This episode is sponsored by The Diversity Agency. A few weeks ago, we got to talk with Anita Grant (Hello Hair), Salem Berhane (IncluSV Beauty Solutions), Kristina Knox (Arbre), Monique Gallivan (Gyallivant), and Seyi Adaghe (ROUN Beauty) are the five winners of this year's Shea Moisture Dream Fund Grant. From Unilever brand Shea Moisture, The Dream Fund was created to support Black-owned women-led businesses across Beauty and professional services in Canada, awarding $10,000 to each of the winners. In part two of our interview with the winners, we sat down for a more personal roundtable discussion. The winners return to the issues we talked about in part 1 with a personal touch, and share their most impactful pieces of advice for new entrepreneurs.
This episode is sponsored by The Diversity Agency.
A few weeks ago, we got to talk with Anita Grant (Hello Hair), Salem Berhane (IncluSV Beauty Solutions), Kristina Knox (Arbre), Monique Gallivan (Gyallivant), and Seyi Adaghe (ROUN Beauty) are the five winners of this year's Shea Moisture Dream Fund Grant.
From Unilever brand Shea Moisture, The Dream Fund was created to support Black-owned women-led businesses across Beauty and professional services in Canada, awarding $10,000 to each of the winners.
In part two of our interview with the winners, we sat down for a more personal roundtable discussion. The winners return to the issues we talked about in part 1 with a personal touch, and share their most impactful pieces of advice for new entrepreneurs.
The Winners talk about:
Exciting news...And So, She Left took home two Signal Awards (Gold + Listener's Choice)! Thank you so much to everyone who voted. Your support means the absolute world to us. Want to go above and beyond? If you haven't already, please take 30 seconds to rate & review the podcast here. Again, many thanks from the entire team.
Hosted by Katherin Vasilopoulos. Made by Cansulta and Ethan Lee.
Music by © Chris Zabriskie, published by You've Been a Wonderful Laugh Track (ASCAP).
Songs used in this episode include: "Air Hockey Saloon," "Let the Pain Speak to Me," "Editing Beyond the Door III Again," "I Knew My Way Downtown and Walking Was Deluxe," "I Am Running Down the Long Hallway of Viewmont Elementary," "The Theatrical Poster for Poltergeist III," "There Are Days That I Don't," "Land On the Golden Gate."
Used under the Creative Commons 4.0 International License
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:00:00]:
This episode of And So, She Left is brought to you by the Diversity Agency, a speakers bureau and consulting firm based in the Greater Toronto Area. They provide their clients with coaching, speaking, training, and consulting services. 2 weeks ago, I sat down with 5 winners of the 2023 Shea Moisture Dream Fund Grant. Anita, Kristina, Monique, Seyi, and Salem. If you haven't had a chance, make sure to listen to part 1 before diving into today's episode. The dream fund offers financial support to black female business owners, awarding a $10,000 grant to 5 black owned women led businesses across beauty and professional services in Canada. I got to know the 5 winners a few weeks back. We chatted about funding, fulfillment, and finding report as black women entrepreneurs.
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:00:51]:
Today, we open things up to a roundtable discussion. It's an even more personal exchange, one that gets to the heart of their experiences as women entrepreneurs. I'm Kathrin Vasilopoulos, and this is And So, She Left, the podcast about incredible women founders and the wisdom they uncovered beyond the corporate world. When we last heard from the 5 winners, we were talking about the importance of passion and letting your personality shine through your business. And after listening to their experiences so far, I wanted to open things up a bit. So for the 2nd part of our talk, I asked the winners to take part in a free form roundtable discussion laying out some starting points. I mentioned some topics to get the ball rolling like childhood experiences and the importance of community. It didn't take long for the winners to run with them.
Anita Grant [00:02:05]:
My ultimate dream is I would like to have a consulting firm and be a funding body based off my name, I Need a Grant from Anita Grant.
Oluwaseyi (Seyi) Adaghe [00:02:15]:
I love it.
Salem Berhane [00:02:18]:
I love that.
