Meet The Mentors: #CreateCultivateATL
As we’re gearing up for Create & Cultivate ATL this October, we’d like to introduce you to the amazing women that will part of our mentor sessions this fall.
Our mentor sessions are perfect for those of you who are looking for advice on how to manage your blog or business from some of the best female entrepreneurs in the digital space today.
If you're wondering what mentor is the best fit for you, check out of the ladies below that will be sitting down with you this October. Also, if you haven't gotten your ticket yet, what are you waiting for? Get your ticket now here.
Stay tuned as we add more mentors to our lineup too!
Nicolette Mason, Creator of NicoletteMason.com
Best for: Social Media, Blogging, Writing, Strategic Partnerships
Nicolette is a Los Angeles native who lives and works in NYC & LA . She is a freelance creative consultant, contributing editor at Marie Claire, and pens her blog nicolettemason.com, where she shares personal style snaps, travel, and the many things she loves.
Since launching her blog and graduating from Parsons School of Design, she’s contributed to dozens of publications including Marie Claire, Vogue Italia, Brooklyn Magazine, The L Magazine, Refinery29, Glamour Italy, and more, and has partnered with brands like ModCloth and Addition Elle, where she has a cocktail dress collection launching this spring, to design collections. She has also partnered with Target on the heralded launch of their plus-size brand, Ava & Viv.
Maxie McCoy, Creator of MaxieMcCoy.com
Best for: Life Coaching, Soul Searching, Career Development
An inspiration luminary, Maxie’s work is a new framework for using inspiration to create a life you’re jazzed to be living. It’s an experience that will put inspiration in your driver’s seat and shine a spotlight on your escape route from mediocrity. Her website provides weekly soul-busting writings, videos, and more inspiration than you know what to do with.
Maxie has also written for the Create & Cultivate blog and you can find her pieces here:
Professional Opinion: Maxie McCoy on Cultivating Inspiration
Professional Opinion: Maxie McCoy on When -and How-To Take a Sabbatical
Professional Opinion: How to Take a Leap of Faith in Your Career
Screw the Cue Cards: 5 Tips for Mastering a Live Audience
Don’t be a Bore: 4 Ways To Engage Your Audience in a Meaningful Wa
Jessy Fofana, Founder of LaRue PR
Best for: PR, Marketing, Social Media
Jessy Fofana is our go-to for all things PR. With her PR agency LaRue PR, she has a wealth of knowledge when it comes to utilizing PR to strategically grow brands and get them on the right radar. Not only that, she is our seasoned PR correspondent for the Create & Cultivate blog.
Jessy founded LaRue PR over seven years ago after successfully directing public relations initiatives for an impressive list of well-known fashion, lifestyle and cosmetics brands and retailers. She brings a unique perspective of understanding what every player in the PR game needs. Having worked in magazine publishing, she knows what editors are looking for, and as the co-creator of Femme Arsenal, an indie cosmetic brand, she understands what business owners need to grow to the next level. Get her advice in-person at Create & Cultivate Atlanta!
Mandy Kellogg Rye, Founder and Creative Director of Waiting On Martha
Best for: Blogging, Entrepreneurship, Creative Directing
It all started with a blog and a desire to unite all of the things Mandy loves the most in one place. From how-tos for setting the perfect table and custom crafted cocktails, to what Mandy’s wearing and the beloved “currently coveting” roundup, a glimpse of what’s on her ever-expanding want list, readers know that when they’re in need of a little inspiration, Mandy is just a click away.
Soon after the blog took off and Mandy could no longer keep up with the “where can I buy that?” requests, she decided it was high time to expand the brand. With that, the Waiting On Martha shop was born. On any given shopping day, you can find a variety of products spanning the home décor, tabletop, entertaining, paper, gift, men’s, women’s, kids and even pet categories.
