Jasmine is a first generation entrepreneur. She has worked in the creative industry for more than 15 years as a professional photographer and content creator. She has had the opportunity to photograph 100’s of families, weddings, and corporate clients. She is passionate about the power of our stories, and equipping the next generation to know the value of their voice and to find creative passion and freedom.

Jasmine also is a mental health advocate and desires to normalize mental health in BIPOC communities, as well as, mentoring creatives to build authentic and profitable businesses. She is available for speaking engagements, as well as consulting opportunities on the topics of the power of our stories, authentic community engagement, youth development, and more.

Karina is a photographer who desires to help educate people to see beyond margaritas, tacos, and the stereotypes, to the heart of Mexico, one piece of art at a time. She brings you beauty from Mexico to cultivate meaningful conversation with ready to hang framed photos, stickers, puzzles and downloadable calendars.

She is also the podcast host of Elevating la Cultura; a podcast featuring stories from 1st and 2nd generation Latinas working hard, pursuing their passions and pouring into the next generation.

What are you excited most for The Firehouse Dream?

I'm so excited for the Fire House Dream to grow and provide more opportunities for youth to explore new artistic ways of expression. I'm also excited for The Fire House Dream to provide opportunities for generational change through conversations, building relationships, and giving back to the community.

Deon is a 27-year-old CEO, serial entrepreneur, speaker, servant leader, and brand strategist and was recently featured as a top black entrepreneur to follow in Yahoo finance. As an entrepreneur, he founded NDVU + LAB digital marketing agency and scaled his business revenue to over $15,000 per month within the first 35 days of launching. As a Strategist, small business and entrepreneurs scale their brands and creative ideas successfully through brand clarity and strategic positioning. He is a strategic leader of his team at NDVU and does so with enthusiasm, passion, and motivation. As a thought leader, he realized that his highest and best was his creative ability and natural wiring for strategy. Even from a young age, he developed a strong affinity and proficiency for playing chess. As a speaker, he discovered that his limitation of speech disfluency was actually his superpower and has emerged with confidence, facing his fear, to tell his powerful story in hopes to change the world, leaving his legacy of perseverance for generations to come.

What would The Firehouse Dream have meant to you if it was around when you were teen?

If I were a teen today, The Firehouse Dream, to me, would mean resources, opportunities, and a community of people that believe in me. The Firehouse dream gives access to the youth to hone their natural creative ability and a place to be fully self expressed as a creative. I wish I had that as a teen, but I'm grateful I get to be a part of helping so many other teens have that kind of experience.

TIEMI WASHINGTON

Tiemi Washington is native to Santa Fe, NM, via Lyon, France, via Hampton, VA and landed in Maywood, IL in 2017; the hometown of her husband. Since her arrival, she has taken interest in developing a dialogue within the community to encourage civic-mindedness, collaboration, debate, the art of listening, speaking and writing. As a former creative and dancer, and single mother, she co-founded and directed a non-profit organizations in Lyon, France for 13 years (La Section Gonz' & Cie Guesmé). These organizations centered around bringing Community together via urban art forms, crossing socio-cultural divides between culture, race, generation and class. Her roles in the organizations were cross functional between artistic direction, choreography, teaching workshops, as well as grant-writing, project direction, budgeting, and all other production aspects. Her passion helped pave the way to building collaborative works with international and community organizations from France, Spain, Germany, Senegal, Italy, Turkey, Portugal, Romania, and Portugal.

Upon meeting her husband, she returned to the United States in 2010. She has returned to university to get her Bachelors of Science in Information Technology while she works full time. Forever passionate about being involved in her community, she has joined The Firehouse Dream to continue to contribute and share her experiences of creating visions into action and help arm our youth with the tools they will need beyond raw talent and dreams. The Firehouse Dream lends directly to that goal; that our Community and our Youth are given the support, training, encouragement and palpable resources to learn how to make the impossible, possible.