We were lucky to catch up with Tonkia Bridges recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Tonkia, thanks for joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

NERDS started in this very untraditional way. As a teacher, I often ate lunch with my students. I’m an avid reader, so when I noticed a student reading during lunch. I asked students if they would be interested in joining a book club if I started one, and they said yes. I thought I would have five or six students, and we would read four books the following year. I had 16 students sign up, and we read a book a month.

To be able to sustain the book club, I went to Facebook and made a post asking if a local celebrity would donate 20 copies of the book Wonder. Someone responded, ” Why don’t you ask 20 people for one copy? So I went back to Facebook and asked if 20 people would donate a copy of Wonder and the response was overwhelming. At the same time, I was on the girls’ basketball coaching staff and ran several tech clubs after school. Many middle school students were not participating in the tech clubs. The high schools in our district are seventh to 12th grade. And only two of the middle school students were participating in our after-school tech clubs. When I surveyed students, they were interested in participating in the clubs. So I followed up on that survey asking students why they were not participating, and the number one response was that they didn’t want to be with the big kids.

Initially, NERDS was going to be an early learning center, back in 2012. I kind of noticed that students were coming into the educational system behind. Yet, when I looked into opening an early learning center, I realized I couldn’t afford to start one. I often tell people that I had this planned pregnancy (The early learning center), so I decided to put that on the shelf. Fast forward four or five years later, I had this unexpected pregnancy, I kept the baby and gave it the first baby’s name. That is why it’s NERDS and not NERD (Nurturing Educational Readiness and Development from the Start). Because initially, it was about really developing and preparing students, even before they entered the educational system.

NERDS, as we know it today is a student-inspired concept, and I am just playing the advocate. I listen to the students, and then I share their desires with other adults to hopefully contribute to the inspiration for them to find their passion.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

In 2020 I lost one of my best friends, someone who’s near and dear; probably the closest person to me, an elderly loved one who suffered from Alzheimer’s and dementia. I often tell people the COVID pandemic was a blessed curse. Because of the COVID pandemic, I was able to be at home with her in her final days and weeks. The resilience part is that I wanted to quit everything after she passed. This journey of entrepreneurship is very challenging. It’s very hard, and I wanted to quit many times throughout the process. Sometimes I’m like, I’m doing all this, and costs me so much to do; money, time, many sacrifices. I’m constantly trying to balance everything. For a small organization with very low human capital and financial capital, I am grateful for the impact of the organization and for the opportunity to help and inspire others. Being a full-time doctoral student and trying to lead this organization while fighting grief and depression, yet every day still getting up and doing something, even if it’s only one thing. Illustrates a level of resilience that I hadn’t even realized until I had to answer this question.

How’d you meet your business partner?

While not a co-founder unofficially, Anastasia Chapo is a board member who is also a Microsoft employee. But she’s also a former college student volunteer for NERDS. She’s our first volunteer who started with our robotics team in 2018. I met Anastasia really through a colleague, a school counselor. Anastasia was working with the school in some other capacity and found out about the robotics team I started and expressed an interest in working with the team. Since day one, she has been very vital to the growth and structure of the NERDS organization. She’s been a robotics coach, she’s recruited other volunteers, managed volunteers, and projects, as well as coordinated collaborations with other companies and organizations. I’m very appreciative of her level of support and commitment to the organization and her contribution to the organization’s growth.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.nerdnation.org
• Instagram: @inspiringtheinnernerd
• Facebook: inspiringtheinnerNERD
• Linkedin: inspiringtheinnernerd
• Twitter: inspiringnerds

Image Credits
NERDS