lee: We are working on obtaining 1,000 true fans. We are stress-testing and trying to improve our conversion rate from free to paid accounts. Cook: Influencer marketing will be an important part of our scaling. Right now it’s about building relationships, supporting people, growing our community.

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“” Hair isn’t just hair. It’s a part of your identity. There is a cultural element, a scientific element and a health element.

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is to be able to get you a 30-minute meeting once a month [with a professional] who can help you with your regimen. Dermatologists, trichologists—I think these are professionals people wish they had access to, but they feel too intimidated.” However, unlike selling a tangible product and getting paid upon delivery, Lee and Cook have had to develop patience as they put all their time into creating a system they hope one day many people will be willing to pay to use. It’s been a lengthy and challenging process—learning new technical skills, applying for grants to help fund their company’s development and modifying their product based on consumer feedback. All of this while also holding down full-time jobs. “Whenever you’re doing something new, it’s going to be painful and it’s going to suck,” admits Lee. “But you’ve got to embrace the suck. You’ve got to believe in yourself more than others doubt you.” The recent university graduates are wise beyond their years, having experienced the difference between ideas and reality, and the huge leap it takes to go from one to the other. Caught up in the momentum of media attention, incubator programs and mentors flush with advice, both Lee and Cook have come to realize one of the most important skills for business and life is setting personal boundaries. “Once we understood that the

“” We want to do multiple things, and that includes reframing the conversation about Black and Afro hair in our society through an engaged community.

rat race other people are running doesn’t have to be our own and we don’t always have to take the advice we get, we started being a lot happier and more content with our journey.” Neither woman set out to become an entrepreneur. Cook studied business and technology with the aim to have job security within a good corporation. Lee studied art, wanting to showcase her creativity to the world. When they both made it into the Product Prodigy Institute program, they didn’t imagine it would change the course of their lives. But after experiencing small wins and seeing enthusiasm around their ideas, they both started to see themselves as more than just good employees. They saw themselves as business leaders who could grow a corporation of their own while also performing a social good—helping women like themselves embrace their natural hair with healthy products and regimens. By doing that, they believe societal standards will change to be more inclusive for all. It’s the dream outcome Rubén Cantú envisioned when he created his program. “Our real purpose is to cultivate the next generation of leaders in our community that are of diverse backgrounds,” he says. “We don’t just want them to take a seat at the table; we want them to make a new table.” In order to keep the Product Prodigy Institute funded, Cantú has to continuously fundraise, sharing success stories like Lee and Cook’s to pique potential donors’ interest. To keep building Remane, the women have to do their own fundraising, reaching out to grant programs and incubators to get capital without having to give up equity so early in the game. Working with a shoestring budget, they are in the process of building a strong relationship with their current customers through hosting webinars, connecting them with hair-care specialists and dermatologists nationwide and building an open database of resources that evaluates and scores beauty product ingredients so consumers are more educated about what they’re using. “There is a lack of data out there for Black hair-care products,” says Cook. “We have to create that data and bring awareness to how unregulated the hair-care industry is. There are reports about some of the chemicals in our hair-care products that can even cause breast cancer.” Other vital data they’re collecting at the moment is from their own customers, as they discover what people need and want rather than trying to guess what will succeed. It’s meant putting their own assumptions aside and listening to the consumers they’re trying to serve. Just as they learned how to listen to each other. “I would love to see us as a hub for hair,” says Cook. “Hair isn’t just hair. It’s a part of your identity. There is a cultural element, a scientific element and a health element. We want to do multiple things, and that includes reframing the conversation about Black and Afro hair in our society through an engaged community.”

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THE FEED

AND, OF COURSE, THERE IS JOY

Urban Roots Food and Leadership Fellow Lynn Huynh finds joy in connecting with the land. BY LYNN HUYNH

began our mornings with. As part of Urban Roots’ Food and Leadership Fellowship, my cohort spent the spring semester planting seeds and harvesting hundreds of pounds of vegetables on an urban farm. Much of this produce would go toward supporting food equity in Austin. This is work that we would celebrate with stretch circles, childhood games and TikTok dances. On this particular Thursday, I led our celebration with a clap, known as the Unity Clap, not only to applaud our cohorts’ labor and love in tending the land, but also to unite us with the histories that came before us. The Unity Clap is a solidarity practice that emerged from the United Farm Workers to bridge Filipinx and Latinx farm workers in their fight for better working conditions and increased wages. We begin the Unity Clap by beating at our own pace. At first it sounds chaotic and mismatched, until we begin to listen to one another and fall into the same rhythm. This transcended the difference in language barriers and cultural backgrounds, creating solidarity in United Farm Workers’ fight for better working and thus living conditions, as well as safety in one another’s commitment toward food justice. Thinking back, I can’t help but think about how our iteration of the Unity Clap reunites us with the generations of farm workers. In a pandemic that seems never ending, with a labor shortage where service workers continue to strike, at a time when our food system is forever impacted by climate change, I find myself thinking about how the only act of permanence is our reliance on each other and our capacity to build the futures we deserve. This past year has seen the erection of community fridges in neighborhoods, a renewed interest in agricultural work and strikes across all vantage points of the food labor system. Everyone has a place in this movement toward liberation from systems of oppression. For me, working in food justice is the realm where I do my part alongside the many other leaders, laborers and educators who paved the way. I imagine, grow and write about food until every neighborhood is able to practice their right to access, grow and eat the foods they have the sovereignty to. But I do it with you. At Urban Roots, I am part of that system. Urban Roots is a nonprofit urban farm that produces over 40,000 pounds of sustainable produce each year through a multitude of practices: crop rotation, no chemical pesticides and the use of compost. Half of the total produce is sold through CSA (Community Support Agriculture) shares and wholesale to support the youth programming, but the other half goes straight to fellow community organizations—such as Serafina, Go Austin/Vamos Austin and Out Youth—that deliver fresh, sustainable produce to Austin citizens who live in food-insecure environments (which are grievously created and maintained by positions of power in corporations and governments). Above all, Urban Roots uses land stewardship and service as platforms to uplift high school and college-aged youth such as myself. From local agricultural coalition building to global food sovereignty, 48 | AUSTIN WOMAN | JUNE 2021

