Life & Work with Nikki Porcher of Atlanta

Today we’d like to introduce you to Nikki Porcher.

Hi Nikki, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I don’t think I ever set out to have a career. I set out to be of service and to help my community, and that’s taken me a lot of places.

It started with the U.S. Air Force. I spent eight years serving my country, stationed at Robins Air Force Base, with deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. This service taught me what it means to be responsible for more than yourself and to finish the job even when conditions are hard.

When I came home, I kept serving through Macon Area Habitat for Humanity, connecting families to housing and employment, and then as a public school teacher in DeKalb County, where I had to stretch my paycheck to feed my son and my students. I went to a trade school in high school and have always had a trade to fall back on, so I made sure my students left my classroom with practical skills they could actually use.

In 2016, I founded Buy From A Black Woman after watching hardworking business owners get overlooked because of lack of access to funding, networks, and opportunity. What started as an idea and a willingness to listen to the problems they were facing grew into a national nonprofit that has generated over $6.12 million in documented economic impact for business owners in the last five years alone. And that’s just what we could track on paper.

Then in 2023, I discovered Project 2025. I read it from cover to cover, and I taught community classes on what those policies would mean for people’s jobs, paychecks, and futures. That’s when I understood the difference between helping people navigate broken systems from the outside and stepping into the room where the rules are written.

And that brought me to where I am today, running for Georgia Labor Commissioner. Georgia is consistently ranked one of the best places to do business. I’m running to make it the best place to work because for too long our systems have been broken, and working people have paid the price. I’ve been the worker navigating a system that wasn’t built for me, so I know it’s not a worker problem. It’s a system failure. For the last 10 years, I’ve built solutions to system failures like this one and now I’m ready to do it for every Georgian. I’m running to make work work for everyone.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
No, and I don’t think anyone building something real would tell you it was. During my journey I’ve been unemployed and had to navigate the confusing, outdated unemployment system just to survive — waiting on answers that didn’t come, filling out paperwork that led nowhere. That experience taught me how easy it is for a system to fail someone who’s doing everything right.
I’ve been a single mom who had to make one paycheck do the work of three, which taught me how hard it is for working families, and how quickly one missed check or one delayed benefit can throw everything off balance. I’ve been a veteran who transitioned out of service without clear guidance on what came next, and then struggled to find a job, which showed me that serving your country doesn’t guarantee a smooth path home.

Building Buy From A Black Woman wasn’t smooth either. I didn’t start with a large platform or a room full of powerful connections. I started with an idea and kept showing up to do the work. And I built from there, one program, one partnership, one relationship at a time. That taught me that you don’t need everything in place to start. You need to be willing to start.

And some of the harder moments weren’t about scarcity, they were about principle. When a global partnership no longer aligned with the community I was serving, I walked away. That’s not an easy decision when you’ve worked to build something. But my community will always matter more than a logo or a headline.

But none of these struggles broke me. They informed me. They taught me how systems feel from the inside, where the gaps are, who falls through them, and why. That’s not a comfortable education, but it’s the one that shaped how I lead now and why the solutions I build actually work. When you’ve lived the problem, you don’t have to guess at the fix.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I’m the founder of Buy From A Black Woman, a U.S. Air Force veteran, a former public school teacher, and the Democratic nominee for Georgia Labor Commissioner.

What I specialize in is closing the gap between what people are told will help them and what actually does. At Buy From A Black Woman, we didn’t just talk about supporting small business owners, we built programs, funding pathways, and training around what they were actually asking for. We’ve supported more than 700 Black business owners, and between 2021 and 2025, the entrepreneurs in our community generated more than $6.12 million in revenue. We built partnerships with companies and institutions including PayPal, Goldman Sachs, H&M, Mastercard, the IRS, the FTC, and the Biden administration’s White House.

I’m proud of these accomplishments. But I’m prouder of what they represent — businesses that stayed open, business owners who were finally able to pay themselves, people who got hired, money that stayed in local communities.

What sets me apart is that I don’t lead from theory. I’ve been the worker, the employer, and the person the system failed. I’ve traveled nearly 80 counties and over 17,000 miles over the last year, listening to workers, small business owners, veterans, and parents about what isn’t working for them — and building solutions from those conversations and my own lived experience. Georgia runs because working people show up every day and keep it running. They deserve a Labor Commissioner who shows up for them too.

What quality or characteristic do you feel is most important to your success?
Showing up consistently, especially when it’s not convenient.

I didn’t wait until everything was perfect to start Buy From A Black Woman. I started with what I had and kept building. That’s how a blog I started in my living room became an award-winning national nonprofit that has helped over 700 businesses. It’s how we built partnerships with major companies and government agencies most people would assume were out of reach.
I think people trust the work because it’s been consistent, not because it appeared overnight. I show up. I listen. I do what I say I’m going to do. And when systems don’t work for me or for the people I serve, I build something that does.

This is the standard I’ve carried through the military, the classroom, my nonprofit work, and now on the campaign trail. It’s the same standard I’ll bring to the Department of Labor.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.Vote4Nikki.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/voteporcher4ga/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/voteporcher4ga/
• Other: Threads: https://www.threads.com/@voteporcher4ga | Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@vote4nikki