Nahamani Yisrael: Changing the World One Connection at a Time
Nahamani Yisrael truly embodies the meaning of her name: compassionate leader. As an entrepreneur, mother, teacher, website designer, and community activist, Nahamani is a woman on a mission to share her spark with the world and to light a spark in others. From balancing being a single mother of two kids to becoming a successful entrepreneur, Nahamani’s story speaks to how far kindness, hard work, and having the courage to make connections and speak your truth can take you in life.
Interview by Kelsey Graham. Photography by Emily Palm.
Tell us about yourself.
I’m a Cincinnati native. I graduated from S.C.P.A., which is really important because it gave me that creative ability to just be who I am. Unlike most high schools, we were allowed to express ourselves and dance in the hallways. After high school, I started a family first and then decided to go back to school. I started my first business doing website design and desktop publishing when I was like 22, but I shut down the business to go back into the workforce and make sure I could put food on the table for my two children. My boss at Fifth Third was like, “You are too intelligent to not have a college degree. You have got to go back to school.” So I was able to use their tuition reimbursement program and get through most of my associate degree debt-free. I graduated from Cincinnati State and then transferred to Xavier; it was not the same when I got to Xavier. It was a sticker shock like, “Oh, wow!” [Laughs.] But you know what? We made it through.
What did your entrepreneurship journey look like?
I graduated from Xavier in 2016. I was working in residential titles at the time and had just started nahamani.org; still working, still a single mom, still putting food on the table. In 2017, I started to struggle with anxiety and depression, and I was going through therapy and my therapist was the one who told me, “You need to quit your job and be a full-time entrepreneur. I can see a huge difference when you’re doing your own thing versus dealing with office politics, F.M.L.A. paperwork, and all of the stress that comes with working for others.”
So, two weeks before my 40th birthday, I put in my two-week notice. My 40th was my very last day working for anyone other than myself. I left there on really good terms. They even contracted with me to do three websites for some of their joint venture partners. They were like, “We want to show you that we believe in you and support you.”
When I left, I reached out to Greater Cincinnati Microenterprise Initiative (G.C.M.I.). I went through their classes in 2001 when I started my first business, so I got back in touch with them. They told me, “We have a summer internship program we’d love to bring back... but there is such a small staff so we don’t really have the manpower to do it. We’d love to have you lead the summer internship program.” It literally was the best summer ever. I feel like our society is really hard on young people, and it was an opportunity to put them in a space to shine and glow and do what they do best. I was teaching them change management, like, “Okay, this is how you go into an organization and make things better: You talk to the leadership, you talk to the staff, you talk to the customers. Then you go back and brainstorm and whiteboard everything.” And just to see their young minds come up with these great ideas, it was like... this is living!
From there, I started teaching their Ice House Entrepreneurship program. And, just recently, we contracted with Jobs for Cincinnati Graduates (J.C.G.) to teach our entrepreneurship mindset class to high school seniors. I will be leading that program and designing the curriculum and hiring facilitators that can support me. We’ll have 30 high school students who will get this training, and they’ll get paid for it because the J.C.G. is grant funded. It’s a great partnership. Like, “Oh, you want to be an entrepreneur? Are you sure? Well, let’s put you to work!”
I have never worked this hard in my life, but it’s always been worth it. I would never change any of those decisions: quitting my job, teaching, leading summer interns – those were highlights. I’m like, “Oh, my God, this is real! Somebody pinch me!”
How did you choose what you wanted to do when you became an entrepreneur?
My first business was doing website design. It was something I was known for – I could pick up the phone and say, “Hey, don’t you need your website updated?” and get some work coming in while we were in that early transition phase.
