We were lucky to catch up with Kristen Newsome recently and have shared our conversation below.

Kristen, appreciate you joining us today. Almost all entrepreneurs have had to decide whether to start now or later? There are always pros and cons for waiting and so we’d love to hear what you think about your decision in retrospect. If you could go back in time, would you have started your business sooner, later or at the exact time you started?

I would probably say I wish I had started a business sooner than I did. I waited to become an empty nester before focusing on my dream of becoming an entrepreneur and pursuing my vision of creating a mentoring program for young women. I am currently looking at expanding that entrepreneurial vision to include curriculum development, books, professional development courses and executive coaching for educators, nonprofits and youth-based organizations that serve BIPOC students.

Why would I have started a business sooner? When you are young, you have a MUCH longer runway to make mistakes and recover from them! Today, there are so many communities of practice, support organizations, and resources for women in business that make it much easier to start a business earlier in life and career. Although I say that I wish I had started earlier, the reality is that many of these resources did not exist earlier in my life/career. Many of these resources evolved as a result of disparities and lack of representation of women in these spaces, and the realization that support was needed to bridge the gap in access.

Like many women, my aspirations took a back seat to raising and supporting a family, sacrificing the great for the stable good, and ensuring that I had a consistent income, aka a job! In retrospect, I could have had a different mindset about risk, and believed in myself and the level of success I could have as an entrepreneur to create the life I wanted for myself and my family. This is why the power of mentorship, especially for women, is so important to me. Perhaps conversations with women who were living the life I aspired to would have completely changed my life and the trajectory of my future outcomes. Now, my life’s challenges have informed my message and I work to create opportunities for mentorship and an expanded view of possibilities for the girls we serve.

Kristen, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am the Founder and Executive Director of My Sister’s Keeper Success Institute (MSKSI), Inc. a nonprofit youth development and mentoring program founded in 2017 and based in Southwest Riverside County. Every day I am a warrior for the quality education, well-being, and gender/racial/social equity of girls who are also Black Indigenous People Of Color (BIPOC). Early in life, I struggled as a young woman of color feeling alone in my quest to reach my dreams, challenging the status quo as a Black woman with entrepreneurial dreams when I saw little representation, and struggling to maintain a healthy relationship with myself and others. I pour my passion into developing mentoring programs for young women who have been historically underserved and underrepresented in high-growth industries such as STEM and business ownership, and to support their social-emotional learning so they can thrive.

I founded this organization to make a significant difference in the quality of life of people often forgotten. Women of color are people who often attend to the support needs of others but are often forgotten when it comes to having the support they need to get their own social-emotional, academic, and career needs met. Often, they are on their own to figure out their path without a mentor to help them avoid pitfalls. We provide a tribe of support for these young women to see themselves reflected in their mentors and to get the support, encouragement, and strategic guidance needed to achieve career and personal fulfillment. This is one of the greatest privileges of my life, and I am proud to have founded this organization. I know I speak for our whole team when I say how very blessed WE are by the young women we get to work with. It gives us all hope for a better tomorrow.

While women have made a difference in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, in 2022, BIPOC women are still the most underrepresented in STEM education and high-demand STEM careers and receive the least amount of funding for business startups. My Sister’s Keeper Success Institute elevates girls’ future employability and creates opportunities for innovative enterprises to be launched with support from experienced mentors and a supportive community. I founded MSKSI with these young women in mind before the racial justice movement ignited in communities across the country and compelled teachers to think about ways to better support students of color. We offer solutions to create alternative futures for young women who are currently the most disadvantaged because of skills, access, and opportunity gaps. The pandemic has created an even greater divide between BIPOC girls and their access to educational attainment, and greater representation in high-growth, higher-income earning career paths. BIPOC students are severely affected by the COVID-19 virus and bear the brunt of its psychological and socioeconomic effects, compounding the impact of the educational inequities faced pre-pandemic.

MSKSI focuses on three initiatives: Closing the skills, access, and exposure gap for young women in BIPOC communities; Normalizing gender/race inclusive narratives; Facilitating safe and respectful student-centered spaces. Because of the intersectionality of race and gender, specific attention to the educational and social-emotional needs of BIPOC girls is critical.  It’s important to provide girls with a learning environment where they are regarded through an asset-based, rather than a deficit-based lens, as well as a classroom environment that is student-centered and emotionally safe, AND mentors and staff who relate to and empathize with their lived experience. All of that is just as important as providing a space that is physically safe.

The holistic and multi-dimensional approach to well-being for BIPOC girls is something that differentiates MSKSI from many girl-focused programs. We accomplish these initiatives currently through three main programs; STEAM Mentoring, Career, Entrepreneurship, and Life Skills Mentoring; and Personal Development Mentoring Programs.

• STEAM Mentoring prepares girls to think and problem-solve for the challenges of the future. STEAM ties the various disciplines of STEM together with the Arts and brings reality into the classroom, especially through activity-based learning and hands-on experimentation. Creativity is encouraged as a method for STEAM learning. MSKSI organizes the STEAM Mentoring program under four learning pathways to help students explore a variety of STEM careers: Saving the Planet (Environmental Science Pathway); Helping People Live Healthy Lives (Life Sciences Pathway); Connecting People & Information (Technology Pathway); How Things Work (Engineering & Mathematics Pathway).
• The Career, Entrepreneurship & Life Skills Mentoring Program (CELS) guides girls to explore entrepreneurship, initiate and advance education, vocation, and career planning and helps girls acquire and fine-tune practical skills that will be useful for life, such as financial literacy, business communication, and sales.
• The Personal Development Mentoring Program (MSKSI School of Awake) focuses on social-emotional learning and supports girls to develop the personal competencies needed to effectively communicate ideas and feelings, develop healthy relationships with themself and others, embrace their authentic selves, develop habits of mindfulness and a growth mindset, and learn strategies for self-care.