Anita Grant [00:02:20]:
Just whether it was the TV shows, the movies, really anything, there is very few black images, right, of young black girls. But I will say my father was very intentional in making sure that we did see that and educated us in those spaces. It wasn't actually until I entered high school, where I really felt like I don't know if this is a space for me. I was in a predominantly white high school. And that's, I think, when I really questioned myself in that relationship with my hair. Like, I went right away 1st day of high school, I was wearing a full headweave. Right? I had straight hair, And it was back to back. My sister's a hairstylist.
Anita Grant [00:02:57]:
We just did weaves, weaves, weaves, wigs, weaves. I know in retrospective, like, it did impact who I was as a person and my my self esteem, I just felt like I wasn't authentically being Anita Grant. It did Impact in different spaces in my professional career. I just didn't feel like I was truly being myself, and I really had to, like, battle with myself when I came home. When it was just me and myself in that room, it was just like, who am I? Right? Am I altering who I am to satisfy these individuals or to be accepted and be validated? And is this sustainable? Right? This is something that I'm proud of. So I think exploring and creating hello here is not really just for me. It's for the generations to come. My plan is for the next generation.
Anita Grant [00:03:40]:
They're not waiting until their adulthood to really explore or to have relationship with their hair. They're not they don't need to go to YouTube. It's just something that's passed on, and it just comes natural just like the hair that grows under their head. I'm making some education for some parents and children, and I would love to, share some of your guys' products in that content. So I'm gonna reach out to each of you and see how I can get some content and products featured into that content delivery as well.
Kristina Knox [00:04:10]:
Sounds dope. That sounds amazing.
Oluwaseyi (Seyi) Adaghe [00:04:21]:
I grew up in in Lagos, Nigeria, in in West Africa. I went to a private school, and so we wore uniforms. And part of each week, we get, like, a hairstyle call, and everyone, every female kinda does her hair in the same way. Be it, you can kind of beautify it in whichever way, but oftentimes it was braids. So I moved to Canada in 2009. I was about 15. And so for me, I think the biggest shift, when it came to my hair was that, well, back home, I could go to a hair salon That was, like, right within my neighborhood here. I became, like, a DIY braider, not just for myself, but for my mom.
Oluwaseyi (Seyi) Adaghe [00:05:03]:
And so I became self taught in learning how to, like, take care of my hair and braid my hair and then how to, like, use extensions. Maybe because I was a kid, I was more it was mainly just for vacations or during Christmas periods because it's celebratory time, so you get to, like, level up Your hairstyles. Extensions were the way to go or wigs, I mean, if you had the the funds for it. For me, with my hair, it's been a thing of ease to manage because it's it's a lot of hair. With our texture, It requires patience.
Oluwaseyi (Seyi) Adaghe [00:05:36]:
It requires love. It requires a lot of water, which I think back then, we didn't we didn't really know the how to care for our hair because a lot of times we're looking towards, like, Eurocentric standards of beauty. And, yes, putting the perms, relaxers in to make our hair straighter so it'd be more manageable, but also because was shinier and, like, looked pretty. And then coming here realizing that there are actually harmful, chemicals that we're putting and having that absorb into our bodies through our hair and through our scalp. So, like, education became, like, more apparent here. And for a lot of people who find that their values lean towards more environmentalism and environmental stewardship, but we're faced with either plastic hair extensions or really expensive human hair extensions, there's this internal conflict of how to care for my hair, but also be an environmental steward according to my values. So we are currently working with banana fiber. We eat a lot of bananas, but at farms, the stems, the leaves, they're kinda considered as waste.
Oluwaseyi (Seyi) Adaghe [00:06:38]:
And so it goes through a somewhat manual process where it gets decorticated and redded. And slowly as banana fibers are getting more use in the textile industry, we figured it could be a good option for braiding hair with hair and culture and identity and just well-being. Because in some of the conversations that I've had with some women, I I see there being, like, lots of synergies within just us right here. And, honestly, like, I didn't even realize that, like, scalp sunscreen was a thing until I met Kristina. I'm very glad to have met you all through this opportunity.
