Monthly Archives: October 2023

With Grand Opening of BAE’s Education, Briana A. Esquivel Diaz Sees a Bright Future for Sacramento’s Kids

October 27, 2023 Lauren Taber

For Briana Esquivel, founder, owner and operator of BAE’s Education, school is more than just a place for children to pass the time. Living through adversity in childhood, Esquivel leaned on education as a means to build success and have a positive impact in her family and community. A first-generation high school graduate and college student, Esquivel is now in the final stages of completing her Doctorates in Education at CSU Sacramento and has built her career around creating early childhood education programs for a variety of institutions. This year, she is celebrating the opening of the first location of BAE’s Education, a non-profit/for profit multicultural state-funded preschool and privately-owned child development center. With support from the Women’s Business Center, Esquivel has created a strategic business plan that will allow her to reach children from underserved communities with holistic and inclusive education and grow a new generation of leaders.

"We're Here for the Children"

Growing up, despite instability being a facet of her home life, Esquivel’s parents always ensured that she had access to good schools. “My parents wanted me to break the generational curse,” she says, explaining the critical role that schools should play in supporting the entirety of a child’s development, not just academics. “Children need stability–they need to be ensured, ‘I don’t have to worry about surviving because my school’s got me’.”

Esquivel first began to develop her philosophy and expertise through her teaching practicum in early childhood education within Los Rios Community Colleges, and eventually CSU Sacramento where she’s obtaining her master’s in educational leadership and policy and through her work in program and curriculum development through projects within early childhood education centers and school districts locally. When the Covid-19 pandemic caused schools across the country to shut down, with marked negative impacts on children’s educational attainment, Esquivel decided take action, aiming to provide consistent and relevant educational settings.

With her wide range of experience working on the ground with communities to develop programs for students, she knew that she could open her own education centers that would go beyond what was possible at existing schools. The concept for BAE’s Education–which stands for Before Anything Else, Education–was born out of the need to ensure that communities could stay connected to care and education for their children. Esquivel joined together with colleagues and envisioned a learning environment that would serve students from underserved populations and empower their families as well. “We evaluate demands, and serve them,” she says. “That’s our number 1 priority. We’re here for the children.”

Leveraging Business Support

With a federal grant in partnership with the State of California, Department of Social Serivces and the U.S. Department of Education, Esquivel and her co-founders were able to begin developing locations for BAE’s Education schools in Sacramento and Elk Grove. Working with a Women’s Business Center counselor, Charles Thomas, Esquivel navigated the technical side of her new enterprise, writing a business plan, creating a budget, and learning how to operate a business.

The Sacramento location, on Mather Road, will celebrate their grand opening next month on November 17. The locations were chosen strategically to be available to lower income neighborhoods, and BAE’s Education will offer education and care for infants and toddlers, preschool, transitional kindergarten,

and school-aged children. To help elevate communities, the centers will offer before and after school programs for students up to grade six, as well as dual-language immersion programs, which allow English-learners to increase literacy in their first language while learning English.

Esquivel sees all of her efforts as an investment in the future of Sacramento. “Our motto is ‘Saving Sacramento, one neighborhood at a time,’” she says. “We would love to be in as many neighborhoods as have the demand. There are still families that need care, growing communities that need love and need people to invest in them and their children.

Black-Owned Business, Blog, Client Success Stories

Tiana Drisker is Preparing the Construction Industry for a Diverse Workforce with Hazard Eliminators

October 16, 2023 Lauren Taber

Like many industries have in recent years, construction companies are beginning to understand the importance of cultivating a diverse workforce. The Associated General Contractors of America released a report in 2018 detailing the business advantages of diversity and inclusion (including increased innovation and safety and reduced employee turnover), and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce will celebrate Construction Inclusion Week October 16 through 20. Recognizing the need to prepare the industry for evolutions in workplace culture, environmental health and safety professional Tiana Drisker founded Hazard Eliminators, creating occupational safety trainings and bringing a holistic approach to occupational safety that focuses on communication, situational awareness, and other soft skills.

AN OPPORTUNITY FOR EVOLUTION

In an industry that has historically lacked ethnic and gender diversity, change cannot be expected to occur overnight—as of 2020, only about 10% of workers in the industry were women, while only 5.1% were Black. So when Drisker first entered the construction industry as an environmental health and safety professional, she knew that her outlook would stand out. “Through my lens as a Black woman, I’ve been able to contribute to the field with a holistic approach of mindfulness, encouraging self-awareness, and situational awareness,” says Drisker, who also has a background in healthcare which increases her attention to personal health as safety. “My approach towards safety has been to look at the bigger picture and not just the skills of the workers.” This approach, she felt, was not always valued in the workplaces she would train.

Drisker saw an opportunity to elevate what traditional environmental health and safety (EHS) training entails. Knowing the importance of strong communication about personal comfort and mindset, Tiana imagined an approach to standard EHS training–about how to alert coworkers of immediate hazards, how to operate machinery safely, and more–that integrated behavioral safety, encouraged workers to see themselves as leaders in workplace safety and was inclusive of diverse identities and perspectives. “I wanted to empower the construction field to be prepared for the influx of all different types of people,” says Drisker.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP FOR CHANGE

Without the opportunity to implement these changes in her workplace, Drisker turned to the Women’s Business Center (WBC) for guidance on starting her own business. Working with a business counselor, Charles Thomas, Drisker solidified her vision into a business idea, wrote a business plan and a budget, and launched Hazard Eliminators in 2020.

