Today we’d like to introduce you to Malaika Cheney-coker
Hi Malaika, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
For most of my career I’d been a professional “do-gooder,” working for Atlanta-based international development and poverty-fighting organizations like CARE and Habitat for Humanity International. While the jobs I held were highly rewarding, I had a deep yearning to start something of my own. Initially this manifested as the wish to bring the literary arts into the social science field where I worked, and where the writing is often dry and technical. Organizations with social missions deal with both the beauty and tragedy of the human condition, and yet, they often write about it as though they are only writing for scientific journals. (I’m a writer, of fiction so it’s only natural I brought this lense to my work).
In a pause between jobs, Ignited Word, my consulting firm was born, but it would be several years before I took the plunge to give it a chance to become a fully-fledged business. Once I did, and slowly began to grow my team, I found our mission expanded to become about helping organizations in the social sector build their creative muscles, so that they can better innovate. We increasingly find that creativity and innovation are essential for practically all organizations that want to stand out and thrive in today’s complex and competitive world.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Anything but! I don’t know of any entrepreneur that has had a smooth road. We’ve had all of the usual challenges of starting a small business — establishing a client base and a reliable income pipeline, finding the right kind of talent, creating services that respond to areas of need. At the same time, we’ve taken on some challenges which I think bely our early years, e.g. building a strong organizational culture through a tree rather than a pyramid model, creating services that are one-of-kind (we literally rarely see comparisons in the market for some of our work), and putting a ton of effort and money into thought leadership, with the result that we constantly produce advice and resources that are free of charge to organizations.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Ignited Word?
Human creativity is boundless and Ignited Word’s mission is to set it free for the greater good. We’re an intrepid, inventive, Black-owned, woman-led consulting firm that loves to work on tough assignments and believes creativity is the answer to many ills. Whether you are a nonprofit, a for-profit with a social mission, or any type of organization striving to make the world a better place, we can work with you! We like to say that like a swirl of dragonfruit ice cream with ripples of ube and nuggets of peach, Ignited Word is anything but vanilla. This means that we bring a packed studio of multidisciplinary tools and approaches to you, your organization, and some of your toughest problems. For example, we can help you:
Create “joyful food futures”
Communicate your impact in fresh ways
Incorporate creativity practices
Map and strengthen your partnerships and networks
Evaluate your impact in forward-thinking ways
Strategize and “un-strategize”
Conduct workshops on storytelling, network mapping,
imagination, and more!
In terms of your work and the industry, what are some of the changes you are expecting to see over the next five to ten years?
We see the sector dramatically adapting its funding mix over the next 5-10 years, in part as a response of changes brought about by the Trump administration as well as ongoing shifts in philanthropy. For us as creativity specialists, we see AI continuing to revolutionize the social impact sector while making evident the need for “soft” skills like creativity and critical thinking.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.ignitedword.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/72122996
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@IgnitedWord
Image Credits
Jay Black