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:07:21]:
I I find it interesting you're like, you had to come home and and ask yourself, you know, who am I really, and how am I presenting myself to the world? And it sounds like your true identity is what you're born with. Right? The the hair. And I just I'm curious to know about the other women also on this call. What has been your experience, and what did you have to change growing up and now seeing that, no. I don't have to do that anymore?
Salem Berhane [00:07:45]:
I actually had, the opposite experience. So I'm originally from Eritrea, East Africa. Besides when we went to actual school, church, basketball tournaments was all, Eritreans for the most part. So everything outside of, like, The school, I was always around East Africans, so I never had the issue of my curly hair being ugly. And I actually didn't understand what the average black woman would go through in the western society of her, straight hair being the better hair until I moved to Windsor. And in Windsor, the beauty of our black community here is we have Black Africans, black Caribbeans, and then black African Canadians. And so when dealing with black African Canadians, The trauma from slavery and racism and stuff and their hair being, you know, ugly if it's puffy or curly and having to go through all the terms and stuff. I was just like, oh my gosh.
Salem Berhane [00:08:52]:
I need to help these women and men too, but these women understand that their curly hair is beautiful. I've had people tell me when I left my hair out curly, like, oh, go back to Africa or whatever. Or when I was in high school and we would have, like, crazy hair days, I would always win, but because I just had the biggest puffiest curls on my head. And so then I was just like, oh, yeah. I got an award or I got free pizza or whatever my award was for winning that. Whereas now, I make it an effort to speak to the school boards and stuff of, removing crazy hair days from school because oftentimes, our natural hair is seen as crazy, so I'm like, there's so much other things that you can do with spirit week. That crazy hair day or anything that has to do with hair needs to be removed because what we consider naturally beautiful hair is what you are considering crazy hair, And it shouldn't be going together, so I kinda just use it more of an educational form as opposed to thinking there's a negative intention to having crazy hair day.
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:10:00]:
And how did it make you feel when you were the the winner of this particular contest? Did it did it affect you in any way?
Salem Berhane [00:10:06]:
Well no. Yeah. Then it made me feel good just because I wasn't putting the 2 together, but because I wasn't exposed to what black women had gone through with straight hair being better, like, when I would straighten my hair, it would just be to give my curls a break or just to have a new different style. But as I've gotten older and was able to speak with a lot of, Caribbean women or when I moved to Windsor, black Canadian woman, and they're like, I've never seen my curly hair since I was 2 years old, and now I'm, like, 40 or 45, and I'm like, what? And they would you know, their thing would be like, well, yeah, my hair wasn't manageable. Perming it was just the easy route, and I've never seen it like that. Once I've learned that about it or was exposed to women like that, if I can go back to my high school self, I would have been like, no thanks. I don't want this trophy because my hair is not crazy.
Salem Berhane [00:11:01]:
This is just natural.
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:11:02]:
Mhmm. Absolutely.
Salem Berhane [00:11:04]:
Yeah. No. In the In the same effort as, Anita, I feel the same way with Seyi and, Kristina. Like, I got space in my in my shelf for you both, So I'm waiting patiently, but I need no longer here. In the the whole time we've been in here, I wanted to say to Monique, I think we need to have a Gyalavant Shea Moisture winners edition just going throughout the year.
Salem Berhane [00:11:31]:
Oh, good. I really think we should. I really think we need it, and we can invite some of the other females that played an active role in this. I don't know if Ethan's allowed, if it's a no boys thing, but, sorry, Ethan. We still love you.
Oluwaseyi (Seyi) Adaghe [00:11:43]:
He's an ally.
Kristina Knox [00:11:44]:
Right.
Salem Berhane [00:11:46]:
I definitely think we should have one of those.
