Willing to walk. Never walking away.

• I've walked away from my own abusive relationship.
• I've walked away from a Governmental Boss who wanted me to act out of integrity.
• I've walked away from a New Director who refused to master her job and wanted me to do the work for her.
• I've walked away (as a business owner) from $500K and $1.5M contracts because they weren't being awarded in a way that would allow them to stay in compliance.

Integrity is one of my core values, and I'm not willing to do anything or work with anyone that pushes up against it.

My commitment to impacting previously overlooked communities — communities that have been left to "fend for themselves." What I didn't know when I started in Public Administration was that, often, the money needed to properly serve minority, rural, and poor communities is available. Those communities just don't have the tools, insight, and strategies to access it.

That's what I'm here for now — to ensure that people and communities in need of help, get it.

I grew up in a small southern rural town surrounded by a ton of family. We were taught early to work hard, care for our neighbors as we would ourselves, and remember that nobody was coming to save us. And guess what — they didn't.

Early in my career, I worked for a State Representative who embodied integrity, attention to detail, community impact, and servant leadership. From her I learned to be thorough, do the research, ask the questions, and use my voice and platform to represent those who don't have one.

• Served as a City Executive
• Reorganized the city government twice
• Won a Best Practice award for the State of Florida for public/private partnership work within the Capital Improvement Office
• Founded two major city centralized Grants Management & Compliance Offices

I learned how the funding cycle works — and how to help organizations, public and private, develop a strategic plan, gain access to funding, manage it properly, and stay in compliance with what they were awarded.

When I left City Government to hang out my own shingle, I did so to help clients truly understand the funding cycle — to be prepared, tell their story so they're awarded the money they seek, and manage it so they keep it and earn more.

Today, as owner of The Affinity Consulting Group and The Fund Finders®, I guide clients who are often entering the funding process for the first time — helping them become capital-ready, procurement-ready, and positioned to scale, with a focus on planning for their eventual exit from the company.

Whether that means passing the business to a relative or a competent successor, or selling it due to retirement, health, or shifting economic conditions, my goal is to help people build the lives they want — through corporate and government contracts, product development, and the eventual sale of their business — rather than letting it dissolve and fail to serve the community at large.

Beyond the work, I am personally in my Sovereign Season — a season I fondly mark with the imagery of the Dominican Hummingbird. Small but mighty, it hovers where others cannot hold still, it moves freely between worlds, and it flies with a resilience that belies its size.

Life has changed for me. My Sovereign Season is about becoming the voice alchemist that God has called me to be. I have worked tirelessly for others, and so I must give more attention to my own health. I am now a Lupus warrior and autoimmune disease advocate, and a caregiver to the seniors in my family.

These illnesses disproportionately impact women because we care so much for others. We must put our oxygen masks on and care for ourselves first.

Like the bridge I build in my work, the hummingbird lives between — here and there, stillness and motion, what was survived and what is now being built. It reminds me that sovereignty is not volume; it is steadiness, beauty, and the will to keep going.