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

Chlo’e , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.

Transformative Changes is a Black-woman-owned non-profit with a mission to defy the status quo in pursuit of justice and human liberation. Its work centers transformation of self, relationships, and community by tackling individual, interpersonal, institutional, and structural racism. The organization specializes in intersectionality to empower community leaders across a variety of industries to foster growth and societal progress.

A saying dubbed by Gil Scott-Heron, “the revolution will not be televised,” provokes us to realize that the true change is in one’s own mind, heart, and actions. Transformative Changes believes community is one of the building blocks of society and there is no singular approach to change.

While many organizations may tackle one component of racism or one approach to change, Transformative Changes believes everyone is needed in the social justice movement space. They center diverse approaches to tackle the multifaceted nature of racism. The organization combines expertise in healing-centered engagement, culturally-grounded creativity, and civic engagement to center people and their passions as agents in the creation of their own well-being in the social justice movement space.

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

As a black woman, the daughter of a recovering addict, and someone who has gone through Virginia’s kinship foster care system, Chlo’e Edwards specializes in all that she has gone through. She shares, “I took these lived experiences and shifted my pain to purpose – one that uplifts justice for all.”

In the beginning of her career, Edwards’ grandparents encouraged her to tell her story. As a result, she became an ambassador for kinship care, foster care, and adoption awareness. After telling her story at a Kinship Care Advocacy Day to push for the Kinship Care Guardianship Assistance Program Bill, which passed, she accepted a role on the Campaign for a Trauma-Informed Virginia advocating for trauma-informed care policy and practice. As a childhood trauma survivor, preventing or mitigating the impact of adverse childhood experiences was personal to her, but she realized communities that looked like her were not represented.

In the wake of the revitalized Movement for Black Lives, Edwards convened community leaders of color, who wanted to explicitly shift attention to the impact of cultural, racial, and historical trauma. Chlo’e launched Virginia’s first Racial Truth and Reconciliation Week, which evolved into the Racial Truth and Reconciliation Virginia Campaign, to empower historically marginalized communities in acknowledgement of truth to promote healing, reconciliation, and repair.

After simultaneously leading a local Black Lives Matter chapter and working on the national Grassroots Reparations Campaign, Edwards packed her bags and moved to the District of Columbia for a new opportunity. However, the work she was doing was not in alignment with her values. After separating from the place of employment, Edwards found herself burnt out, grappling with racial battle fatigue, and struggling to meet her basic needs.
While on the verge of a mental health crisis and experiencing the challenges of navigating the public health and social service system, she realized, while her identity was rooted in her calling towards social justice, she did not know who she was outside of that. As a result, she joined a healing-centered engagement certification cohort, learned mindful movement and breathing, and trained in social emotional learning facilitation. She realized adulthood was not a destiny free of trauma and that, in tandem with “fighting the power,” she had to fix her own family and heal from within.

Edwards revisited her roots as a major in Creative Writing, Multicultural Literature, and minor in Social Justice and began to re-engage her first love, which is poetry by coaching youth. Blending these techniques, she founded Transformative Changes with a mission to defy the status quo in pursuit of justice and human liberation by fostering transformation of self through healing-centered engagement, transformation of relationships through artivism, and transformation of community through civic engagement.

Transformative Changes inspires a journey of wholistic change by challenging the status quo in communities, relationships, and more importantly, fostering change from within.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

In 2022, Chlo’e Edwards moved for what she felt would be a wonderful career opportunity working with in the housing and economic development sector. After a couple months at the organization, she quickly realized the opportunity was not what she thought it would be. Her employer told her to focus on fitting in. She was told, “You are extraordinary not ordinary. Extraordinary does not work for everyone.”

After separating from the job, Edwards learned to create a space where people could be celebrated and not tolerated. Transformative Changes centers the butterfly, because a butterfly goes through a period of transformation, evolving from a caterpillar and eventually flying out of the cocoon. If it weren’t for this period of struggle, including struggling to pay rent, a mental health crisis, weekly counseling, and her experiences navigating the public health and social service system, the organization would not exist.

Today, Transformative Changes attracts people, who are typically experiencing a similar period of transformation, whether staffers are figuring out their purpose, experiencing a career pivot, burnt out from the traditional workforce, pursuing school, or separating from a toxic employer.

While Edwards’ period of struggle in the District of Columbia was no easy feat, hustling as an entrepreneur exposed her to a wide repertoire of ways to ignite change, whether it was teaching mindfulness and social emotional learning to youth, coaching slam poetry and mentoring youth poet laureates, or advocating for social determinants of health. Transformative Changes attracts agents of change pursuing a period of metamorphosis, and through the organization’s mission, others get to become and contribute to the change they wish to see in the world.

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

As a Black woman entrepreneur and non-profit founder, Chlo’e Edwards finds challenging the status quo to be exhausting. Black women are always “putting out fires,” and today, the fumes are louder than ever. Black-owned businesses are often underfunded, which forces leaders to navigate the execution of their vision or limit it to the next payroll.

Working within the change sector—and being a leader within it, often feels unsustainable. When asked, “Why do you work so hard? Who is setting the expectations?” Growing up, Edwards was taught that to succeed as a Black woman, you must work ten times harder and be ten times smarter than white counterparts. After facing racism and ageism in the workplace, climbing the ladder was no easy feat.

Edwards flashbacks to childhood examples of her father, who was previously incarcerated and re-entered society with no choice but entrepreneurship. Her father was a classic workaholic, and despite his background, his business became a large mortgage company with dozens of employees.

After much mental health counseling with Roots To Results Counseling LLC and business coaching with Rootspace Consulting, Edwards learned she “sets the standards.” As a result, she is learning to unlearn these trauma patterns and is committed to changing the narrative of what it means to be a Black woman and an entrepreneur.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://transformativechanges.org/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/transformativechanges
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/transformativechanges
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/transformative-changes/
• Twitter: https://x.com/_wethechange
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@thepeoplearethechange