Narrative podcast exploring how women of color cultivate ancestral wisdom, reconnect with the land, and use the garden as a site of personal and communal healing. Produced by the Roots & Resilience Studio, the series blends reflective storytelling, soft soundscapes, and intimate interviews to center themes of memory, leadership, and liberation; rooted in soil and spirit.

Host & Creator — Inner Garden Podcast: Stories of Healing, Land & Legacy

You.com

You.com is the world’s first open search engine platform that summarizes the web for users, with no ads, superior privacy options, and personalization.

Angel Investor

Penguin Random House

Author ASCENDING: BLACK WOMEN & THE POWER PARADOX, a leadership memoir addressing bias and misogynoir, offering solutions based on collective stories.
• Acquired by Lashanda Anakwah at Tiny Reparations Books/Penguin Random House.

Author- ASCENDING ~ Black Women and The Power Paradox

GrubMarket Inc.

GrubMarket is the AI-powered technology enabler and digital transformer of the American food supply chain industry. It is the first mover of building B2B eCommerce, as well as the first mover of providing Enterprise AI Solutions to the American food supply chain industry. It is one of the largest private food tech companies in the United States and the world.

L-Nutra, Inc

L-Nutra Inc is a leading health tech company providing innovative solutions in nutrition for longevity.

Backpack Healthcare

Backpack Health, formerly Youme Healthcare, is a pediatric mental health provider whose services include a digital self-care app, virtual therapy sessions for children and teens, psychiatry and medication management and virtual resources for parents. Backpack Health has developed an app that uses AI to help monitor a client’s emotions and then match them with an appropriate therapist.

Portfolia

LP Investor - FemTech III Fund

First Close Partners

LP Investor

Ascend Ventures Tech

Ascend Ventures is a purpose-driven investment firm that supports high-impact startups led by underrepresented founders. With a focus on inclusive innovation, Ascend empowers entrepreneurs to build scalable, sustainable ventures that drive economic equity and systemic change.
As part of Ascend Ventures, Black Innovation Lab is a flagship initiative focused on advancing innovation, equity, and entrepreneurship within overlooked communities. 
My work includes:
• Led the development of a community-centered platform for Black innovators, resulting in increased access to capital and networks.
• Championed inclusive ecosystems by providing mentorship and strategic guidance to transform visionary concepts into scalable ventures.
• Cultivated strategic partnerships and designed programs to drive systemic change and sustainable pathways for generational impact.

Founder and CEO

Black Girls CODE

Founder and CEO (February 2011 - August 2022)
Founded and led Black Girls CODE, growing it from a grassroots pilot program to an internationally recognized non-profit with 15 chapters.
• Designed an immersive computer science curriculum for girls of color 6-18 in marginalized communities.
• Established strategic partnerships resulting in revenue growth from less than $200,000 to a surplus of $30M.
•Scaled the initial program model from a 4-week cohort to a distributed program model powered by professional technical volunteers, expanding from 6 to 15 US cities and Johannesburg, South Africa.
•Established an in-school CODE Club program in 2015, implementing a 6-12 week immersive cohort program within after-school programs in Washington, DC, New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, and the Bay Area.
•Established an alumni program in 2019 to support professional development for program alumni and ideated the viral Code Along Youtube Program.

Founder

I'm Kimberly Bryant — systems architect, cultural storyteller, and strategic intellectual working at the intersection of technology, equity, and transformative power.

As the Founder of Black Girls CODE, I architected one of the most impactful STEM movements of the last decade—introducing over 100,000 girls of color to coding, creativity, and community. Today, I lead the Black Innovation Lab by Ascend Ventures, a new venture ecosystem rooted in Memphis and the U.S. South that invests in visionary founders building for societal impact and generational wealth.

My work operates at the systems level—deconstructing barriers and designing frameworks for inclusive innovation. Whether launching startups, advising funders, or writing my memoir Ascending: Black Women and the Power Paradox (Penguin Random House, 2026), I create implementable solutions to systemic challenges while preserving the cultural narratives that sustain transformation.

I'm also the founder of Roots & Resilience Studio, a cultural production space for women of color reclaiming our stories, land, and leadership on our own terms.

🎙 Inner Garden: Stories of Healing, Land & Legacy is the Studio's first podcast series—a sonic sanctuary exploring how women of color are reconnecting to ancestral wisdom, community, and the soil beneath our feet.

📚 Roots & Resilience on Substack is where I share garden wisdom, leadership reflections, and narrative essays on growing with intention—in the garden and beyond.

I've been honored by the White House and the Smithsonian for my contributions to tech and social impact. But my next chapter focuses on building the systems that sustain liberation:

+ A regenerative framework for rest, ownership, and intergenerational wealth
+ Strategic platforms that restore power to the hands of storytellers, builders, and visionaries
+ Cultural and economic architectures that center the leadership, wellbeing, and legacy of Black women

If you're designing systems for transformation or architecting solutions for systemic change—let's connect.

This story is one I've seen often over the past few years and it's also a cautionary tale and telling that so many of us don't understand how intellectual property works especially within a corporate structure. 

I've replied below to the ONE comment 😩 below that clearly articulates this so I won't rehash it but I pray we all learn and pay much closer attention to how IP law works in the new year. 