Accomplishments:
We have had some amazing accomplishments in 2022 that we are very proud of. My Sister’s Keeper Success Institute (MSKSI) was selected for funding by the California Commission on the Status of Women and Girls as part of the Women’s Recovery Response Grant Program! We received a $25,000 grant for the purpose of capacity building. The California Commission on the Status of Women and Girls received over 630 grant applications for its first-of-its-kind grant opportunity dedicated to Women’s Pandemic Recovery Response but selected only 120 to fund. These included local women’s commissions and government entities to establish and expand women’s commissions, and nonprofits serving women and girls. Funds were awarded to organizations serving women who have been disproportionately affected economically by the ongoing pandemic including but not limited to low-income, unemployed, or underemployed, AIAN, BIPOC, LGBTQIA, unhoused, rural, disabled, senior, and veteran populations. The process was extremely competitive, and we are so blessed to have been selected and supported to continue our mission for young women in California.

My Sister’s Keeper Success Institute (MSKSI) was also selected for a $5,000 grant from SheAngels Foundation in Los Angeles, CA for our work with young BIPOC women and our mission to inspire them to be bold, confident world changers through STEAM & Career Mentoring and Personal Development. We attended a high tea and award ceremony and were introduced as the recipients of the competitive grant and presented with a check during the event. SheAngels is a powerful movement creating a big impact to meet the critical need for funding women and girls’ causes. SheAngels awards grants to female-founded and operated non-profit organizations that provide mentorship, funding, training, and advancement resources to girls and women. We were so proud to accept this award and how it will support even more girls to participate in our upcoming STEAM Engineering Academy in September!

MSKSI has established a Memorandum Of Understanding with University Lab Partners (ULP) and Children’s Hospital of Orange County for participation in the Medical Innovation Research and Entrepreneurship Program (virtual) this summer and received over $81,000 of in-kind donation of services! The program lasts three weeks and will include an in-person tour of the ULP wet lab facility on the last day of the program. Student teams will work with industry mentors to solve real-world unmet clinical needs, devising a proof of concept, intellectual property/patent strategy, and pitch to industry leaders on the final day. This program is fully grant-funded for MSKSI participants and is targeting recruitment for girls most underrepresented in STEM fields.

MSKSI Personal Development Program will be hosting our 5th annual MSKSI School of Awake Summer Camp in person this year. We are excited to support these young women as they learn more about how to stand out and shine in that unique, authentic way that only they can. At MSKSI School of Awake, we are building a tribe of strong, sensitive, dynamic young women that are not afraid to be themselves and make a difference for good in the world. This camp will be in session June 6-10, 2022.

We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.

I met the co-founder of our Personal Development and Career Entrepreneurship & Life Skills Programs, Dr. Tumona Austin, at a previous place of employment over 7 years ago. We both had lived experiences as women of color in which we were underestimated and overlooked in our careers, challenged within our higher education journeys, and struggled with belonging. We connected over our shared passion for mentoring while talking about how different things could have been in our lives if we had a strong mentorship network of women to encourage, uplift, and guide us along the way.

These discussions turned into lunch/brainstorming sessions and later full masterminds where we began planning the vision, mapping out the process, and starting to enlist other women to help us bring the vision to pass. We talked for hours on end about what we wanted to create for young women, and exactly how we planned to create the change we wanted to see. We walked together through her discouraging experience of pursuing her doctorate degree when others told her she didn’t have what it took. Fast forward to the day that my husband and I, her friends, family, and supporters finally cheered in the stands at her graduation, as she walked across the stage to receive her Doctorate in Education!

The best support is reciprocated, and with my cofounder, we share and encourage each others’ successes. On the day of our ribbon-cutting ceremony, she was right by my side when My Sister’s Keeper Success Institute, Inc. became a legitimate entity, and the community came out to support us. We had finally brought the dream from the vision to execution! Having a co-founder and advocate who can partner with you, even if only with moral support, can be a game-changer and a catalyst for greatness. Every year, our vision expands and we get more capacity to reach more young women. Women do tend to thrive in communities, and we have found that strong community support helps translate visions into reality, and keeps them thriving. We LOVE our MSKSI tribe!

Have you ever had to pivot?

Most of the world had to pivot during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. In many ways, the pandemic presented an opportunity for people to either get fully committed to what they were doing at all costs or to decide to shift in a different direction altogether. Life, being in isolation, gave many of us time to think about what really matters. The social injustice that we collectively witnessed thanks to media caused many of us to decide to make human rights matter and to look reflectively at what we could do to make a bigger impact and support the Black lives that seemed to be the target at that moment, and in truth, that has been targeted by insidious racism and abuse since their arrival in this country in 1619.

My pivot was to look at ways to serve the neediest and most underserved in our target market during the pandemic. We moved from an activity fee-based structure to fee waivers, utilizing grants and funding sources to cover costs. Moving online with our classes, workshops, and even our young women’s leadership conference was a complete pivot from building the community through face-to-face connection, and we learned very quickly how to do it successfully. COVID definitely changed life for all of us, but some of us got more entrenched in purpose and intention with regard to our businesses and priorities. I am thankful for that opportunity and it has forever changed me and helped me further define my intention for a business that inspires transformational change.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.msksi.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/msksiinc
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/msksiinc
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristennewsome/
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/msksiinc
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCA98HCgFzD70lTbPgHyWPlA