And then the social media part came about very organically. There was a local fitness guru, Denise Bryers. She made a post on social media that she was struggling; she was teaching five or six hours a day and trying to keep her business afloat. She wasn’t able to keep up with posting. She gave me an opportunity to do it, and it started off as a barter agreement: like, “I’ll train you and you can have all of the fitness your heart desires if you’ll run my social media.” And it just grew from there. Then I started teaching a social media training class at Ohio Media School. I started acquiring interns and was like, “Well, I’m no longer the one doing your social media, and I have to pay somebody, so now you have to pay me,” and we worked it out. She just recently left Cincinnati and moved to the North Carolina market. I still take her classes – I pay for them now [laughs] ‘cause I’m no longer doing her social media. But she was the one who really gave me a chance. We were able to grow her social media following, and I took those best practices and actually turned it into a bootcamp-type social media class.
How does your business, nahamani.org, marry the two?
Nahamani.org is a digital communications company. We help nonprofit organizations and for-profit businesses communicate their value to their target audience through a wide variety of digital mediums – mainly website design and social media. We work very closely with their leadership and make sure everything we are doing and communicating takes into account all of the key stakeholders.
Tell us more about nahamani.org.
Xavier’s change management training really impacted me. My teacher wore killer shoes, so I sat in the front row and looked at her feet the whole class and absorbed all of this information. But I really found that stakeholder engagement was missing in all of these spaces. When I’m teaching or even consulting with someone about social media, I’m not big on likes, numbers, all of that. On the other side of that number, that follow, all of that – there’s a human being. It’s about engagement. What can we do, what can we say to bring that person closer to your organization, or closer to clicking that “buy” button? What can we do to make them see that we value them?
Every time I design a website, I do it from the end user’s point of view. I just did a website – it was actually an initiative by Interact for Health called Quit Culture, and it’s a smoking secession website that’s geared toward Black Cincinnatians and like six urban neighborhoods. Everything I did was based on their usage, their desires, and how they’re going to perceive this. When I design a website, it’s not so much about kilobytes and S.V.G. and all of that. It’s like, at 2 o’clock in the morning when someone’s on your website, what are they gonna do? How are they going to know where they’re supposed to click? What’s the call to action? How are you going to help them? How can we design this website so it can stand alone and, at 2 a.m., someone can get on there and get the information they need, make a decision to further engage, and make a meaningful connection? That’s how I design.
Sometimes entrepreneurship isn’t so much starting a business, but being entrepreneurial in your career.
And it’s all because I’m trying to do it for the person on the other end. My client is paying the bills, so I want them to be happy with it, but everything I’m advising them about is for the end user. And I’m about that on social media, too. In some cases, I’ll task my clients: “You need to go out and interview eight stakeholders, this many clients, this many suppliers or service providers, and this many peers and people in your circle. Find out what their pain points are. What is it that keeps them up at night, and why is it they’re engaging with you in the first place?” Start conversations. It’s not a sales approach; it’s a listening opportunity. You need to spend time listening and understanding their pain points so that you can eventually get to the sale, but this is not the sale! [Laughs.]
That’s a big part of what my business is about and what makes it different. I’m not designing websites that just look pretty. I’m not going to promise you I can get you 10,000 likes. And you’ve got to be okay with that. Sometimes my clients are not okay with that. I’ve actually had someone call me and say, “Hey, how much do I have to pay you to get 5,000 followers?”
I said, “Sir, that is absolutely the opposite of what I do. I am about building engagement. I can help you build real relationships with real people, but I can’t promise you any certain number of followers. It’s gonna happen naturally if you’re giving something of value, but the numbers are what the numbers are.”
What advice would you give future entrepreneurs?
Everybody can be an entrepreneur. People come to me like, “I want to start a business, but I don’t know what to do.” I always tell them, “Figure out what you would do for free and then figure out a way to monetize that.” If you’re doing something you’re so passionate about that you would do it for free, you’re gonna do it way better than anybody else.
