We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ashley Valentine. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ashley below.

Ashley, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

Being inside of a bookstore, hugged by books and exploring the world as viewed through the eyes of the characters between the pages of books has always brought me great joy and helped expose to me life outside of my city and neighborhood. As I worked through my final semester of graduate school, majoring in Special Education and Reading, I began to truly envision myself outside of the traditional classroom and instead as a business owner supporting families and connecting the urban youth to stories that resonate with their lived experiences. I genuinely appreciated the unique opportunity that teaching provided me to connect with students and their parents. But I knew that the structure of school and education from a school -based approach was limiting to many parents who’d experienced trauma around education and to families who may have struggled to navigate success from a school-based lens. It took a few extra years to do my due diligence and finally, I decided what better time than the present to take a risk! I’d found the perfect location, signed a lease and am in the early stages of building out my dream oasis for Black and Brown youth of Milwaukee. Rooted MKE is the second black owned bookstore and newest BIPOC centered children’s bookstore in the state of Wisconsin. We are also the only black owned makerspace in the state. I think it is critical that urban youth both see themselves in the pages of books and read varied narratives of what it means to be a black, or brown protagonist. There are not many spaces that are dedicated to black and brown youth. I want to change that. After 4 years of researching, building knowledge & relationships through working within the STEM education field, business planning and slowly building a solid foundation; It feels impactful to share my dream for my community with the amazing youth of my beloved city at the forefront!
Now with its shelves filled with books and the sound of laughter and curiosity in the air, I can proudly say that Rooted MKE is up and running! My dream has become a reality. We offer many opportunities for empowering growing young minds such as children’s titles that feature protagonists of color, tutoring services, exploration classes and author events. Whether it’s a gloomy or warm sunny day, the author events are always a fun time. Once a month families gather around and enjoy a read-aloud, activities, food, and signed copies from the featured author.
I’ve often thought about how it’s always important to expose the families and the children to the characters because a Black or brown person doesn’t look any singular way. It’s important to recognize and spotlight that with the children as well. We can’t assume that because a book is written for a child that they’re able to access it or that they have the foundational skills to be able to read it and truly tap into what the author is trying to convey. When I envisioned Rooted MKE, I saw it as a safe space that is truly centered around literacy and supporting literacy development and that is exactly what it is today. These unique opportunities will help to support literacy of levels by enriching and encouraging children on their developmental journey. The Rooted MKE space also gives families the opportunity to connect and be part of a community with common goals and interests in mind.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am a mother, wife and business owner. I graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee with a Masters in Expectational Education and Reading (undergrade degree in Sociology). I was formally a special education teacher and STEM manager. I have an almost two and a four year old. As a teacher, my last year in the classroom I constantly thought about how I could do more outside of the confines of working in a public school district. I saw daily, that the students I served had great needs centered around literacy and math and it seemed like we were simply scratching the surface as it related to providing the services needed to truly see significant gains. I began to work with my graduate school advisory team to explore how I could support youth and their families from a community lens to truly impact the lives of youth and their families.
I am the owner of Rooted MKE. Rooted MKE is a BIPOC centered children’s bookstore and literacy exploration space in Milwaukee, WI. We are a destination where families are welcomed to shop our curated selection of titles for children ranging from infants to middle grade. We carry books that spotlight and amplify BIPOC characters, exclusively, in multi-faceted ways. We also curate literacy experiences with the mission of getting youth excited about what they read and engaged in their reading to support comprehension. We also offer small group and one-on-one academic support to increase access to literacy and solve illiteracy and low academic achievement issues that drastically impact Black and Brown youth.
I am most proud about our tutoring and literacy programming. It is truly life changing when a child and their family are able to experience literacy success and make gains in reading. We know that literacy rates are indicators of future success in real world ways. When a student is able to advance and gain literacy confidence, they are able to serve and contribute the world around them from a position of strength.
Rooted MKE is strongly aligned to our mission of amplifying Black and Brown voices and we are always thinking about how to serve our commnunity.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I have certainly had to unlearn the abundant giving of my time, products and services. As a new business, year one we were overwhelmed with requests to donate for giveaways, fundraisers, and charitable causes. I personally was inundated with requests to appear on panels, at events, to table and to contribute my subject matter expertise. What I’ve had to learn the hard way is that Rooted MKE is first a for-profit business. We have employee wages to pay, contract invoices to cover, retail brick and mortar overhead costs and these expenses can’t get covered if we are giving away our time, talent and expertise. Moving into 2023, we have refocused how many charitable causes we can realistically support and right now, we are unable to do so. Our goal is to ensure that we have at least 6 months of expenses saved and at that time we will revisit requests, ensuring that the ask is mission aligned and advancing our work and efforts.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

March of this year I posted a social media post about our struggles in sustaining. I personally was exhausted and hadn’t gotten an opportunity to work on the business instead of in the business daily, since we’d opened in March of 2022. I’d met with a business consultant who suggested that I close the bookstore because it wasn’t generating sufficient revenue to sustain the weight of a team or to scale and during that meeting, I couldn’t identify a path for financial sustainability. From my desk, I posted about our situation and asked for community support. That was one of the most vulnerable moments I’ve shared with our community and the response was overwhelming with support. The post went viral. From that post I now am working with a team to analyze our strategic plan and fine tune our processes and procedures, I’ve established a non-profit to support our work, Rooted In Community, have established a board of directors and on the for profit side have established a board of advisors. I have humbly submitted to the fact that my dream for Rooted MKE is enormous and in order to see if fully realized in a way that is both financially sustainable and sustainable for the health of myself and my family it is truly going to take a community effort.
We are reshaping how we deliver services and further carving out the niche of our product offerings to ensure that we are fully aligned with our vision and able to be a grounded literacy communal space long term. I think this is a clear example of resilience and a true belief in the value of my business and my leadership in the Greater Milwaukee Area

Contact Info:

• Website: www.rootedmke.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rooted.mke/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RootedMKE.Tutoring/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/rooted-mke/about/
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/rooted-mke-milwaukee

Image Credits
Amanda Evans Calen Nelson