Collab Cohort Centers Creativity In Fall Showcase

Maya McFadden, founder of The Kids Newsroom. Lucy Gellman Photos.

When Maya McFadden was growing up in New Haven, no one told her that she could be a professional storyteller. Then she stumbled into grassroots journalism. Now, she's building a pipeline to civic engagement for young Elm Citizens, so that they can tell the stories of their city, in their words.

That's the idea behind The Kids Newsroom, one of 10 new ventures that Collab is helping nurture as it celebrates its sixth year in New Haven. Last Thursday, McFadden joined fellow builders, storytellers, tinkerers, entrepreneurs and small business owners for the organization's fall pitch night, held at NXTHVN at 169 Henry St. Between them, ventures range from an eco-friendly soap company to an online music education platform to a new clothing and stationary brand designed for Black and Brown women and girls. Read about all 10 ventures here.

"They [Collab alumni and cohort members] are contributing to this thriving local economy,”, said Executive Director Dawn Leaks Ragsdale. Since its launch in 2017, Collab has supported dozens of small food businesses, budding nonprofits, grassroots arts initiatives and entrepreneurial leaps of faith, from small-batch sustainable clothing to new-old methods of potty training. Of the 84 percent still in operation, ventures have generated almost $7 million in revenue, and raised roughly $3 million in funding.

Top: Dawn Leaks Ragsdale, who is the executive director of Collab. Bottom: Attendees and presenters get food from Chef Sil's Vegan Kitchen, a graduate of CitySeed and Collab's Food Business Accelerator. 

Thursday, it was an outpouring of creativity that defined the night, from the first slide deck of the evening to a final networking session that filled the space with laughter and conversation. As attendees trickled into NXTHVN, a former Henry Street factory that has become a Dixwell neighborhood arts incubator and example of adaptive reuse, cohort members welcomed them from around the room, some offering samples of mocktails and roasted nuts as others walked people through their web platforms, apps-in-progress, and budding brand ideas.

Close to the front of the room, Bridgeport-based mixologist Justin Young chatted with Global Local Gourmet founder and chef Nadine Nelson, laying out his plan for Just In Mixology, LLC, a mobile bartending service that is already taking flight in the tri-state area. 

Born and raised in Bridgeport, Young said he's been interested in mixology for years, since working as a bartender during his time at the University of Bridgeport. For a while, it was just a hobby, a party trick he could pull out after hours while working a day job for JP Morgan Chase, and later Teach for America. But during the Covid-19 pandemic, as bars closed across the state, he started thinking about what it would mean "to bring the bartending service to you."

Justin Young and chef Nadine Nelson. 

As Covid stretched from weeks to months , he noticed that consumer trends were changing. When they originally reopened, bars and restaurants were often a vector for spreading the virus, meaning that people were more hesitant to go. Even after vaccines emerged in early 2021, people were less likely to return to their neighborhood watering holes and eating establishments than they had been prior to March 2020. By last year, the industry also saw a mass resignation as workers pushed back against employers who had exploited them economically for decades.

All of that, Young said, translated to people who wanted more intimate cocktail experiences, including in their homes and living spaces. By then, he was working for Teach for America, and knew that "I wanted to dive into being an entrepreneur." After starting with a series of virtual bartending classes, he launched a bespoke, guided mixology course in Long Island earlier this fall. When TFA issued major layoffs earlier this year, he turned to nurturing the business full time.

"It allows people to connect," he said. He later added that people can experience the draw for themselves next month, when he plans to formally launch the small business in Bridgeport on January 27. In the next months, he said, he also wants to build relationships with local distributors, and grow his presence both online and in the community.     

Top: Patrick Escandon. Bottom: Tea Montgomery, who was one of this year's mentors. 

Nibbling on sushi and dumplings from Chef Sil's Vegan Kitchen nearby, fellow Collab participant Patrick Escandon exhorted the value of hemp as a multi-purpose, environmentally-friendly and cost effective building material that is still very much entering the market. With his venture Flow Like Water, Escandon is working to both provide eco-supply building materials, and teach people about the value of hemp insulation as an alternative to fiberglass or spray foam. Paired with hydrated lime, "it's just a healthier building material," he said, pointing to a thick, white brick of hemp that resembled a fossilized bale of hay.

"It's mold-resistant and energy-efficient," he said, adding that it could and should be a viable alternative for affordable housing projects, and a partial solution for the high cost of housing and insulation more broadly. "There's a lot of room for expansion."   

McFadden, who grew up in New Haven and is now an education reporter for the New Haven Independent, harnessed that spirit of creativity and adaptation as she spoke about The Kids Newsroom, a new, growing after-school program that gives young people the tools—and the agency—to tell the stories of their lives and their city in their own words. Born earlier this year as a collaboration with The Shack, the initiative seeks to address a persistent problem: students are often on the front lines of making change, but adults are often the ones doing the talking.

