Over the years as we connected with incredible from folks from almost every imaginable industry we realized that every nook and cranny of our economy is full of small business owners, artists and creatives who live and breathe what they do – and their stories are nothing short of heroic. It’s the immigrant parents who overcame the odds and kept their small business alive for decades allowing their next generation to thrive and the artisans who pour their passion into every piece and refuse to let even the most common items remain mundane that make our communities come alive. The stories below will inspire you and we hope you’ll take the time to read and connect with these incredible folks.

Michael Ditullo

I grew up in New York State, a little more than an hour north of New York City. It was an interesting place to grow up because I knew there was a big world out there and I knew I wasn’t in it! Getting occasional intense exposure to the New York City I think made me a lifelong observer of people, architecture, and culture. Stepping off the train in Grand Central Station was like stepping off a spaceship onto another planet. I was so lucky that when I was little we lived with my grandfather who taught me how to be kind, empathetic and curious and my Uncle Mark LaFalce who was going to art school and taught me how to draw in perspective at a very young age.  I think all of those things combined to make me the person and designer that I am today. Read more>>

Ted Levin

I was born in New York City and grew up nearby in the Hudson Valley. From an early age, I knew I wanted to be a a musician. There was never a plan b and at 13 I got my first guitar. After High School I went to The University of North Texas. Post graduation I did some sales type jobs for a few years but soon realized that was not for me. At 30 I got the guts to quit everything else and just do music. I started a band called, Space Cadet, in 2000 and we had some success until calling it quits by 2009. After the years of touring and chaotic rock and roll lifestyle I decided to switch gears and take things a little slower. I got residency as a solo act playing every weekend at the Omni Hotel in Dallas doing a ’50’s, Rockabilly gig, and soon after added a couple other guys to back me. Read more>>

Sarah Roberts

After a life of creativity, I started my brand in 2015 creating custom invitations, logos, and original watercolor paintings. I have a passion for good, unique design which has served me well in my business. In 2018 I quit my corporate job and became a full-time freelancer. Since then SarahOMaryDesigns (SOD) has evolved through many different phases, landing where I am today. These days, the focus of SOD is event paper design, small business branding, and art specifically created for paper items and textiles. I absolutely love to throw a party, and I love to design around a theme! I’ve recently also realized that I love seeing my art out in the wild, not just for my own clients. Last year I started licensing my art to other stationers and business owners. That road led to an exclusive membership where I release art monthly to a select few of 15 business owners. We are about to begin month 9 of the membership, and it has been the biggest blessing! Lastly, as a small business myself, I really enjoy helping other small business owners find their brand identity. From simple logos to full on branding kits, I help clients create something unique that stands out among a crowd! Read more>>

Richard Pickett’s Story

I got into yoyoing around 2004 and making hiphop music around 2014. For yoyoing, I got into it because of bullying and it becomng a creative outlet for my worries and problems at the time. I got into music because of my sister making poerty. I started getting into writing poetry and just followed her lead. Read more>>

Brooke Latham of Social Canvas

My path to entrepreneurship feels like it was fated from the start. I remember admiring my father’s entrepreneurial spirit from a young age, and mimicking his go-getter attitude in many aspects of my life. Luckily, I was always encouraged to follow my dreams and to not be held back by fear of the unknown. I’ve always been passionate about communications — visual, verbal, written, implied, and so on. After pursuing a degree in the visual arts, and a career in the fine art world of New York City, I came to a crossroads. While I loved the path I was on, something felt lacking. I had to look deep within to recognize that my entrepreneurial spirit was not being fed, and my greater sense of purpose was not being fulfilled. So began the start of the most incredible journey. I founded Social Canvas, a boutique digital marketing firm dedicated to helping organizations of purpose expand their impact. I help businesses grow by leveraging holistic digital marketing, and I’ve worked with many incredible clients since launching Social Canvas 5 years ago. I’ve built an talented and dedicated team, and I am inspired by my work every day. Read more>>

