We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kimberlee Nicole Smith a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Kimberlee Nicole, thanks for joining us today. Have you been able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?

I have been able to make a full-time living from my creative work. I didn’t recognize I was a creative or an artist until after I became a mother 10 yrs ago. By that time I had a master’s degree and career in public health, decorated combat military service, and practicing a professional coach. The turning point in my story came when I was in need some support to navigating, what I later realized was postpartum depression and anxiety. Everything that I knew professionally and the professional people in my social network couldn’t help. I needed more and had to figure it out on my own.

I started posting apology notes (Dear Elijah) to my baby boy for surely ruining his life and signing them Unfit Parenting. The random things that happen in the early days of being a first time parent had so many moments that were challenging that folks don’t tell you. There were also funny moments that you know this can’t be alright. This is how parent’s ruin the lives of their child. So I documented those moments with apology notes I posted on FB for the first 2 years of his life. They helped me find the joy spots of the season. I did it until I didn’t just didn’t any more. I was out of the dark and feeling like myself again.

When I stopped, people started reaching out to me to ask me for more. They said it helped them in their early days of being a new mom. They shared the posts with their friends. And that I should make them a book for my son and others. I didn’t do that but I realized that all I was doing was telling stories, being me, and doing public health in a way that wasn’t out there. If I needed this, other people need this. I have to create it. But I didn’t know how.

I was at the height of my career in public health at the time I found out I was pregnant with my first son. I was receiving unemployment benefits from the state when I was navigating new parenthood realizing that the field I loved didn’t have what I needed to help me now that I was on the other side of the table of the service we provided to people. I wanted to fill the gap. the solution wasn’t in a position at an company or organization. The veterans unemployment counselor told me about the Veterans Entrepreneurship Program at the University of Florida’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation Center. I didn’t know what entrepreneurship was but he said that it might help me figure out how to create my vision.

I applied and got accepted. That was in 2014. The first day of the intensive emersion phase changed my life. I was told that an entrepreneur is a creative problem solver. A change maker. Entrepreneurship is not about starting a business or making profit. Entrepreneurs recognize needs, gaps and opportunities that exist and create solutions to make life livable for others. The cast vision of that solution to attract resources and talented people to develop, launch and grow the vehicle delivering the solution. It was about starting something. It was a mindset and a way of life. You can create a business but you can also create a program, project, a movement or run your household or be a leader in your community. I was a creative. These are things I’ve always done and didn’t know why I felt like a square in a sea of round holes. The round pegs either loved listening to me, but didn’t what to do with my visioning but entertained and inspired by me. Or they wanted to smooth our my square sides so I fit in or made them uncomfortable. I was a creative. Disrupting status quo thinking and structures is what we do. I happen to also be an entertainer and a performative storyteller, so it makes engaging with me more fun when I inform, inspire and activate change when cultivating insightful conversation.

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 get to connect with and provide value to people and their work in many ways. I host/emcee events for organizations who’s mission is to promote optimal wellbeing and social impact. I also support leaders in that space as a coach, advisor and strategist to support them as they navigate their role as a change maker professionally and personally. I get called in to do workshops for groups to each creative social entrepreneurship venture creation and wellbeing promotion to help prevent burnout of change makers in the social justice space.

I am a two-time decorated war veteran having served overseas as a mental health specialist during the global war on terror during 2001-2005. I am a health educator, and professional coach with over 20 years of experience in promoting optimal mental, physical, social and emotional health of people. I have worked directly with 800+ clients and partnered on uncovering possibilities, discovering new thinking, learning, and celebrating the connection to their higher selves. I am a visionary creator and storytelling educator who challenges perspectives that reinforce the status quo. I have facilitated hundreds of meaningful dialogues for the purpose of expanding perspectives on how to improve individual lives and society. I am the founder and Chief People Person of The Tenacious Rose Project (TRose), a creative lab that uses creative expression to activate social change. TRose develops and delivers solutions that deepen the impact of creative-minded changemakers globally. I have served as the Senior Advisor for Innovation in Strategic Engagement at the University of Florida Center for Arts in Medicine and the project engagement manager for the Creating Healthy Communities: Arts + Public Health in America initiative in partnership with ArtPlace America. I led the building of an interdisciplinary professional network of 1,000+ leaders working across the US, hosted a roundtable of thought leaders in the field of arts in public health, and was a co-author of the Arts & Public Health: Core Outcomes Set Briefing Paper, a multi-partner collaborative effort.