Sometimes entrepreneurship isn’t so much starting a business, but being entrepreneurial in your career. You can be the boss of your life – that’s entrepreneurial. You can decide, “This is the path I want to go on,” or “This is where I want to work,” so you go and find somebody on LinkedIn who works at that company. Send them a friend request. Ask them to get coffee – even if it’s virtual coffee. Talk to them; find out what their day is like. Build that relationship and let them know you’re passionate about it. Because guess what: When they know you’re passionate about it, and they see an opportunity – they’re gonna let you know about it. You can be entrepreneurial even if you choose the path of working for a company. It’s not necessarily starting a business; it’s solving a problem.
How did you overcome any struggles you faced as a single mom working to launch your own business?
It’s scary as heck being a full-time entrepreneur. There were times when money was tight. And it goes back to relationships. I have a great support system – even in my personal life – and there were times when I had to put on my big girl pants and ask for help. There were times when people paid our bills. I have a cousin who’s also an entrepreneur, and one time we were really short on cash, bills were due, and receivables weren’t getting there quick enough. It was a significant amount, so we ended up using my debt as a credit for her business. If she needed something for her business, she would call me, and I would do it for her and we’d knock off hours. Those are some tough conversations to have, but it was also great that I didn’t just have to say, “Hey, can you give me this large amount of money ‘cause we need stuff?” I could actually say, “Hey, I need some help, I’m in a bind, but I think I can work it off.”
As an entrepreneur, you just can't leave your work at the office. How has your family been impacted by your work?
Being the kid of an entrepreneur is probably pretty tough. I can remember having to take my son with me to meetings when he was three or four. I would bring a blank piece of paper and some crayons, and he would color and draw. Later, my son told me he realized entrepreneurship was actually a viable career path when I had lost a job in 2015, and at the same time we were in the midst of moving. There was all of this anxiety and fear, so I beat the pavement. I called up some old contacts and said, “Hey, you need a website done?” I didn’t own a computer; I would use the computer at school or go to somebody’s house for a couple of hours. We ended up going through with the move; it was a week or so later than expected, but we still moved and paid the deposit, paid for trucks, and paid for pizza for all of the movers because that’s about all I could afford. [Laughs.] “Got you guys some pizza after we get done carrying this really heavy furniture!” Because I have really heavy furniture. “You can have two slices, knock yourself out, go ahead!”
So my son saw that, and was like, “You didn’t have a job, and you made it happen. For me, that was the time I was like, ‘Okay, this is real.’” I ended up getting a job after that. There were a couple of months when I would be at the library or on campus doing stuff on their computers. I just had to do what I had to – we call it bootstrapping in our classes. I was bootstrapping, for real. But I’m glad they got to see that experience; I wish they didn’t have to, but I’m glad they got to see, you know, you need to use what you’ve got and use it to get what you want. Even if it’s not what you want to do forever... if it’s a skill set you have, use it and leverage it, and you’ll get closer to where you need to be. You can always pivot and do what you love.
You’re involved in a number of organizations, too. Can you tell us more about Hertime Social Club?
Women have a tendency to put their own likes, their own needs, and their own feelings on the backburner. We give 150% to our families, we give so much to our jobs, we’re involved in the community, we’re doing all these things, but we’re not really taking time for ourselves. So, with a co-worker from the title company, we started Hertime Social Club.
We started having dinners with conversation starters just to help the conversation along. We’d have functions and workshops, and we would sequester in the community room at the library, or if someone had space at their job. We’ve had handy people showing us how to be a little bit more handy; I’m not trying to build a house, but what do I do if I need to unclog my sink? They taught us little tips and tricks like that. It was just making sure that women were being intentional about making time for themselves and what they’re passionate about. I definitely see it thriving post-COVID.
Tell us about your involvement with West End Area Revitalization Enterprises.
My grandfather was an entrepreneur. He was from Georgia and moved to Cincinnati when he was nine – right after the Great Depression when the West End was this thriving Black district. Anything you needed, you could find a Black-owned business that provided it. Part of it was due to segregation, so some of that was negative, but it was also a self-sufficient community.