Eric Schmidt

I was born and raised in Lakeland, Florida. It’s a small town in between Tampa and Orlando. I signed up for drama as an elective in 8th grade just because a friend did and I loved it and then I auditioned for the performing arts high school in town after that, with a focus on theatre. After high school I took a break from theatre in college until my senior year when I took a some TV and Film production classes and then I was hooked as a performer again. I also did some voice acting classes and that professor encouraged me to make a demo to try to actually work in the field. I moved to New York after college in 2009 and my first job was as a page at the Late Show with David Letterman. I have worked in entertainment ever since. I’ve had practically every job you can have. I used to do casting for Food Network shows. I did accounting for the Good Wife. But now I’m mostly in front of the camera. I even got to work on an episode of the spinoff of the Good Wife called the Good Fight. My voice has appeared in nationally televised commercials for Natty Light, OneWheel, and Grubhub. And I recently played a wizard in a car insurance commercial. I’m performing more and more and getting bigger roles so far this year, after the strike, so I’m excited about my future. I also perform standup comedy around town AND I wrote an award nominated screenplay with a friend I’ve known since kindergarten,  Read more>>

Stephen Solomon’s Story

I am an actor and model living in Brooklyn, New York. I first started acting whenever I was very young doing youtube videos with my twin brother Jesse. The performer that I am today was always inside of me. I had a wonderful experience at Lincoln Park Performing Arts Charter School, which allowed me to grow immensely as an artist and performer. I then continued my education at Carnegie Mellon University for two years where I studied fine art and minored in drama. I finished my degree at Point Park University where I earned a BA in Performance and Practice. Throughout college I collaborated a lot with Pittsburgh artists, growing my modeling portfolio. This is what led me to getting signed with a modeling agency and moving to New York right after graduating in May of 2021 Read more>>

Sapira Cheuk

One of my first memories was drawing on my living room floor. Art has been a constant in my life, but the funny thing, I’ve tried to quit so many times. When I was growing up, I grew up with the idea that art isn’t a career and that it’s just a hobby. Being an immigrant, there’s added pressure to be a traditional example of success, and being an artist was not one of them. So, as a dutiful daughter, I tried to follow that path, but I simply could not stop making. I came to realize, that making art is a part of me that wasn’t a choice, that desire and need ALWAYS going to be there. In the last 20 years, I’ve slowly built my life around what I care about. Incorporating one new aspect of the field at a time, all while making sure I had employment that supported me. Read more>>

Sean Kosofsky of The Nonprofit Fixer

I have worked in nonprofit organizations for over 30 years. I moved from NY to CA for love and that meant leaving a great job. While on the job hunt, I decided to start consulting, but I had no idea what that meant. I started reaching out to friends and colleagues in my sector to see if they needed any support and didn’t know how to explain my value. Within a year I was way better at focusing on helping people with fundraising, creating digital courses to sell and nailing a few small clients. Then COVID Hit. I went through a marketing accelerator and that dramatically sped up my learning and focus. Read more>>

Sonya Hernandez of Recover Restore Gro

Since my earliest memories, I have been captivated by the beauty of healthy hair and all things related to it. I recognized at a young age that a woman’s hairstyle could give her an extra boost of confidence and soften her gaze. For us women, our crown is a powerful expression that is deeply personal, and at times, a sensitive topic. It’s a beautiful and complex aspect of ourselves that deserves to be celebrated and nurtured. In 1998, I joined cosmetology school with a passion for hair care. I excelled in beauty school and later began working in a clinical setting where I specialize in helping those dealing with hair loss. Throughout my life, I have been deeply intrigued by the art of scalp care and hair restoration. In February 2020, I finally decided to take matters into my own hands and created Recover Restore Gro®️ – a personal gift to women everywhere, to help them maintain, grow, and nurture healthy hair. With one line that caters to all textures, my hope is to empower women to feel confident and beautiful, long after they’ve left the styling seat. Read more>>