my education from Urban Roots’ programming has taught me how to value and participate in every aspect of the food system. This knowledge has transformed me into someone who is more critical of the world around us and more observant of how food moves from the land, to our hands, to our tables. In more personal ways, being on the farm has taught me how to be with myself, how to quell my anxiety, how to find solace in the empty pathways between the crop beds. And, of course, there is joy. I find an abundance of joy working with the earth, surrounded by the stillness of the sky and the laughter of my fellows. Here, we not only learn how to work with community partners, educate visitors of the farm, work alongside one another and take care of crops. We also learn how to build collective care and celebrate our relationships with ourselves, with each other, with our land. In a world that requires me to minimize myself in the spaces I navigate, every day spent at Urban Roots is a practice of celebrating myself.

Photo by Delaney Harris.

The sound of our claps echoed across the 3.5 acres of land that we

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ON THE MONEY

HOW STUDENTS CAN START SAVING

Time is on your side for financial success. BY JENNY HOFF

If you’re heading to college in the fall, you’re probably already getting in the mode of either saving money to pay off your loans or figuring out how you’re going to earn money while also taking on several classes. The good news is if you are thinking about your finances right now, you’re ahead of the game. You can start planning early and learn how to avoid making common college mistakes that can lead to insurmountable debt and financial stress. Here are some ways you can get a head start on financial stability.

TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE ECONOMIC ENVIRONMENT.

If you’ve driven around Austin lately, you may have noticed a huge percentage of stores and restaurants are hiring, with starting rates much higher than the minimum wage. For many small-business owners, one of the biggest problems they are facing is finding good employees, which means it’s a great time to be looking for a part-time job. If you have an idea of what you want to study in college, this may be a good time to both earn money and get in some experience in your field of choice, since there is such a demand for entry-level positions. OPEN A ROTH IRA AND CONTRIBUTE TO IT.

One of the first lessons that should be taught in high school is the power of compound interest. You have a huge advantage if you invest money into the stock market when you are young. If you open a Roth IRA through a company like Fidelity or Charles Schwab, you can contribute up to $6,000 per year after taxes into the account. When you take that money out in 30 years, you pay no taxes on what it earned. For example, let’s say you figure out a way to contribute the $6,000 allowed every year for 10 years (from 20 years old to 30 years old), contributing a total of $60,000 over that time period and then never invest another penny. When you go to take that money out 30 years later, your $60,000 will have turned into about $500,000. And you won’t have to pay any more taxes on that amount. It is the closest you can get to producing money out of thin air, so take advantage of it if you can. Your future self will be extremely grateful. HARNESS YOUR CURRENT SKILLS.

Are you a good pianist? Charge $40 per hour to parents eager to get their kids musical instruction. Are you great at math or writing or science? Offer your tutoring services for $25 per hour. Maybe you love mowing lawns or gardening. People are willing to pay big bucks to offload those chores on eager workers. Join Facebook groups in your area, get on the Nextdoor app and market your services so you can put more hours into your college studies while still making great money. AVOID CREDIT CARDS; OPT FOR PREPAID CARDS INSTEAD.

You need to consider credit card purchases as a rare event instead of your go-to source of money. Countless people have left college not just with a degree and massive student loans, but also thousands of dollars in credit card debt, making their first venture into adulthood stressful and scary. Whatever you put on your credit card you should pay off in full every single month to avoid mounting debt, accumulating interest and bad credit scores. A great way to avoid overspending is to use prepaid cards or debit for purchases so you won’t get any surprise bills in the mail that you can’t pay. Learning some basics like budgeting, investing and saving can set you up for success the day you graduate. How much you eventually earn isn’t as important as how you use the money you earn. Plenty of high-wage workers end up in debt because they never learned basic money management. Give yourself a money crash course before starting school and you’ll ace your financial future no matter what career you decide to pursue.

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