A native of both the North and Westside of Chicago, Kenya fell in love with giving back as a teenager. Coming from a single-parent home, her experiences as a young woman allowed for her to see the value in mentorship and other programs that provided guidance to youth who needed a bit of extra guidance navigating those adolescent years. As her mom balanced her workload and parenting, Kenya desired an outlet outside of her home where she had the space to speak freely about her concerns and experiences without worrying about stressing out or disappointing her family members.

Some of those themes that came up for her, such as peer pressure and guidance for her ambitions and dreams of success, are still things that come up today for young women. Kenya was able to lean on a strong support system within her family, church, and community that provided and supplemented this guidance. Because this has made all the difference for her, and these continue to be individuals who support her in her adulthood, she found it necessary to partner up with Darryca to create Focus Fairies as a place for them to foster this kind of support and care for young women today.

Kenya and Darryca met in 2013 due to their mutual passion for doing the on-the-ground work of giving back to the community via toy drives, feeding the homeless, coat drives, toiletry donations to shelters and so much more. As they bonded over the need to do this work throughout the Chicago area, landed on another mutual passion of supporting and developing young women in a way that will sustain them with confidence, knowledge, resources and direction, fulfilling the needs that they both sought out when they were younger.

Kenya became a mother at age 19, which helped her to have a different outlook on life as she grew into motherhood. It brought even more discipline and an even stronger desire to be an effective role model. This is another one of many factors that led to her desire to build out this work with Chicago’s young women. Focus Fairies was started in Marshall Field Garden Apartments, where many residents are younger, single moms. It was important for them to begin this work here, where they began their mentorship and resource sharing that was life changing for the families that were just being started.

Kenya’s natural ability to resonate with the younger generation makes her a force to be reckoned with and has solidified her position within the Chicagoland area as a notable nonprofit leader.

Kenya has been a licensed Property and Casualty Broker since 2010. This career choice has allowed Kenya to not just utilize her financial resources but her skills of education, relating, coaching and mentoring to the work of Focus Fairies.

                  Born of the desire to become the role model she yearned for during her formative years, Darryca embarked on a transformative personal journey. As a community advocate, she had always wanted to return and give back to various Chicagoland communities by helping the youth, especially those from underprivileged circumstances, providing them with outreach, resources, and mentoring assistance. She began devoting her time, energy, and talents to capacity-building young adolescents in overcoming hardships similar to those she had faced as a child so that they could become integral, contributory members of society. She believes in the potential for involvement and influence at all levels to ensure success, capitalizing on their inner strengths to build a better community, one filled with peace and harmony.

Driven by a profound awareness of the enduring repercussions that traumatic life challenges indelibly impose on the mental well-being of young girls today, in 2017, Darryca took the bold step of co-founding the Chicago-based non-profit organization, Focus Fairies, a mentoring program for inner city girls of color. She currently serves as their Executive Director. Her wholehearted conviction that she is right where she needs to be is affirmed almost daily by the heartening testimonies of mothers who reach out awestruck by the remarkable transformations they witness in their own daughters -- newfound confidence, ignited passions, and a renewed sense of purpose.

As the founder and Executive Director, Darryca simultaneously directs Darra Michelle Events & Consulting, her successful event planning for-profit enterprise. Darryca’s combined professional, non-profit, and for-profit community endeavors have led her to amass a wide variety of experiences from which she accrued deep expertise in not only forging fruitful relationships but also in simultaneously managing an array of projects while adapting to rapidly evolving environments.

Darryca is currently pursuing her doctorate in interdisciplinary studies with an emphasis on non-profit and social entrepreneurship at Governors State University. She holds a Bachelor of Public Health degree with a focus on Healthcare Administration from Northern Illinois University and a Master of Business Administration from Argosy University.

Darryca

Kenya