The work I do is the work I always needed.

I became a single mom before I became anything else with a title. That sequence matters. It's the lens I bring into every room — the founders' room, the funders' room, the community room, the conference stage.

I went to social work school because I wanted to understand systems. What I learned is that systems don't fail people; they were never built for them. The people my neighborhood relied on — the woman who watched the kids, the cousin who fixed the car, the friend who brought the casserole — were carrying entire local economies on unpaid backs.

I started My Panda in the Oakhurst-Decatur corner of Atlanta as a beta. A way to pay neighbors for the labor they were already doing. Then COVID hit. Everything pivoted. The thesis got sharper.

Techstars came next. So did Soft Edge, which started as a question I couldn't shake: if AI is going to do the efficient work, what becomes more valuable? My answer — the human work — turned into a curriculum and a company.

And Single Mom Founders exists because I never want another woman building a company while building a child to feel as alone as I did.

I call myself a community architect because "founder" only describes one slice of the work. I build the structures community labor deserves — software, training, capital, story.