As the CEO of her own business, Drisker is able to leverage her professional certifications and technical knowledge to create unique training programs that cover the requisite safety information and include education on interpersonal communication, self-awareness and diversity. With her programs, Drisker also educates clients on how to create safe workplaces for women, including appropriately fitted personal protective equipment.

“It’s not just about how well you can drive a forklift, it’s your awareness when you use those tools,” she explains. “It’s your communication style and how you spoke with other people in your environment about the hazards that they would be engaging with during that task.”

GROWING LEADERS

Beyond ensuring a safe workplace, Drisker knows she is an advocate for employees and their rights. She sees her methods for safety training as a way that employees can feel empowered to communicate their needs and boundaries and confident that their colleagues understand them as well. “I want to grow leaders, grow people, grow their perspective,” she says, adding that her programs are also accessible to businesses experiencing growth and need to integrate safety plans for the first time.

Through her work with the WBC, Drisker has gained contracts with repeat clients and continued to acquire her business certifications. “[Charles] has connected me with other professionals that I’ve been able to do business with, and I don’t know where I would be without his guidance,” she says. Looking forward, Drisker is hoping to work on her business full-time. In the meantime, she is expanding her clientele and teaching classes to repeat clients. As the construction industry continues to become more diverse, the knowledge and innovation of leaders like Tiana Drisker will be in ever-greater demand.

Blog, Client Success Stories

Pamela Marquez Shares the Heritage of Agua de Jamaica One Bottle at a Time

October 4, 2023 Lauren Taber

Ask Pamela Marquez about the first time she drank agua de jamaica in Mexico, and the answer will span generations. “It did elicit ancestral memories in me,” says the Sacramento local, reflecting on her travels across the country. “It empowered my body.” Marquez founded Puzz e Gata Jamaica in 2020 to share the benefits of the sweetened, cinnamon-spiced hibiscus flower tea across Northern California, after being unable to find any product that matched the traditional recipes she had encountered in Mexico. This year, she began working with the Women’s Business Center to develop strategies for the sustainable growth and innovation of her mission.

Global History, Personal Mission

As Marquez learned during her research, the hibiscus flower is not native to North America. The flower and its tea came to Central America from West Africa by way of the Caribbean, and variations of the beverage are still enjoyed widely across those regions. In fact, the differing recipes from regions within Mexico was a major inspiration for Marquez to bring a traditional brew to Sacramento. Traveling twice a year to different states, she spoke with the women selling their home-brewed agua de jamaica, absorbing the rich cultural significance of the drink as well as their unique recipes.

Puzz e Gata at the Sacramento Farm to Fork Festival in 2022.

“I learned the cultural healing properties, the folk medicine uses of the past, and even the current medicinal qualities,” Marquez explains, pointing out that hibiscus tea is rich in antioxidants, can fight inflammation and has been associated—in her personal experience—with alleviation of symptoms of depression. Benefits, she adds, that aren’t present in the sugary drink mixes that merely mimic the flavors of jamaica that she found outside of Mexico. “My purpose is to get real, authentic, hibiscus flower tea to the Sacramento community.”

Growing Flowers (And a Business)

After developing her own recipe, a combination of methods and ingredients she learned during her travels, Marquez successfully launched Puzz e Gata Jamaica through the Alchemist Community Development Corporation’s Alchemist Kitchen Incubator Program. This gave her access to a commercial kitchen where she could brew and bottle her recipes, made from flowers grown organically in her home garden.

Pamela Marquez brews four variations of jamaica tea.

With this early success, Marquez was able to begin selling at local grocery stores, including the Sacramento Natural Foods Cooperative and the Davis Food Cooperative. But without a background in running a business, creating a pathway to sustainability and growth was a separate challenge. She turned to the Women’s Business Center and began working with business counselor Prashante Bailey-Lewis.

“I accept as much help as I can with my business, so whenever I see an opportunity to ask for help, I do,” says Marquez, adding that with Bailey-Lewis’s guidance, she raised her prices and developed new strategies for marketing her product to restaurants. “She’s just a well of knowledge.” Marquez has also received support with grant proposals, pitch deck creation, and attended WBC networking events to build her community connections.

Preparing for a Sweet Future

Marquez grows and harvests her ingredients by hand.

The whole of Marquez’s operation seeks to elevate the culture and flavors of Mexico: from the name Puzz e Gata, her favorite Spanglish phrase for “pussy cat” with a feminized twist, to the recipe variations she offers. In addition to traditional agua de jamaica with cinnamon, Marquez also offers a less-sweetened “tart” brew, a jalapeno infusion, and an infusion with cactus or nopales.

As a Chicana founder, Marquez’s impact on the empowerment of Mexican heritage goes beyond her personal mission. Studies have cited Latino-owned businesses as the fastest growing segment of small businesses in the country, with the number of Hispanic women entrepreneurs growing 137 percent between 2007 and 2016. By bringing her product to the marketplace, Marquez is contributing not only to the celebration of a staple of Central American culture, but to the visibility of Latina entrepreneurs in our small business economy.

In the years ahead, Marquez’s main goal is to secure her own brick and mortar store where she can create new recipes, test innovative uses for hibiscus flower, and feature local artists. “I know I’m going in the right direction,” she says, “I can see all of the creativity that’s going to come out of this business.”

And an insider tip? Try any of Puzz e Gata’s bottled blends poured over ice with a rim of Tajin or Chamoy, says Marquez, and keep your eyes peeled for hibiscus rim sugar for holiday specialty beverages.