noseyAF: Conversations about Art, Activism, and Social Change

Ep #154: Joy Is Infrastructure with Janell Nelson of Englewood Arts Collective

This episode was recorded live at Lumpen Radio 10.24.26

What if joy wasn't a nice extra, but part of the infrastructure of a healthy neighborhood, right alongside the sidewalks and the streetlights?

Recorded live at Lumpen Radio, I'm talking with Janell Nelson, creative strategist, artist, and Director of Englewood Arts Collective, about the EAC Arts Village Sculpture Park at 63rd and May and what it takes to build something beautiful on three vacant lots with almost no money.

What We Talk...

Ep #153: I Did That: Celebrating Yourself When You Finish Something Big with Ayana Major Bey

You finished the thing. Did you stop and say I did that, or did you just move on to the next thing?

It's my birthday, and I'm spending it catching up with Ayana Major Bey, the actress, voiceover artist, podcaster and multi hyphenate creator who came back on the show right as I was coming up for air after 31 Days of Black Business. This one is a shoot the breeze, artist to artist conversation about celebrating yourself, protecting your time...

Ep 152: The Red Pill Is Not the Only Option with Rayviation

A room full of men, four cameras, one boom pole, and a conversation most of them had never had out loud.

This week I'm talking with Rayviation, a Chicago based producer, filmmaker, playwright and teaching artist, about Loving Men, the film he made with the Boston Ujima Project, the vintage store documentary he's making now, and why he thinks we are living in a golden age of indie filmmaking. Recorded live at Lumpen Radio, no edits, no retakes.

What We Talk About<...

Ep 151: I Make Films for Black People and Everybody Can Watch with Barbara Allen

Two little girls saw a movie camera in a mail order catalog and spent a whole week on the phone building a case to bring to their parents. They both got a yes. Fifty some years later, one of them is a filmmaker and the other one is her writer.

This week I'm talking with documentary filmmaker Barbara Allen, the person behind Paper Trail: 100 Years of the Chicago Defender, DuSable to Obama: Chicago's Black Metropolis, Colorblind: Rethinking Race, and House Music...

Recorded live on Lumpen Radio 105.5 FM, Saturday, September 12, 2026

A teacher looked at her painting in front of the whole class and called it a knowledgeable failure. She took it as a compliment.

Chicago painter Megan Williamson has been painting for decades and is nowhere near finished figuring out what painting can do. From a hundred Zoom portraits to a room full of circus figures, her work is about looking, searching, and following an idea wherever it goes.

What We Talk About

Ep 149: All That and a Bag of Chips: 31 Days of Black Business Reflections

No guest. No theme song. Just me, a cup of coffee, and whatever came out of my mouth. 🖤

We made it. Thirty-one days, thirty-one Black business owners, every single day of August. And then two days into September, because that's how it goes.

This one is unscripted. I sat down and talked off the top of my head about what this series actually took, what it reminded me of, and the thing I realized halfway through that I'm still sitting wit...

Ep 148: Serious Training for Everyday People with Sean Armstead of Phenomenal Fitness

Part of noseyAF's 31 Days of Black Business series 🖤

He trained 33 people last Saturday. Starting at 4 in the morning.

Sean Armstead is a former Marine Corps infantry officer who served in the Persian Gulf, and he's been running Phenomenal Fitness since 1997. The slogan hasn't changed in almost thirty years: serious training for everyday people. His whole book of business comes from referrals. He calls it old money.

What We Talk About

Ep 147: Vintage Is a Form of Luxury with Jennifer Kelly-Nichols of Vintage Frills

Part of noseyAF's 31 Days of Black Business series 🖤

She was too scared to sign a lease, so she bought a short school bus and painted it pink instead. She'll tell you she cheated a little.

Jennifer Kelly spent years as the logistical backbone at Chanel, Tiffany's, and Neiman Marcus before burning out during COVID. Now she runs Vintage Frills, a Chicago boutique organized entirely by color: a red room, a blue room, a neutrals room she called the dungeon in her...

Ep 146: Your Customers Are Doing Economics Whether You Are or Not with Dr. Kristi-Warren Scott Bishop of Verity Consulting

Part of noseyAF's 31 Days of Black Business series 🖤

She was going to call herself the corniest economist. Her friend said no, you're the baddest economist I know. She was terrified to use it. Her friend said do it scared.

Dr. Kristi-Warren Scott Bishop is a PhD economist and the founder of Verity Consulting, which she launched in fall of 2025 after spending over a decade doing economics across the federal government. She started it because she...

Ep 145: Leadership Without Burnout with Janelle Alba Garner of Tanglaw Advisory

Part of noseyAF's 31 Days of Black Business series 🖤

How do you keep a mission alive without burning out the people carrying it?