Erin Karp’s Story

When my dad gifted me his vintage Pentax Asahi camera in 1995, I had no idea I’d discover such magic and joy. I learned to develop film & make prints in the darkroom, a task I enjoyed and took quite seriously. I took only one photography class in college with my professor, Robin Schwartz, & my love for making photographs and developing prints in the darkroom exploded. She told me most people are either photographers or printers, not both, but that I was both. That meant so much to me & it stuck with me; my pride in making and exhibiting quality prints has never waned. Read more>>

Patricia Mitchell’s Story

I began this journey of creative arts & small business entrepreneur approximately 10 years ago but I’ve always been involved with art & furniture refinishing in one form or another since I was a teen. Ten years ago, my son left for college and I found myself a little lost so I returned to what I love. Art and Furniture Refinishing. I began doing it for myself, then friends and friends of friends until I decided to try my hand at running my own business. I began my business as Cece’s & Patsy’s and recently I took a leap of faith I changed my name, brand and relaunched my website as The Victorian Muse. Read more>>

Bex Wilkinson

Bex Wilkinson is a multimedia artist. Her main mediums are acrylic, pastel and gouache. However, she has worked in many mixed media forms including plaster casting, encaustic and recently has begun to work in the medium of fusing glass. Bex’s main drives are that of emotional, psychological and political content. Her focus on current issues, such as Transgender, Criminal Health and Pandemic have fueled her emotional expressionistic creations. After the suicide of her Beloved, Bex took on such topics as death and mortality in her subject matters. Recently her direction has been focused more on “Dead Bird” pastels: a beckoning acknowledgement of the reduction of migrant birds due to Global Warming. Bex does not get stuck in the narrative of negativity, but searches for the beauty within the terror of such grim circumstances. Read more>>

 Juliet Harrison

I grew up with a camera in my hand. Back in the days of the Kodak Brownie, through the Instamatic and then on finally to a Canon 35mm. Eventually getting a MFA in photography at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. I also grew up loving and riding horses. Stopped as a teen but resumed in my 40s. At which time I turned my cameras on to the horse as subject. Using the same modernist point of view as I did with any subject, I spent many years photographing horses in 35mm B&W film. Through my work I connected with other equine fine artists. Painters, sculptors and photographers. I built a career and network as the Black and White horse woman. Eventually opening a small studio/gallery space in an arts collective, to showcase my work. Read more>>

Ramon Gil

Okay, but I can’t promise brief. I’d always liked to draw and I was pretty good at it. So much so that it became that thing that made me feel special as kid in school. Even won a couple of awards. My art talent became the star that I hung my self worth and self esteem on. By the time it was time to go to college, I didn’t think about doing anything else. In retrospect, I think I would have enjoyed some other fields of study. Another interest that served as an aid in my younger years was comic books. It was escapist and creative. So I wanted to be a comic book artist. Within a year or so after graduating college, I was working as a comic book illustrator and, surprisingly, I found that I didn’t like it. The hours were long, the pay unlivable and the work was repetitive and isolating. What’s more, the comic book business was unstable. In 1994, the whole industry tanked. A lot of people lost their jobs. It was then that I went into advertising as a graphic designer.  Read more>>

K. Brat’s Story

I began being interested in music at about five years old. My uncle can sing so as a kid he used to give me vocal lessons and have me singing songs off the radio with my karaoke machine. I grew up at an early age knowing that I loved music, and enjoyed being on a stage rather I was dancing, singing, or acting. Throughout school from elementary to high school I was apart of the arts, step team, dance teams, marching band, concert band, choir, ballet, jazz, hip-hop. The list goes on and on. I graduated high school attending The University of Alabama at Birmingham double majoring in Nursing and Criminal Justice. Around my sophomore year of college I began rapping in small night clubs freestyling, even entering rap battles to win money. My bestfriend Diera helped me come up with a name, at first I was going by my first and middle name because I was an aspiring singer. After realizing I had the talents to rap I started going by K.Brat. The name kind of stuck and the rest is truly history. I’ve gotten pretty far with my rap career as an upcoming artist, but I know God has more for me he’s just preparing me for that moment I catch my big break. It’s a process and being successful won’t happen over night when it’s God’s plan. Read more>>

