We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Lishawn Alexander a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Lishawn, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today. Let’s kick things off with a hypothetical question – if it were up to you, what would you change about the school or education system to better prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career?
Youth and Adolescents need career exploration and opportunities. Often, youth and adolescents are only familiar with the very common careers: teachers, doctors, lawyers, and other blue collar jobs. I think exposing youth and adolescents to a world beyond these typical occupations is so important to their development. It was only until I got to College that I really felt exposure to other Career pathways and I believe that if we give youth and adolescents this insight earlier, they will be more open to unique career options and not so limited.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers?
My name is Lishawn Alexander and I am the CEO and owner of both Lishawns Consulting and Lishawns Cupcakes, LLC. For many years have been dedicated to building and enhancing the community’s capacity to create positive, lasting social change in government and beyond. With a deep commitment to providing much needed support to local nonprofits to achieve better governance, financial management, and legal compliance to improve the overall strength and sustainability of the entire community, my company Lishawns Consulting was formed as a result of this industry expertise. Our clients primarily reach out to us to support them with incorporating, governance and management decisions as well as contract management support. Lishawns Cupcakes, LLC, our cupcake and catering service area was established first in 2012 and its d/b/a Lishawns Consulting in 2019. For additional biographical information, you can visit our companies website at www.lishawnsconsulting.com or www.lishawnscupcakes.com
In addition to running my two companies, I have the pleasure of being a part of the CUNY- Medgar Evers College Adjunct Faculty since the Spring 2017 teaching students in the Public Administration Department how to effectively advocate for effective social change and be a part of the decision-making community. Most recently, working with the Department Chair, Dr. Zulema Blair, to support interns with additional professional development support, career planning, and coaching.
Prior to being a business owner, worked as a Senior Analyst for the New York City Mayor’s Office, where I had the opportunity to plan and develop PASSPort, HHS Accelerator, and Nonprofits communication content, strategy, scripts, and best practices for key stakeholders. Both our brands content and service delivery has been of high quality and we will continue to do so as we grow. Our service delivery has our customers and clients at the center and we embraced, celebrate, and exude success.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
COVID-19 was definitely a test of our resilience and I can say that we have been able to overcome many of the challenges associated with it. Our company was one year in business when COVID-19 happened. We were setting our organization’s foundation and doing a lot of in person marketing and personal one on one connections at events. Within a couple of weeks, I had fully transitioned both of my businesses online. For our consulting business we set up a virtual office to keep in touch with my team and clients and for the cupcake business allowed for online purchases. Prior, we did not have any online presence, but today we have a website, several social media channels and have developed a strong email marketing system to remain connected. Though we did lose a lot of our catering business services that were cancelled as a result of the pandemic, we remained present through all our communication channels and to this day continue to have smaller more personalized cupcake orders.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
During COVID-19 everyone had to pivot. First, pivoting to a virtual and online service company. Quickly becoming the experts for our clients to follow and then offering some digital marketing services as part of our service delivery. Moreover, helping our clients also develop their digital branding and online presence in the new normal.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://lishawnsconsulting.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lishawnsconsulting/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LishawnsConsulting
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lishawns-consulting/
- Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/lishawnconsult?lang=en
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2IBD_qUN64yf5JCh0xpJIA?app=desktop
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/lishawns-consulting-brooklyn
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@lishawnsconsulting