Courtney Kerr, Founder of Kerrently.com and TV & Radio Personality
Best for: Blogging, Strategic Partnerships
Courtney’s life took an interesting turn when she was cast on Bravo’s 2011 docudrama, “Most Eligible Dallas,” which eventually led to a 2013 spinoff show, “Courtney Loves Dallas.” Female viewers were eager to know everything about Courtney’s wardrobe, which was her lightbulb moment to leave her longtime, successful career as a retail shopgirl and venture into the world of style blogging. For two years, Dallas woke up to her every morning on the panel of opinionated women on KTXD’s 2-hour morning show, “The Broadcast.” In 2014, CBS Radio also scooped up Courtney to co-host afternoon drive show, “UNcorked with Leigh Ann & Courtney Kerr,” which airs on their Dallas hot adult contemporary station, 103.7 KVIL. In January of 2016, “UNcorked” went nationally syndicated and began as a weekly online podcast for Play.It.
After 5 years of juggling it all & going 100mph in designer heels, Courtney recognized that it was time to elevate “What Courtney Wore” into a online magazine, appropriately named “KERRently.” In January 2016, “KERRently” was launched and it is where Courtney shares her thoughts on fashion, beauty, travel and just life in general.
You can read our Q+A with Courtney here on our blog.
Cailli & Sam Beckerman, Creators of Beckerman Blog
Best for: Blogging, Strategic Partnerships, Fashion Design, Creative Directing
Sam and Cailli Beckerman have been showcasing their fashion sense and outfits of the day since 2009. Living out the ultimate millennial dream, these twins flew to Dubai just to check out Chanel’s new collection for their blog. The twins’ bold styles revolve around bright colors, eclectic designs, and edgy ensembles. Even their ridiculously adorable Pomeranians dress to impress. From being designers to becoming bloggers, these twins have seen it all and have accumulated a following of over 163,000.
You can read our Q+A with Cailli and Sam here on our blog.
Daniela Ramirez, Creator of Nany’s Klozet
Best for: Blogging, Fashion, Strategic Partnerships
Daniela launched her fashion blog Nany’s Klozet in 2011 to be a fashion diary. Now five years later, she has gained 270,000 followers and over 43,000 YouTube subscribers in both the English speaking and Hispanophone spaces. Some of her partnerships have included Guess, Pantene, Lucky Brand and TRESemmé.
You can read our Q+A with Daniela here on our blog.
Jessi Malay, Creator of mywhiteT and Recording Artist
Best for: Blogging, Fashion, Music, Strategic Partnerships
Jessi Malay, a Los Angeles native, doesn’t just document her her daily outfit inspiration on her blog My White T, but she also has a successful music career. With over 100,000 followers on Instagram Jessi has successfully merged her love of music, fashion and beauty and turned it into a full-time career. Check our Q+A with her here.
You can read our Q+A with Jessi here on our blog.
Keiko Lynn, Creator of KeikoLynn.com and Founder of Brooklyn Brigade
Best for: Blogging, Creative Directing, Entrepreneurship, Strategic Partnerships
Since 2009, Keiko Lynn has shared her fashion, beauty, and lifestyle musings that have served as inspiration to her followers. Not only that, the Brooklyn based blogger has gone beyond the realm of being a blogger and turned into a creative entrepreneur when she founded Brooklyn Brigade creative studio with follow blogger Helena Glazer.
She is constantly creating and looking for inspiration, and shares a peek into her daily life, style, and beauty tips on keikolynn.com.
Kelly Mindell, Founder and Creative Director of Studio DIY
Best for: Entrepreneurship, Creative Directing, Strategic Partnerships
Kelly Mindell, a modern-day artisan and professional celebrator, launched her blog, Studio DIY, during her senior year of college. Her clever, colorful creations has attracted a growing audience of over 306,000 followers that has caught the attention Pocky, Tic Tac, Method Home, and Grease Live. Based in Los Angeles, Kelly pulls inspiration from the West coast culture and has been expanding Studio DIY’s scope by experimenting with fashion, travel, and drool-worthy food, like donut burgers!
Rachel Martino, Creator of RachMartino.com
Best for: Blogging, Strategic Partnerships, Fashion
Rachel Martino is a Francophone fashion and lifestyle blogger based out of Brooklyn that has been able to create an international brand right from her home, with over 384k followers. Not only that, she is 25 and just last year became a full-time blogger after leaving Esteé Lauder Brands as Origins’ Community Manager.
Now, Rachel is fully focused on creating amazing content for her blog, making strategic partnerships that make sense for her blog, and travelling “across the pond” to market to her French audience as well.