Cyndi Maurer of Into the Known | Intuitive Tarot Academy

I was very aware as a child. I often knew things about people without anyone telling me anything; I could identify other people’s feelings; & I was pretty good at anticipating people’s needs. I realized at a young age that I would sometimes see things other people didn’t see, & I quickly learned that these weren’t things you talk about. Throughout my childhood & teenage years I was always fascinated by people’s motivations, behaviors, & decisions. I enjoyed psychoanalyzing the people around me & looking for patterns in their behaviors. This early awareness & curiosity about human nature were the first signs of my intuitive abilities. I still knew things that no one told me, but I assumed it was because of my pattern recognition. (Spoiler: It wasn’t. It was me using my psychic skillset in my youth.) Read more>>

Michele Vanort Cozzens

At age 63, I have a lot of life to talk about. I am a baby boomer, the daughter of a WWII vet, and a war bride. I am the fifth of six children from an Irish-Catholic family, raised in a working-class neighborhood outside Chicago. I am also an Irish twin with a sister 11 months younger than me. Our parents were in their 40s when we came along, which means we got what was left over. My father was a hard-working, pious man. He was beautiful. He was athletic. He was intelligent and funny. Also, he was a drinker, who was emotionally and physically abusive. He was not generous with praise, affection, or financial support, and the one time I remember him commenting on my appearance, it felt more like an insult than a compliment. I was very close with my mother, however. She made up for her husband’s behavior by being completely selfless. She taught me by example to be generous, kind, and grateful. Read more>>

Noah Kaufman of Starbot Enterprises Ltd.

As an emergency room physician, I’ve always had an interest in building companies and the start up process. I’ve created businesses in the past and I’ve done deals with private equity. I got into the digital asset space in 2016 and started Investing in bitcoin and Ethereum. Unfortunately I was a part of the FTX/Voyager collapse and I lost quite a bit of my digital assets. I figured they must be a better solution so I looked in the marketplace and there really wasn’t. So I decided to build one. Now we are building the world trading platform for digital assets: Starbot. Read more>>

Britta Merwin of Fox Weather

From the beginning I was a weather nut. I was born in Texas but raised in Colorado surrounded by fascinating weather. I was the girl that loved Barbie’s dreamboat but also had one goal; sail Barbie down the storm drain in the wake of any thunderstorm. I honestly just wanted to know why and how… how is it possible for it to be warm and sunny in the 70s one day and be surrounded by snow in less than 36 hours. My journey of finding out ‘why’ was sparked and as I grew up the journey to ‘why’ turned into a mission to help keep people safe by showing them the ‘why’. I started my TV career on a rare and unique path finding myself as the morning meteorologist on the CNBC program Squawk Box when I was only 24 and now 16 years later, I’m back on national broadcast with Fox Weather thankful for the experiences I have had along the way. Read more>>

Lee Calisti of lee CALISTI architecture+design

It’s fascinating how I became an architect. The short story I tell is it chose me. Please read on. Let’s go back to 1977 when I was in fifth grade. Along with my closest school friends, I became a massive fan of Marvel Comics and spent my free time drawing my favorite characters. In 1978, for my birthday, I received the book “How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way” – the best gift – ever. Let me tell you, I was captivated by it and spent hours learning and practicing. I can’t pinpoint the exact day, but at some point, I discovered architecture; the Sunday paper would publish a “house of the week,” and I would analyze the floor plan against the elevation view. Funny what catches a kid’s eye. Looking back, I can remember drawing houses, building models, and absorbing everything related to architecture. One late 70s summer, my friend’s dad began building an addition to their home, and I was fascinated by the construction process. I remember walking through the rough framing mesmerized. That Christmas, my mother bought me a drafting board and T-square, and I started designing houses in my room while listening to Beatles music. It just felt right as an eleven-year-old. Read more>>

Deroll Scarlett

Our luxury custom made bow tie and tie accessory sets our customer apart to be an edgy individual. We pay careful attention in selecting only the best quality fabric. A TYED BY DEDE customer won’t have to worry about attending any event and having 20 people in the same tie: don’t you hate that? Lol. You pick the fabric and we’ll do the rest. No more expensive bowties, ties, tie clips, Suspenders, lapel pins and beard groom care kits. Check our feature out on Huffington Post, Brooklyn Lifestyle Magazine, Groupon and News12. Read more>>

