We recently connected with Shaina Bermudez and have shared our conversation below.

Shaina, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your business sooner or later

If I could go back, I would have started Be the Change Charleston earlier. My co-founder & I worked for two solid years designing plans and going back and forth determining if we were ready to launch our non-profit dedicated to empower disabled individuals through community connections and employment opportunities. Starting sooner would have pushed us to think less and do more, making more mistakes along the way, learning quicker and pivoting immediately.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

After 2 years of teaching special education at a public high school , I got burnt out. I mostly was concerned that students were being pushed through the school system with very little support once they graduated, dropped out, or received a certificate of completion. So I banded together with another teacher (& soon to be best friend) to develop a way we could support a gap in services for disabled people in our community. We came up with a nonprofit that was dedicated to empowering disabled individuals through community connection & employment opportunities- Be the Change Charleston. As we created free resources like our virtual local event calendar (a hub for inclusive, accessible, & disability focused events) & our resource directory (a digital center for disability focused agencies, organizations, & resources), we honed our first initiative, Empowerment through Employment (ETE). Our ETE Program is a free, highly individualized program designed to empower individuals with disabilities by providing them with an ETE Coach, who supports them with self-identifying & achieving goals around job readiness skills, employment skills, and life skills. Our ETE Coaches support participants with self-identifying & achieving goals around developing skills among job readiness, employment, & life skills.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I had to unlearn that everything needs to be neat and perfect before you get your boots on the ground. In fact, spending more time perfecting your ideas only leads to more mistakes being made, because you get set in the mindset that your plans are better than reality. I found that making mistakes while engaging in action are the most meaningful ways to learn and grow.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

Halie Tumbleston & I knew each other from undergrad- we both majored in special education. She concentrated in teaching students with severe and profound disabilities and I concentrated in students with learning and emotional/behavioral disabilities. We began working at the same school together, although we were in different classroom settings with different students. We began collaborating over solutions to typical novice teaching issues, as well as processing the unnatural territory of political red tape that occurs in all public schools. We became fast friends through our shared experience and shared vision of the future of disability rights in our communities.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.bethechangecharleston.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/be.the.change.charleston.sc/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/be.the.change.charleston
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shainabermudez/

Image Credits

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