As an arts in public health practitioner (health promotion), I use my story to inspire others on their journey. I believe storytelling is a way to help people connect with each other, discover themselves, and enlighten the path on the journey to optimal well-being. I am an advocate for the elevation of the role of artists and creatives in expanding innovation at the intersection of the arts/culture sector and public health. I create platforms for the voices and the work of artists and creatives to share their voices, work, and legacy. The goal is to have the immense value artists and creatives offer as agents of change in our evolving society.

Most recently, I am developing an advocacy project called Force Multiplier. This project brings together everything that I am. Force Multiplier is an expansive next step in the movement to recognize the need for Black people to rest as a form of reparation. It focuses on Black socially engaged artists/creatives (BSEA/C) as civic leaders in the communities they represent. For generations, artists have been driving the movement for social justice by truth telling, mobilizing, organizing, healing, and innovating change for racial equity. Force Multiplier is a call to action inviting stakeholders to participate in promoting the well-being of BSEA/C. This collaborative effort between stakeholders and BSEA/C creates an opportunity for BSEA/C to reclaim their agency and build their efficacy in the movement. This project promises to have a ripple effect across race, class, and gender and to impact both the socio-ecological and racial inequities affecting the well-being of BSEA/C and their communities.

I am now in the fund raising phase of the development of this project. I am looking for donors and impact investors that believe in this work to join us in this movement forward. I also want BSEA/Cs around the world to know that we are here working for them. This is a for us, by us project. We get to BE well, so we can build great. A world where everyone has a liberated human experience.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

Shift how they view the value that we bring to society. The fact is arts, culture and creativity is the cornerstone for health/wellbeing, innovation and humanity thriving since the dawn of civilization. It’s not just for entertainment and novelty. The nurturing of creative expression, imagination and experimentation need to expanded past pre-school. Being a creative mind isn’t only in a few of us. It is a muscle only a few of us exercise and build its strength to move in the world with a tenacious audacity and willingness to be bold, expressive and caring for the wellbeing of others. We can’t get to a new liberated, connected way of being in this world without transcending where we are to get to a place humanity has never been without creativity, innovation, arts/culture.

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

I appreciate learning entrepreneurship and the entrepreneurial process from my mentor Dr. Michael Morris came early in my journey. I want to teach other purpose driven creative -minded folks how to use the process to help them take the amazing ideas they have and be able to cast a vision of a viable scalable reality that will attract resources and people. The understanding of public health education and strategic communications have also been amazing. I created a collective learning experience to help folks do this in partnership with University of Florida’s Center for Arts in Medicine and the Center for Arts, Migration and Entrepreneurship called Creating Healthy Communities Digital Badge Program.

I am also grateful to have learned about self-care before it was a trendy thing to do when I served a Mental Health Specialist in the Army on deployment on my tours supporting the war on terror. That as well as understanding the importance of social/emotional, spiritual, well-being as a practitioner to others has helped me navigate the tumultuous journey of being a creative change maker and leader who has a public presence and multiple roles in life.

Being a part of a village of other creative beings on a similar journey that impress me and I feel challenge me to stand tall in my sense of self has been huge.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.thetenaciousroseproject.com | www.kimberleenicolesmith.com
• Instagram: @the_tenacious_rose | @troseproject
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thetenaciousroseproject
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/knicole
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@thetenaciousroseproject

Image Credits
LC Walter Photography and Howie Mac Photography