Her Story
About Brandy
I started in the nonprofit sector back in the late 90s. My first job was in 1998, working for Pillsbury Neighborhood Services, a huge community organization in Minneapolis, and I was on the advocacy department where I helped spearhead a campaign advocating for single moms and advocating for affordable, quality child care. I founded my nonprofit in 2011, and now I'm stepping into a public speaking role as an innovative motivational speaker. I'm an author who shared my testimony of narcissistic abuse and recovery, and my talks are centered around women's health, mental health, and access to healthcare. My foundation addresses healthcare disparities that we're facing. Right now we have a huge healthcare disparity in Charlotte, in my city, where I have hundreds of women who have been on extensive backlogs for mammograms. My mom passed from breast cancer in 2008, and that's what inspired me to start this foundation. She caught it at a late stage, and she was in between jobs, she just moved from Minnesota, so when you don't have insurance, you're in between jobs, she's in Stage 3. Going through what my mom went through and that journey with her, I was able to see all the issues that we were facing, and I wanted to be a part of that change, making sure that women get access to those critical mammograms, regardless of their socioeconomical status, their income, whatever. I also created Mighty Movers to work with kids, teaching yoga and mindfulness. This was inspired by my daughter, who demonstrated belly breathing with me when I was dealing with anxiety and depression from grief and trauma. She came home from pre-K and showed me breathing exercises her teacher was doing with the kids to regulate their nervous system, and it immediately brought my anxiety down when I was on the verge of having a panic attack. That inspired me, and that's really how Mighty Movers was born.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Brandy
01What do you attribute your success to?
I have to give all the honor and the thanks to God. God Almighty. My mother, my late mother, is definitely a huge part of it. I still hear her voices on certain things, and she would tell me things like the power and the pen, use your voice. A lot of her things that she taught me over the years are those little reminders to keep going. My mother was a fighter, she was tenacious, and those are the things that really keep me going. My girls, when they speak life to me and they see the work, Mother's Day was really special because they wrote me a heartfelt card and note and they let me know that, Mom, we see you, we see what you're doing, and we appreciate you, we love you. As a mom, we do all this stuff because we're doing it for our kids, and when they give you that confirmation that, hey, mom, we love you, and we see you, and they give you your flowers, that means a lot. That has really been keeping me going, just trying to break generational cycles and move forward. The encouragement that I get from women telling me keep going, and just people, whoever crossed my path, that has been so important.
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