Venture manager Ndubisi Okeke and Maya McFadden. 

Meanwhile, McFadden has noticed an educational shift, in which students are more interested in hands-on, experiential learning opportunities that also prepare them for life beyond the classroom. In other words, The Kids Newsroom is building "career-ready and civically engaged storytellers," who are naturally inquisitive and interested in asking questions, she said. "This is a unique hub for journalistic education and career readiness."

Currently, McFadden sees The Kids Newsroom as a fully-formed 501c3, open to young people starting at age eight. Whether the students become journalists is beside the point: she wants them to feel empowered to tell their own stories, and the stories of their community, in whatever way they wish. There's also a mentorship component: New Haven high school students work with middle- and elementary-school-aged kids, to promote more communication between grades that might otherwise not interact.

That same spark flowed through a laughter-flecked presentation from Adelyana (Addy) Reyes Ramos, who in 2021 founded Tierra Soap Co. with her husband, Richard Ramos. Winding the clock back to 2020, Reyes Ramos remembered the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, in which she did her best to tend to a garden, care for her family, and stay busy at home while working remotely as an accountant ("I'm sure it caught us all by surprise," she said to knowing mmmms that rippled across the room).

Top: Addy Reyes Ramos of Tierra Soap Co. Bottom: Darian Duah of CheB. The venture "is a hyper-local e-commerce platform that provides quick sneaker purchases through storefront authentication, local partners, and blockchain payment options, aiming to solve issues related to slow delivery, limited local shopping options, and payment methods."

Then in the summer of 2020, she and her husband were on a family road trip to Georgia when he received the news his father had passed away in the Dominican Republic. When he returned to the island for the funeral, he met a new sister for the first time. Her house was filled with soap, a craft he found so mesmerizing that he brought it back with him when he returned to Connecticut. A supportive partner and lifelong lover of the arts, Reyes Ramos jumped onboard, learning how to make soap right alongside him. 

"I'm an accountant, so the fact that we were selling soap under the table" wasn't going to fly for long, Reyes Ramos said to laughs that bounced and echoed off the brick walls. Instead, she turned it into a fully-above-board small business, and began building four fundamental values that she could operate by.

The first, sustainability, meant steering clear of plastics and implementing a zero waste policy that Tierra has continued to grow. Next, Reyes Ramos knew she wanted to foreground arts and culture, with products that were both visually beautiful to look at and felt of a piece with events happening in real time. Fourth, she centered wellness. "We want our products to make you feel good in all ways," she said. "And we're fostering a healthy relationship between skincare and the planet."

Since founding the company in 2021, Reyes Ramos has both watched Tierra take off and thought of new ways to build it out, from new, small-batch releases to partnerships with local businesses like Possible Futures and Vintanthro Modern & Vintage. Even this month, she said, she's working to foster new connections with pop-up appearances at holiday markets. 

Diana Johnson of BlackCherry.

Other participants in the program described how a creative impulse is leading them forward. Lifelong New Havener Diana Johnson said it was depictions of Black and Brown women in popular media—or rather, a surprising lack thereof—that led her to begin work on BlackCherry, a lifestyle, doll and smart stationary brand for Black women and girls across the diaspora. Justin Chapman, whose in-process app, ArtZapp, is designed to build interest and active participation in the arts, is using data from Americans for the Arts to help drive people back to cultural events.

Nathan Mai, a sophomore at Yale University, has harnessed his own love for music to jumpstart Woodshed, an educational and instrumental platform for music learning.  Artists Eliezer Santiago and Tiphani Benbow, partners in both life and work, have built Phocused as a multimedia "destination spot for creators and photographers," on their own love for craft. Because both know how expensive both space and equipment can be, the two plan to open a 2,000 square foot space in Branford in the new year.

Even culinary artist Portia Amendola, who founded Mostly Nuts after years of requests for her grain-free granola recipe, outlined a plan to grow the company by another employee in 2024, while also holding fast to her eco-friendly values and grassroots, person-to-person sales at farmers' markets. "I love on people with food and creativity," she said with a smile Thursday, and a front row of nodding heads confirmed that her peers already knew it to be true.

Top: Portia Amendola. Bottom: Eliezer Santiago and Tiphani Benbow.

During a networking session that followed presentations, Escandon seemed to capture the evening’s tilt toward a more creative ecosystem as he welcomed people to his table, showing off a number of hemp building blocks that together can form livable infrastructure. Just half an hour before, he had shown off photos of his first-ever hemp build, a version of himself beaming from within the frame.

"The possibilities that we can build are just expanding," he said.