Kristina Knox [00:11:56]:
Yeah. I'd love to echo everything you just said, because I feel like, you know, part of my dream is also being able to connect with women like you and being able to share our missions with each other and also our, our communities, I think, especially in, like, the black community and for people of color, skin cancer isn't something we talk about. A lot of us don't tan or get sunburned, So we think that we're safe from the sun, and I really hope to bring this knowledge to these communities and also provide people with an option they can use to protect their skin. A question we get a lot is, like, do black people even need sunscreen? And the answer is yes. Even if your skin tone is darker and you don't get sunburned, you are still susceptible to skin cancer, and tanning is also a form of skin damage caused from the sun. Even my own personal experience, like, I grew up in a Jamaican household where wearing sunscreen was, like, not a thing unless we're going to the beach. We had, like, 1 bottle of sunscreen under the bathroom sink that was probably expired, if I'm being honest, I've come to realize that, like, there's really a lack of options, for people of color and especially people with darker skin tones. Like, When you go into Shoppers, there's the same few brands that are available to you to purchase sunscreen, and we really want to provide another option for people.
Kristina Knox [00:13:34]:
Skin cancer in the black community is is something to be concerned about, especially because people with darker skin tones, tend to get diagnosed at later stages of skin cancer, reducing their rate of survival compared to, white patients. And so being able to provide sunscreen options that feel comfortable for people with darker skin tones that, you know, they want to wear, they feel, empowered to wear. I don't want anyone to have to go into a Shopper's Drug Mart like me, like I've been doing, for my entire childhood growing up and just see the same brands that I know are gonna leave a white cast on my skin when I wear them, I want people to be able to go and see products that they will love to use and feel comfortable to wear and know that they're able to comfortably protect their skin from the sun.
Monique Pitt [00:14:42]:
When I started Gyallivant, what I was hoping for was for black women and women of color to be able to care for themselves in ways that felt familiar to them. So growing up, we used to dance. Growing up, we would cook in the with our families. We would we would have story time. Like, there are so many things that we have been doing, but they haven't been called wellness. And I think it's really important for us to rewrite this narrative of what wellness looks like, and to celebrate the ways in which black women, women of color have been creating wellness for themselves for centuries. So the impact for me, is to have women come out, have fun, centre play. I think a lot of times when we are talking about trauma or wellness or self care, it's presented in a similar way.
Monique Pitt [00:15:30]:
And my hope is that through Gyallivant, it can be fun, and we can know that we can heal and have fun at the same time. Black women, women of color, we experience different health concerns at disproportionate rates, like fibroids and like heart heart disease. And by moving, by going on hikes, by going camping with your friends and enjoying community, by going ice skating for the first time, and by seeking therapy, all of these things are ways in which we can impact our health in positive ways. And I think it's also important for women to know that healing doesn't have happen as an individual on your own inside of a therapy office. It can also happen in a dance class, in a community with people of different generations. So a lot of people, of course, because of the pandemic, we were in lockdown for quite some time. They felt isolated, but black women also were sharing that they didn't feel seen in the wellness spaces that did exist. So there were a lot of, like, online yoga classes that you could take and a lot of online fitness courses that you can partake in, but we weren't really seeing ourselves represented.
Monique Pitt [00:16:37]:
So for me, I knew that representation and having Gyallivant be a place where we could celebrate culture even though we were in this time of mourning would be so important. I just see Gyallivant being a space, being a hub where multiple wellness offerings can be happening at once. I want it to feel like a sorority. I want for the east end girls to be able to get together versus the west eend girls. I want To move out and do something in Halifax, like, I just want to kinda take over different spaces. And then to just be cheesy and add another is I will say, seniors, we start a development where we target, like, I would say, 20 to 40 live, and then we have our Gyallivant junior. But, like, I know my grandma wants a card game or something happening soon.
Monique Pitt [00:17:25]:
Yeah. If I did organize that and create space for seniors to be able to come out of isolation and just commune with one another, like, that would just be, like, mission accomplished.
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:17:36]:
To round out our conversation, I wanted the winners to impart their most impactful pieces of advice for women entrepreneurs. Here's what they had to say.