You can read our Q+A with Rachel on our blog here.
Adrianna Adarme, Creator of A Cozy Kitchen
Best for: Blogging, Book Writing, Cooking, Crafts
Atlanta-native Adrianna Adarme started her blog in 2009 as a place to celebrate pies and corgis - more specifically, her corgi Amelia. However, her blog has been a haven for countless of recipes and projects that have inspired her 230k followers online.
Following the growth of her blog and social channels, Adrianna launched her first book called The Year of Cozy which has various original recipes and projects for the perfect “cozy” home, and is getting ready to release her second cookbook, A Cozy Coloring Cookbook.
You can read our Counter Culture feature with Adrianna on our blog here.
Carrie Morey, Founder of Callie’s Charleston Biscuits & Callie’s Hot Little Biscuit
Best for: Entrepreneurship and Food
Carrie Morey became a culinary entrepreneur when she founded Callie’s in 2005 and from then on, she expanded the southern biscuit making tradition by making her brand Callie’s Charleston Biscuits accessible across the country, along with another restaurant in Atlanta’s vibrant Virginia Highlands neighborhood.Today, Callie has authored a cookbook that also includes her entrepreneurial narrative, and also is a guest lecturer at the College of Charleston School of Business, presenting the program’s Entrepreneurship Class.
Jeni Britton Bauer, Founder of Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams
Best For: Entrepreneurship & Food
Jeni has been making ice creams professionally for two decades. Before that, she studied art, worked in a bakery, and had a serious hobby blending perfumes and collecting essential oils. Jeni founded Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams in 2002. Her ahead-of-the-trend vision—using whole ingredients and dairy from grass-pastured cows, rather than synthetic flavorings and commodity ice cream mix—coupled with inspired flavors sparked the artisan ice cream movement more than a decade before it would become a top food trend. Jeni is a James Beard Award-winning author of two cookbooks and has been recognized by Fast Company as one of the most creative people in business.
Adrianna Adarme of A Cozy Kitchen Talks Cooking Anything She Wants
The kitchen is her oyster.
Got an appetite for hearing from the leading boss women that are calling the shots in the culinary world? Get ready to grub hard on our new#CreateCultivate series: Counter Culture, where we'll be talking to prominent women in the food industry about good eats, food trends, and making it in the cutting edge cooking world.
Don't put a fork in it, because we're not close to done.
We're watching food blogger Adrianna Adarme of A Cozy Kitchen decorate cupcakes in the gorgeous light of her LA living room. There's a setup of icing, baby's breath, and blackberries. She spreads the icing on the vanilla base, baked earlier, the knife creating perfectly smooth swirls. It's Pinterest heaven.
Adrianna didn't set out to be a food blogger. "When I first started my blog," she says, "I was working as a producer at a trailer house. We made trailers and promotional materials for studios. When people hear this they think it’s really fun but in actuality it doesn’t require a ton of creativity."
It was a work environment that left her feeling disconnected from art or creative work and searching for something else.
"I wasn’t inspired by the films we were promoting nor was I inspired by the content I was creating there. Looking back I think if I was working on films I did love, I might not have ever started my blog." But she did.
In 2009 she started A Cozy Kitchen. In the fall of 2015 she published The Year of Cozy, her step-by-step book of recipes and projects. She also has a new coloring book A Cozy Coloring Cookbook, designed with illustrator Amber Day, to be released November 2016.
It's cozy because it's a grown-up take on comfort food, like pie, the smell of which she says will always bring a smile to her face. It's a modern-meets-nostalgia approach to cooking and baking that she says is more about a feeling than anything else. "It’s not necessarily one that is in the middle of winter or one that has snow outside of the windows."
When I think of a kitchen that's "cozy," she says, "I like to think of it as a warm place you never want to leave. Maybe music is playing, the oven is baking up something awesome, and your dog is at your feet. And maybe it’s right before your friends are coming over. It’s that safe feeling that everything is OK, even though it’s usually not."
"Cozy--it’s that safe feeling that everything is OK, even though it’s usually not."
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We chatted with Adrianna about the power of good food, what "Cozy" means to her, and the one food she'd choose to eat for the rest of her life. ("Easy," she says, "Pasta.")