Because of Interstate 75/71 coming right through the West End, there was some disinvestment. They tore down huge structures, almost whole neighborhoods, to build a highway and stopped investing in it, and it just became more and more impoverished. People started moving out to the suburbs and the city started disinvesting even more; the buildings, everything, just became in really bad shape. Then F.C. Cincinnati decided they wanted to come in and build their stadium there, and the city started putting resources behind it.
We want to make sure these people who have been there doing the hard work when it wasn’t pretty, when it wasn’t fancy, when it wasn’t a buzzword, continue to stay and have a say in how the neighborhood is shaped.
Our goal with West End Area Revitalization Enterprises is to make sure that people who stayed in the West End or have a desire to live in the West End – whether they’re lower class, middle class, or upper class – have an opportunity to live in the West End. I feel like resources in the city are very much centrally located, so especially for someone with low income who may not have transportation, being that close to the city is beneficial to them. Whether they need to get downtown to do business, or they need to get to a social service agency to get food, or they need to get to Government Square to get transportation to a job, being close to the city is important. We just want to make sure it doesn’t turn into a gentrification situation and that there is always going to be some type of affordable housing, and that the stakeholders and the people who live there – and have lived there for generations – have a voice in everything that’s done in their community.
We’re really active with the West End Community Council. Seven Hills Neighborhood Houses has become the central hub for pretty much everything that is the West End. They manage the housing fund and some of the money that F.C. Cincinnati has contributed to the neighborhood. They manage applications that come through the Port for properties in the West End, so we really try to support what they’re doing. They’ve been there for generations, so we want to make sure these people who have been there doing the hard work when it wasn’t pretty, when it wasn’t fancy, when it wasn’t a buzzword, continue to stay and have a say in how the neighborhood is shaped. Yes, let’s pour resources into it – it deserves resources and streets being cleaned up and crime being mitigated.
We did an event called West End Money Matters, where we brought in five subject matter experts. Dusty Rhodes sent one of his top people from the auditor’s office to talk to people about homestead exemptions, and about what the increase in property value could possibly do to your taxes. We had a person talk about personal taxes and how they could put more money in their pockets 52 weeks of the year versus living for that big tax refund at the end of the year. Dr. Vanessa Enoch was our keynote speaker, and she made everyone in that room pull out their phone and put Credit Karma on their phone. You can’t talk about owning a home if you don’t even know what your credit score is. So, everybody pulled out their phone and started monitoring their credit. It’s just things like that – little changes that can have such a huge impact on one person’s life. If we can multiply that, then just think of all of the change we could have.
What inspires you?
I’ll start with what I see as an issue. We, as a community, do a terrible job of uplifting and supporting our young people. If a young person does something bad or something terrible, they make the front-page news. If a young person does something awesome, we rarely hear about it.
I’ll brag on my daughter for a bit. She was 16 or 17 when she decided to become a makeup artist, which meant she would bring people to my home at all times on the weekends to do their makeup. There was this trail of girls and their moms, and I was like, “Who are these people?” She started doing makeup in her bedroom, and then she grew out of that space and she took over what is now my office. (Before COVID, I wasn’t working at home 10-12 hours a day, and we could kind of share it a little bit.) Then one day all of my stuff ended up in the basement. [Laughs.] True story – I’m still looking for some stuff.
She had a process down and was getting her skill set and her clientele built up. Then she outgrew that space, too. So now she’s a makeup artist at Glamourz Glam Beauty Bar in Woodlawn. She’s 19 years old, and she lives independently and has her own car and is fairly self-sufficient. I mean, that’s amazing! And we, as a society, just don’t celebrate that enough.
And she’s not the only 19-year-old chasing her dreams. There’s Essynce Moore – she’s amazing! She started her first business at like 13, and she was featured on B.E.T. At first, she started selling clothes, then she had a little boutique, and then she wrote a book and was the first teenager to have her book as required reading in some middle schools. There are so many young people doing great things, and I just don’t see us uplifting and celebrating them enough.
Actually being who you are – standing and shining big – gives everybody else in the room permission to do the same, and that’s what I want to be known for.