Salem Berhane [00:17:45]:
I think for me, it would be, you know, it's not over till it's over. Like, fight the fight, and just dealing with some of the product owners that come to my shop and they look at me like, how are you doing it? And I'm like, girl, I cry in my office almost every day when I first opened. Don't think because I have, like, a brick and mortar, I'm doing anything better than you are kinda thing. So If you believe in your product, you have to, like, push it like it's the best thing ever, and it will sell itself.
Anita Grant [00:18:20]:
Yeah. Just just echoing that as well is,
Monique Pitt [00:18:23]:
give yourself some grace.
Anita Grant [00:18:25]:
Be vulnerable, and don't be afraid to ask for help. To have a strong network and a strong team and mentorship people that's been through it and hearing from their experiences, sometimes you just gotta reach out, put yourself out there, and and just gather information and put yourself in those rooms and, be okay to let people know I don't know it all, but I'm determined and and I'm passionate about what I'm doing. So if you're willing to help, take the help, and don't take no for an answer. If one door closes, knock on the next. Somebody will open.
Oluwaseyi (Seyi) Adaghe [00:18:56]:
That's very true. I would add in, don't think that what you are right now is all that you could ever be. We've talked a lot about identity and who we are or who we think we are, but then something might just come along the way and might excite. But if you think that, well, this doesn't align with who I thought I was or want to be, just be open and ride the ride in a sense.
Kristina Knox [00:19:24]:
I just wanted to add that entrepreneurship can look different for everyone. Like, it doesn't have to look like how it looks in the movies. You can, you know, be a student, have a 9 to 5 job, whatever your situation may be, and still start your business. You don't have to, you know, quit everything just to start your business, you can do both until you have to make that decision. Our businesses, they don't grow, into something, you know, big and crazy overnight. It takes time, so it's really important to think about the long term goal and the long term plan, and trying to make that as sustainable for you as possible.
Monique Pitt [00:20:10]:
I would just add, I think as black women, We've gone through a lot in life, and we haven't been able to always dream. Like, we've been in a space of survival. For many of us, we've had to just, like, get things done. So I would just invite anyone who's thinking of entrepreneurship to just allow yourself to just dream. Like, what would it look like for you? Perhaps you've never thought of that yet, or maybe there is an idea that you have, but you think it's too small. I would just say no. Like, nothing is too small. Like, if it's an idea that has kept coming to your mind over and over and over again, I would say bet on yourself, and I would say bet on your community, and I would say go for it because you never know if that thing is gonna be the thing that other people need as well.
Monique Pitt [00:20:57]:
So a lot of times, we think we're doing business just for ourselves, but, really, we don't know whose life you're gonna change by going after that thing that you were daydreaming about.
Salem Berhane [00:21:06]:
I can't. I'm looking forward to the reunion.
Oluwaseyi (Seyi) Adaghe [00:21:09]:
Yeah. See what we might have this reunion, hosted by Gyallivant. So I'm in. Yes. We're outside. We're outside. Yeah.
Anita Grant [00:21:20]:
And I wanna say you, to SheaMoisture and the Diversity Agency for for making this happen, and spreading some more impact for us black female founders. So grateful. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:21:32]:
Thank you to all 5 of our guests, the winners of the 2023 Dream Fund. A big thank you as well to our sponsor, the Diversity Agency, who has partnered with Shea Moisture's Dream Fund and Cansulta to provide black female-owned businesses with the tools, workshops, financial aid, and visibility they need to thrive. I also have some very exciting news. And so she left took home a 2023 Gold Signal Award along with the Listeners Choice Award in our category. On behalf of the rest of the team, thank you so much to everyone who voted. You, the listeners, made this possible, and your support means the world to us. We also owe a big thank you to Michelle Redo whose episode was submitted as the winning entry. We've linked her episode in the notes below.
Katherin Vasilopoulos [00:22:19]:
And So, She Left is made by Cansulta and Ethan Lee. We'll be back next Wednesday with a new episode. Our music is by Chris Zabriskie edited for your enjoyment. You can find a list of all the songs you heard here in the episode notes. I'm Katherin Vasilopoulos, and thanks for listening.