Leaving my job to start my own business really came down to family changes. I had a decent salary, benefits, and job flexibility in a role serving children and families, but I could no longer work a traditional job due to the demands.
I had a kid, and then I had another kid, and my husband was gone a lot. He’s an airline pilot. If I wanted to stay in the workforce, entrepreneurship felt like the only option.
My sorority sister, Alexandra Tyson — we both pledged Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated at the University of Maryland, College Park — came over to visit and check on me after a pregnancy loss.
During that wellness check, she told me about an RFP she saw for a popular education company looking for international teachers. She asked me if I wanted to team up and try to nail the proposal.
We didn’t get the job, but we recognized we had synergy.
After my partner, Alex, was a classroom teacher in the US and abroad for 20 years and an instructional coach at an international school in DC, she felt she had amassed enough skills and knowledge to be an entrepreneur.
That had always been a goal of hers — to run her own business. It was instilled in her as a family value. She has Jamaican heritage, and her family groomed her to start a business.
Siyana Partners Consulting
We didn’t make the leap overnight since we both had strong reputations in our field. But we kept asking ourselves what it would look like if we built something that could meet the needs of the systems we were embedded in daily.
So, in March 2023, we started Siyana Partners Consulting to give education organizations strategic support. Our firm relies on grants and fundraising support. We’ve already amassed $580,000 this year.
Getting the business here after three years didn’t come without some regrets along the way.
We both wanted to quit at different times
I remember telling Alex a year after we launched, I might have to get a full time job. I was already a mom to my now 4-year-old son when I got pregnant with my second child. I remember saying, “Noooo, I can’t do this. I can’t do this.” I wasn’t expecting it to happen like that, especially since I was diagnosed with premenstrual dysphoric disorder that affected me after my son’s pregnancy.
I rethought becoming an entrepreneur because we didn’t have any childcare help yet, and I was diagnosed with postpartum depression after giving birth. If it weren’t for Alex, who told me to pause on the business and take care of myself, I don’t know what I would’ve done. It showed in that moment that yes, she’s my business partner, but she’s also my friend.
Alex had to convince me to stop working and focus on my family, while she thankfully picked up the ball with the jobs we did have.
I even told her, “I’m not going to take any payments,” but she refused. It’s like a marriage. Sometimes I have to carry us for a while. Sometimes she has to carry us for a while. Even though we were making little money at the time, Alex still sent me half.
Siyana Partners Consulting
And it came back to her when she needed support. She left her husband when she went out as a consultant, and he was the breadwinner. Building a business while leaving, she was like, “Oh shit! What the hell.” She thought she would need a full time job.
I was really good at talking her off the ledge. She would apply for jobs, and she would get offers, and then they would come through, or they wouldn’t come through. Alex thinks it was just fate. This is the way it’s supposed to be. I have her back, and she has mine.
Why our partnership works
Our partnership works so well because we both have very specific skill sets, and we trust each other to use them. For example, last week Alex gave me permission to work on the business while she worked in the business.
I was out there, running out, having business development meetings, networking for us, looking for our next opportunity. There is a strategy for raising money for the business. It’s always a strategy and that is relationships.
Siyana Partners Consulting
We’re pretty good at maintaining relationships, really strong, meaningful ones. We both extend ourselves, so they’re very loyal to us.
We also present well. We’re pretty confident. I do a lot of things for free: volunteer for boards. I sit on a couple of different boards. Alex will participate in various meetings and panels for free, which gives us visibility and helps us become an authority in the field. We also use our graduate school networks — John Hopkins and New York University. We also support the Terps, the school where we met.
