We recently connected with Jessenia Rios and have shared our conversation below.

Jessenia, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. One of the most important things small businesses can do, in our view, is to serve underserved communities that are ignored by giant corporations who often are just creating mass-market, one-size-fits-all solutions. Talk to us about how you serve an underserved community.

Once becoming entrepreneurs a few years back, myself and co-founders Natalie and Alexandra, noticed the lack of authenticity and connection in many of the networking events we were attending. We truly felt that the struggle was real and not many people at these events looked like us or shared in our struggles. We decided to create a safe space of our own and ⁠Women Who Thrive was born. Women Who Thrive provides physical and mental fitness services to young girls in public schools and empowers women to take action.

We started hosting free events with the mission of sharing real stories and growing our female network while being intentional about self care. However, we wanted to give back and for our network to feel like part of a larger mission. Therefore, we launched our first youth empowerment program called Girls Who Thrive. We wanted to help younger girls by providing mentors that would guide them in their early journey of self esteem building and physical wellness. Our program is created to empower young girls to prioritize their mental and physical wellbeing, while creating a safe space that encourages self-love. We implement our program by partnering with middle schools in NYC. A big part of our #girlswhothrive curriculum is learning how to honor our bodies as they are. We want our girls to learn how to feel good inside and embrace themselves and their journey. We create movement through dance and yoga so we can connect to our bodies while increasing our intuition and creativity.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am one of the Founders of Lola & tots, a cultural education center redefining work-life balance with a new way to work and play that benefits the entire family. Offering membership-based childcare with co-working benefits, enrichment programming, open play, event space and more. Upon opening my new endeavor, myself and fellow entrepreneurs Natalie Rios and Alexandra Macias, wanted to find a space where we can connect with female entrepreneurs within an authentic and safe space. We felt that through a network, we could foster our own self-care, during the rollercoaster that is entrepreneurship. What we found was that there were few spaces like this for 1. women, 2. women of color and 3. especially women who came from a very modest background. Wellness and self-care was just not something we could find for our demographic. We decided to create that space and founded Women Who Thrive.

I am most proud of our Girls Who Thrive programming. Thus far, we have partnered with 3 schools in NYC and serviced over 100 young girls, with 98% identifying as black and brown. We have been able to create a robust program where the girls feel seen and heard and learn the right tools for taking control of their own well-being. The girls are able to empower themselves through both physical and mental fitness. Furthermore, our network of women have the power to give back and feel like they are part of a bigger mission.

I want people to know that starting a nonprofit as women of color is no easy task. We typically do not have the network, background or safety net that is required. However, no one can relate to the mission at hand more than we can because we are the people we are servicing. We come from the same background and therefore are fully aware of how important our missions are. We recognize the gaps from our lives and our pasts and try to fill them with our mission. Our passion in our purpose is huge and that is why our supporters mean the world to us and we are extra extra grateful for them.

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

One of the things we had to quickly unlearn was how to not do too much all at once. In the beginning, we wanted to help bring wellness to so many women and young girls through various programming. It became a huge challenge especially for a small nonprofit. Grant-writing and fundraising are enormous tasks and then when you are trying to raise funds for so many programs, it can really deplete your resources and network. We learned that it’s best to focus first on the programming you feel most aligns with your mission.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

We built Women Who Thrive by doing the following:

1. Focus on a pattern/flow
2. Focus on your mission
3. Be authentic to yourself and followers
4. Engage, engage, engage!
5. Post at least once a day
6. People want to see you, post your daily-to-day, events, etc.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.women-thrive.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/women_who_thrive/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/womenwhothrive.org
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/women-who-thrive/