Janelle Alba Garner is the founder of Tanglaw Advisory. She spent years supporting founders doing genuinely great work and watched them sacrifice themselves to do it. She doesn't think that's the deal. Tanglaw is a Tagalog word meaning guiding light, and that's roughly the job.

What We Talk About

Ep 144: Ten Toes Down and Chasing Goals with Rob Marley of Stay Focus Society

Part of noseyAF's 31 Days of Black Business series 🖤

Self-motivated. Determination. Commitment. Those are the three stars on the logo, and they're not decoration.

Rob Marley was going through the worst of it around 2010. No support system, no outlet. He kept telling himself two words to get through the day, and then figured a whole community of people probably needed them too. He didn't know graphic design or computers. He started by painting the words on t-shirts by hand.

W...

Ep 143: Coaching Is Not a Meritocracy with Serena Hicks

Part of noseyAF's 31 Days of Black Business series 🖤

Heads up: this conversation touches on grief and family loss right up front.

You might have a life coach. Your life coach also has a life coach. Serena is who the coaches call.

Serena Hicks got pushed out of a corporate job at 40. Two weeks later her older brother died of cancer, thirteen months from diagnosis. She was broke, grieving, and living paycheck to paycheck after what she calls a phenomenal career. Then she fou...

Ep 142: Sustainable Swimwear That Actually Fits with Tiffany Asamoah of BOLD Swim

Part of noseyAF's 31 Days of Black Business series 🖤

She went looking for a swimsuit before a vacation. Nothing past a size large. Nobody in the marketing looked like her.

Tiffany Asamoah found a tailor, watched her make one, and started asking better questions. BOLD Swim is sustainable swimwear designed to fit and feel good in and out of the water, and it's since expanded into underwear, accessories, and a scarf collection with an exclusive print. She's been in Madewell, Macy's online, and...

Ep 141: Split Ends Are the Devil with Charita Golden of Golden Tresses

Part of noseyAF's 31 Days of Black Business series 🖤

She wants you to love the hair you have, not the hair you wish you had.

Charita Golden is the natural hairstylist behind Golden Tresses here in Chicago, and full disclosure, she is my actual hairstylist. So I went into this a little nervous, because if I mess it up I still have to go sit in her chair. She's been natural for over 25 years, since before it was a movement, and she's bee...

Ep 140: Private Investing Is Not What You Think with Victoria Watkins of Inrichmint

Part of noseyAF's 31 Days of Black Business series 🖤

I learned a new term recording this one: family office. I was today years old.

Victoria Watkins is a lawyer and the founder of inrichmint, where she helps people invest in companies that aren't on the stock market. She'll tell you private investing is not the gated thing you think it is, and that your friend's flower shop counts. She's also the author of Little Valarie and Her Big World of Options and...

Ep 139: Your Credit Report Shows Your Stress with Cierra Michelle Jones of The Credit School

Part of noseyAF's 31 Days of Black Business series 🖤

She got denied on her first house, couldn't afford a credit repair company, and went to Google instead. She calls herself her own first client.

Cierra Michelle Jones is the Founder and Executive Director of The Credit School. She joined the Army at 17, spent years running from her credit problems, and got denied and scammed trying to buy a house in 2015. Now she has zero debt except her house and her...

Ep 138: Two Introverts Built a Wine Bar on the South Side with Charlette Stanton and Jacare Thomas of Park Manor 75

Part of noseyAF's 31 Days of Black Business series 🖤

Recorded live on Lumpen Radio 105.5 FM on August 21, 2026. No edits, no retakes.

What happens when the people who've spent decades bringing everybody together finally create a place of their own?

Charlette Stanton and Jacare Thomas met as teenagers and have been building community for more than two decades: social clubs, arts organizations, events, trips. Now that's a physical space. Park Manor 75 is a Bla...

Ep 137: Not Everybody's Life Is a Movie Scene with Adrienne Randle of Evryday Blk Magazine

Part of noseyAF's 31 Days of Black Business series 🖤

Not everybody's life is a movie scene. That's the whole idea.

Adrienne Randle founded Evryday Blk Magazine, a bi-monthly publication in digital and print, because she wanted something that felt good to read. No gossip, no trauma, no celebrity culture. Just four-generation Black farms, a man who chases waterfalls, and the small local film festivals nobody's covering. It's the next chapter of her Black Owned Business Shopping Guide, which ran fro...

Ep 136:Trades Aren't a Backup Plan: Building a Business With Your Hands with Shawn Ellis of Handyman Ellis, LLC

Part of noseyAF's 31 Days of Black Business series 🖤

His grandfather used to take his quarters and hand them back as tens. Called it magic. Then one summer he said, come work with me and I'll show you what the magic actually is. Shawn was thirteen.

Shawn runs Handyman Ellis LLC in Chicago, providing professional services for homeowners and businesses: mounting, assembly, installations, repairs. About 80% of his work comes from word of mouth. I'm part of...