So, what inspires me is when a young person shares what their dreams are, what their passions are, and what they want to be when they grow up. And I still say what I want to be when I grow up! I wanna be a compassionate leader; that’s what my name, Nahamani, means. When young people are able to voice what they want, how they see themselves, and how they want the world to see them, and then put together a plan, execute that plan, knock things off of their list, and move closer and closer to their goal – it sets my soul on fire. I see young people with all of these skills and all of these passions, and I just want to see people continue to pour into them. They’re going to take over at some point, so we might as well uplift them and make them feel supported and loved, versus putting them down and telling them they’re not about anything or their music is stupid – just because we don’t necessarily agree with it. I want to build them up.
Where do you see yourself in the next 5 years?
I hope to be doing more public speaking. I’ve spoken on behalf of Bethany House – I’m a former resident at Bethany House. I serve on the board of directors now, but there was a period when me and my kids actually stayed there. I was on Facebook one day in 2016 and I saw they had a page, and I was like, “I’m gonna go and write them a review. That’s something I can do.”
So, I wrote them a review, like, “This is a great program. They really helped me and my family when we were experiencing homelessness in 2003. It’s been 13 years, and we still have a home. The program rocks.” They reached out to me and gave me an opportunity to speak at what they call “Ales to Zinfandels” – it’s a wine and beer tasting they have. I spoke in front of a room of, like, billionaires, and all I did was tell my story and people came up to me, they hugged me, and we cried together.
I want to do more speaking about causes and things I’m passionate about. Everyone has a story, and I think it’s very valuable to tell your story because it really helps people understand who you are and why you’re passionate about the things you’re passionate about. Actually being who you are – standing and shining big – gives everybody else in the room permission to do the same, and that’s what I want to be known for. I want to be known as that person who walked into a room and said my truth, and someone heard it, felt it, and was then able to walk out of that room and say their truth. I want to be that spark that sets somebody else’s soul on fire, and then they go out and do something amazing and great.
Who is an influential woman in your life?
My grandfather, Ernie Waits, was a disc jockey in the 1940s. He was the first Black disc jockey in Cincinnati, and he was very much involved with King Records and all of those groups. He had the opportunity to get to know and work with Nikki Giovanni when she was young in Cincinnati. So, as a kid at my grandparent’s house, they had beautiful, 6-foot bookshelves – like, one wall of their entire living room was bookshelves. My grandmother was an avid reader, but the books she read were big, so I wasn’t picking those up. But the Nikki Giovanni books of poetry were really thin, and they were low down on the shelves, so I would read them. Her poetry was not PG-13 all of the time, and I’m like 7 or 8, so I would read it and snicker, but I just always loved her style of writing, and her authenticity.
She’s an amazing poet who went on to be an English instructor at the University of Virginia. I emailed her, like, “Hey, my grandfather is Ernie Waits. He loved you and had all of your books. I read them as a child, and I just adore you. I would love to meet you one day.”
She responded and said, “Your grandfather was a pillar of our society, of Cincinnati. He was a great man, and I was so fortunate for him to be a part of my life. I’m gonna be having a book release through Joseph-Beth Booksellers. I’ll be coming to Cincinnati then, so that might be an opportunity for us to meet.”
So, of course, I’m all over Eventbrite. She released her book and I got V.I.P. passes independently. I got to go and have my book signed; I had it dedicated to my grandfather. I just love and adore her. She is so authentic, so raw. She was actually supposed to come here in April – of course I signed myself up for the Women’s Fund committee. I’m like, “What do you need help with? What can I carry? What can I do? Because I need to be in this lady’s presence.”
I’m a fan girl. But it’s just, again, having a voice, being authentic, and saying what you mean and standing up for it – even if it’s not always popular or trendy. She really inspires me. Sometimes if I need a good cry or I need away from my phone, I’ll just pick up her book and read a few poems. And that’s what I love about it – it’s not a commitment. I just read a few poems and then I can get back to doing what I do.
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