May 31, 2017
The Kickass Single Mom Grant is a $1,000 gift awarded monthly to a single mom doing something incredible — whether large or small, in her career, business, family, community. The goal is to support women doing amazing things, and share their stories to inspire others.
June's Kickass Single Mom grant winner Sheri Hopkins, a 35-year-old mom of three daughters, who saw the potential for the black-owned business community in her hometown of San Diego.
"Even though San Diego is such a diverse city, I felt like there wasn’t a community that my daughters could say looked like them," Hopkins wrote in her grant application. "Speaking to business owners, they stated no one supported them and eventually their business failed or they were struggling to hold on." Last year, she founded the business association, Black San Diego.
With a friend, Hopkins started compiling a list of local businesses owned by African Americans, and hosting networking events that attract more than 200 people, and a Facebook community, that today has more than 2,600 members. Sheri's 15-year-old daughter helps run the events, where she meets and is sometimes mentored by members.
Hopkins, an accountant, realized that many of her peers struggled with the basics of entrepreneurship, like bookkeeping, getting business licenses and insurance. She plans to use the grant to create binders and a website with this information, and checklists that business owners can use to establish and grow their enterprises. Future plans include related seminars, and eventually a co-working / incubator for black-owned San Diego businesses.
"I want my daughters to grow up seeing that they can be anything," Hopkins says. In addition to working fulltime as an accounting director for a property management firm, Hopkins works out daily (rising at 4:15 a.m.!), being active in her church, chauffeuring her daughters to sports and other activities, and her favorite stress-relief activity: roller blading.
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