(Because y'all you can't create a feature while employed and expect to be acknowledged for it. That's not how it workssssss 😩😭

Be blessed. 🙏🏾

Kimberly Bryant

Co-Founder @ joincolab.io | Forbes 30 Under 30 | Author

A 21-year-old intern created the Spotify Wrapped story format.
The world loved it but she never got the credit.

Every December, Spotify Wrapped takes over the internet.
It becomes a cultural moment - almost a holiday.

But the version we know today didn’t come from executives or a big creative team- It came from a design intern named Jewel Ham.

Back then, Wrapped was just a link Spotify emailed to users.
It wasn’t fun. It wasn’t social. It wasn’t something you posted.

Jewel imagined it differently.

She spent her internship redesigning it into the colorful, tappable, story-style experience everyone now shares on Instagram.
She built the slides and pitched the concept on her last day at Spotify.
Everyone loved it.

A year later, Wrapped exploded.
Millions of people were sharing their stories.
It became one of the biggest organic marketing moments in tech.

And the person who helped spark that shift watched it all happen without acknowledgment.

Her story says a lot about how ideas move through big companies - especially when they come from young people or from Black women.
The creativity is celebrated. The creator often isn’t.

But it also speaks to something bigger:

Your ideas can change culture, even if your title says “intern.”
Your perspective matters, even if you’re the youngest person in the room.
And sometimes the thing you build quietly becomes the blueprint for an entire industry.

Jewel’s story is a reminder to bet on your creativity.
The world might not always credit you - but it can’t ignore the impact of what you make.

This. Resonates. My entire lived experience. 

"Critical thinking is powerful because it interrupts comfort. It asks why things are the way they
are. It exposes contradictions that many would rather leave unspoken." 

I remember being constantly prodded when I was pledging my sorority back in college about why I was always being SO serious. Because I had questions. And I wasn't easily bent without answers. 
I'm glad I'm still this same woman. 

Proudly🖤

Black History Studies Historian, Financial Educator

bell hooks understood a pattern that repeats across generations. When a woman thinks
critically, people often label her difficult before they ever engage with her ideas.
The label is a shortcut.
A way to dismiss her without confronting what she is actually saying.
Critical thinking is powerful because it interrupts comfort. It asks why things are the way they
are. It exposes contradictions that many would rather leave unspoken.
So instead of addressing her insight, the world questions her tone.
It reframes her clarity as attitude.
It turns her precision into a flaw.
But women who think critically are not difficult. They are necessary.
They hold up mirrors that others avoid.
They name truths that would otherwise stay buried.
To think for yourself is not an invitation for conflict. It is an act of presence.
It is choosing awareness over silence.
And every time a woman refuses to apologize for her mind, she shifts the world a little closer to
honesty.

From Her Archives

No alternative text description for this image

When I Die by Nikki Giovanni, 1975

when i die i hope no one who ever hurt me cries
and if they cry i hope their eyes fall out
and a million maggots that had made up their brains
crawl from the empty holes and devour the flesh
that covered the evil that passed itself off as a person
that i probably tried
to love

when i die i hope every worker in the national security
council
the interpol the fbi cia foundation for the development
of black women gets
an extra bonus and maybe takes one day off
and maybe even asks why they didn’t work as hard for us
as they did
them
but it always seems to be that way

please don’t let them read “nikki-rosa” maybe just let
some black woman who called herself my friend go around
and collect
each and every book and let some black man who said it
was
negative of me to want him to be a man collect every
picture
and poster and let them burn -throw acid on them- shit
on them as
they did me while i tried
to live. 

and as soon as i die i hope everyone who loved me learns
the meaning
of my death which is a simple lesson
don’t do what you do very well very well and enjoy it it
scares white folk
and makes black ones truly mad

but i do hope someone tells my son
his mother liked little old ladies with
their blue dresses and hats and gloves that sittin’
by the window
to watch the dawn come up is valid that smiling at an old
man
and petting a dog don’t detract from manhood
do

somebody please
tell him i knew all along that what would be
is what will be but i wanted to be a new person
and my rebirth was stifled not by the master
but the slave

and if ever i touched a life i hope that life knows
that i know that touching was and still is and will always
be the true
revolution

🖤🖤🖤

This post deserves a listen and digs into the layers of conversations we must have amongst ourselves as Black women when it comes to respecting the work of our sisters. I was already going to love this post, but by the time Dr. Jenn M. Jackson, PhD referenced "skin privilege" and how it manifests in cultural spaces and proximity a certain demographic I knew I absolutely must share it. This is something I'm interrogating in my own work; who amongst us gets to show up and be seen as representative "for us", and who does not. 💡

Black Politics Scholar | Author | Speaker Black Women Taught Us (2024) Policing Blackness (forthcoming) Researching Black Politics, gender and sexuality, threat, and policing.

I recently shared my Substack article about Brené Brown, Courage Culture, and the co-optation of Black women's intellectual labor. I also made a short video detailing why it is important that we engage in citational ethics that properly credit Black women for our intellectual work and contributions.

Read the piece at https://lnkd.in/gG7Q-5ei.

Watch the video below.

#courageculture #intersectionality #Courage #brenebrown

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