Frank Herfort

Until my last days of school time, I had no really idea what to do after that long period of life and what to work. I was interested in too much things, but could not figure out in which direction I should go. Luckily, during an internship in a photo agency, which I had chosen accidentally, I found my path. I really like that lifestyle and attitude of all these creative people. Everyday was different in a way and I felt I could use my ideas and all interests in creating images. I did not even know, that this could be a profession until that moment. I successfully participated in a lot of photo awards and finally studied Visual Art and Photography. During my student time I could work on my own projects and freelanced parallel for a lot of photographer as assistant, where I learned absolutely a lot. It was a really magic job for me. I started working for magazines, newspapers and shot big campaigns for advertising agencies. I specialized in Advertsing, Architecture and Interior photography. Later I added my artistic work to my commercial work. This way I continue until today. Read more>>

Amira Shaunice

I’ve been a storyteller for most of my life. As a child I would write plays and force my cousins to act in them. Throughout my formative years I attended performing arts schools where I fell in love with television and film. I once wanted to be an actress but quickly learned my niche was writing and producing. After college I moved to New York to purse my filmmaking career. In 2014, I launched my first web series ‘New York Girls’ which is responsible for where I am today. I’ve since produced over 100 episodes of series. I also have an eye for talent. I love the casting process and giving people opportunities. Read more>>

Claudio Parentela

oh…my artistic career, my artistic adventure, twisted, splendid, difficult, flat, full of ups and downs…began many many years ago, around 1995. It was not an easy choice for me, I had many doubts, many fears, but I felt a strong, desperate, necessary desire to make a radical change to my life and I chose the only thing that I didn’t have and that I felt an urgent need for, my freedom. I started drawing and to paint everything, illustrations, paintings, comics….in many many zines and magazines….covers for punk, noise, metal, industrial bands….t-shirts for many underground brands….I drew like crazy every day and I sent my drawings around the world, frantically, joyfully. Read more>>

Cap Daniels

Inspired to create fiction as a high school student by an extraordinary English teacher, I fell in love with the art of storytelling and the craft of writing forty years ago, but not until a decade ago did I dare to believe I could become a professional novelist. Now, with nearly three dozen best-selling novels on shelves all over the world and a seven-figure annual royalty income, the dream still feels too good to be true. Read more>>

Malcolm T. Banks Jr. of Banks Media Connections & Da Shirtshop

My journey has been one that not too many would be able to face. From success to failures, to losing a mother and a sister, to divorce you name it, but a close father figure to me told me something one day about myself that I had never realized. He said, “Malcolm, I have watched you re-invent yourself through everything that you have been through over the years”. I pondered over that statement for days and it dawned on me that the resilience that God has anointed me with is not normal and I would not have gotten this far without him. Read more>>

Susan Campbell of education

After I got my Ph.D. in clinical psychology in 1967, I set about discovering how I could use my skills in understanding human behavior and how human systems work to create a better world. The world I saw had so much potential for being more fair, just, creative, happy, safe, and beneficial for all humans (rather than the few who are lucky enough to be born smart and rich). I turned my attention to the US education system, working as a consultant in public schools. I determined that what our educational system teaches does not really educate people in how to get along with others, how to deal with conflict and change, how to manage their emotions, how to be curious and enjoy learning, how to develop yourself into a person who knows how to cooperate, and how to develop systems (like communities and companies) that honor and protect the sanctity of life, the planet, and all beings. In my late 20’s, I wrote my first book about all this titled, Expanding Your Teaching Potential: Education for Participation in a Changing World. Read more>>

Nsw The Model

I began modeling as a child , picked it back up around my early to mid 20’s. I modeled for a company, Kidding Around doing commercials, print-work and auditioning for movies. When I returned to modeling as an adult , I hit the runway and resumed print work and commercials. Read more>>