Why food? Beyond the obvious of it bringing people together? What special meaning does it hold for you?
Unfortunately there isn’t some big story that drew me to food other than just the desire to be creative in my spare time. I majored in filmmaking in college and with film, unlike food, you need a lot of people involved and a ton of resources in order to create the work that’s in your brain. But with food you can sort of just do it by yourself. You don’t need much. I like ceramics for that very reason, too.
How did you land on blogging as the answer to a creative void?
I arrived at blogging when I was bored at work reading blogs. I found them really entertaining, a great way to procrastinate. So, I started cooking at home a lot more because of them. I really liked that there wasn’t that much production between the person/writer and what you were reading. It felt super immediate and fluid.
How much of cooking is instinct and how much is following a recipe?
I think that sort of depends what you’re making (laughs). I think cooking is very much about instincts but you don’t really get those instincts until you’ve cooked a lot. I don’t think people are born with those instincts; I do think people are born with good palates but those instincts you speak of are ones that are learned over time. Being a good cook is all about doing and experience, like a lot of other things in life.
But that’s ok. I think a lot of people don’t have those instincts yet so that’s why recipes were created.
Is there a moment in the kitchen you can remember from your youth that has stuck with you?
Not necessarily a moment but more like a feeling. It’s the feeling of how our Sundays felt growing up. Salsa or merengue or jazz was usually playing, and my parents were cooking with my grandfather. My grandfather would usually be lecturing my dad about the importance of “tuco” (which means tomato sauce in Spanish). There were lots of heated arguments about using water vs. chicken broth (laughs). That feeling is a super warm feeling to me when I look back on; it felt safe and comfortable—like a hug.
"Salsa or merengue or jazz was usually playing, and my parents were cooking with my grandfather."
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What is your favorite part about being a food blogger?
My favorite part about being a food blogger is waking up and being able to cook anything I want. I have a platform that allows me to cook anything I’d like-- and still make money. I mean, that’s a dream. There are challenges in any job but I can tell you that there aren’t that many with food blogging, or at least I don’t think so.
What are some unexpected challenges? From creating something from scratch to making sure it’s photographed just right?
For me, the biggest challenge is just not being basic and boring. I sometimes think, 'Oh this is just my style,' but sometimes I’m just being boring (laughs). It’s so hard. That’s probably my biggest struggle, just coming up with ideas that I think are worthy of being shared.
Do you ever run into a recipe rut? Kind of like writer’s block but with food?
Yes, totally. It’s the worst. There are times when I feel like every idea that I can think of is so basic (laughs). During times like that I usually just go on Instagram and look up restaurants that I know are doing really inspiring work. I look at their food on Instagram, try to imagine the flavors together and think of something else completely so I’m not totally ripping them off AND transform it into something real people in real non-professional kitchens can recreate.
What do you hope your readers get from A Cozy Kitchen?
I hope they get a place that is fun and cozy. I hope it’s a place that inspires them to maybe make something they were slightly intimidated by. I hope that they find something to bake with their friends. I like to think that a lot of my recipes are perfect for that lazy Saturday when you want a project to bake .
What’s the long-term goal for A Cozy Kitchen? How do you see your brand expanding— including your book, etc.?
I like to tell people that I want to wake up and cook every single day for the rest of my life. How that exactly looks and where my money comes from might change, especially since digital media is always rapidly changing. The large picture isn’t easy to see since no one has really blogged for twenty years. All I know is that I want to keep making and creating food for a really long time. Hopefully people will be interested in what I make for that long.
"The large picture isn’t easy to see since no one has really blogged for twenty years."
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In the fall I’m coming out with a new cookbook. It’s a coloring book called A Cozy Coloring Cookbook. I’m SO excited. It’s full of illustrations of some really simple recipes that are colorful and fun to color. I worked with a really amazing illustrator named Amber Day. She’s ridiculously talented. I like to think of it as hyper-reality. It’s full of sprinkles falling from the sky, a pattern of pizza slices and Amelia (my dog) dreaming about all the things she wishes she could eat. I can’t wait to share it with the world.
Be sure to catch Adrianna on panel when she joins us for Create & Cultivate ATL. Get your tickets now!!
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