Ep 135: From a Craft Class to Ten Years in Business with Ticina Williams of Creativiti Custom Designs and Events

Part of noseyAF's 31 Days of Black Business series 🖤

Ticina Williams started designing her own party supplies because the licensed images never looked like her sons.

She founded Creativiti Custom Designs and Events in Chicago — that's Creativiti with an i, because everybody calls her T and she's the T in Creativiti. It started with a craft class at Michael's she only took because she got dropped from her college courses one summer. Ten years later it's...

Ep 134: Semoine Boyer of CocoaLuxe: Routine to Ritual, and Fragrance for When You Can't Get Away

Part of noseyAF's 31 Days of Black Business series 🖤

She started making these products because she needed somewhere to go when she couldn't actually go anywhere.

Semoine Boyer is the founder of CocoaLuxe Home and Spa: candles, body butters, scrubs, oils, and body sprays, all made with fragrance blends she creates herself. She started making them because she needed downtime from being a wife, a mom to a son with special needs, and a full-time job in IT. She...

Ep 133: Type C Energy and Design With Soul with Sunni of Sunni Aesthetics.

Part of noseyAF's 31 Days of Black Business series 🖤

Only about 4% of designers in the US are Black. She named her podcast after that number, and it's gone down since.

Sunni runs Sunni Aesthetics, a creative studio doing branding, creative direction, and visual storytelling. She came up through film production and set decoration in Atlanta, flunked out of design school right before the pandemic, spent quarantine drawing and painting, and taught herself the rest. Six years later, here she is.

W...

Ep # 132: Sun Food and Decolonizing What We Eat with Radius of RA's Natural Abundance (noseyAF Classic)

Part of noseyAF's 31 Days of Black Business series 🖤

This conversation originally aired on Lumpen Radio on July 28, 2025, as Ep #77. Bringing it back for the series.

He'll tell you the box never existed.

Radius is a musician, photographer, chef, and community builder out of Chicago's South Side. He runs ETC Records, publishes photo zines from his travels, co-founded The Love Fridge Chicago, and promotes sun-fired food through RA's Natural Abundance. He came on to talk about dec...

Ep 125: We Heal Together with Aya Nikole Cook of Haji Healing Salon

Part of noseyAF's 31 Days of Black Business series 🖤

Recorded live on Lumpen Radio 105.5 FM

What happens when the person who built the healing space finally has to heal herself?

Aya Nicole Cook built Haji Healing Salon because everything she needed growing up on the South Side required leaving the South Side to find. Ten years later, she's in the middle of what she calls a death portal, undoing a decade of go-go-go and rebuilding the space and herself at the...

Ep 131: From Black and White to Living in Color with Alexis "Lexi" Williams of Aloha Glamour

Part of noseyAF's 31 Days of Black Business series 🖤

A Black woman from Mississippi became a Queen Mother in Ghana. It was not on her bingo card.

Alexis "Lexi" Williams founded Aloha Glamour after losing her daughter Lauren Taylor, who was born and died in Hawaii in 2015 while Lexi was stationed there. Everything was black and white for a long time after. When she started seeing color again, she started the business. Every head wrap and every pair of...

Ep 130: Day 13 Explaining Investing Through a TJ Maxx Run with Nadia C. Vanderhall of Brands + Bands

Part of noseyAF's 31 Days of Black Business series 🖤

She lost her job in the Great Recession and drained her 401(k) before she knew the first thing about money.

Nadia C. Vanderhall learned it the hard way, then learned it the real way working in product marketing at a bank, where she kept noticing the products weren't built for the people who needed them most. She started posting what she was learning on Facebook. The first big one exp...

Episode # 129 Dark Fantasy, Black Authors, and a Toxic Hottie or Two with Cheryl Hodges of The Obsidian Archive

Part of noseyAF's 31 Days of Black Business series 🖤

She decided to write a book. Then figured she should probably start reading again. Then opened a bookstore.

Cheryl Hodges kept watching the girlies on Instagram open romance-only bookshops and realized nobody had built one for dark fantasy and speculative worlds. So she did, in January of this year, while writing her own novel, working a full-time job, and raising a kid. Indie authors and Black authors in...

Ep 128: Neurodiversity in Black Families with Rosemary Sanders-Price of Rose in Bloom Therapy

Part of noseyAF's 31 Days of Black Business series 🖤

She spent twenty years in retail management. Then a friend asked her one question in church.

Rosemary Sanders-Price went back to school to become a therapist because when her son was diagnosed with autism, she couldn't find anyone in her corner with the information she needed. She figured other mothers were in the same place. Now she runs Rose in Bloom Therapy and wrote a book about raising him.

What We...

EP # 127- Empowering Women Through Firearm Safety with Javondlynn Dunagan of JMD Defense

Part of noseyAF's 31 Days of Black Business series 🖤

She cried and left her first firearms training early. Now she's taught hundreds of women to shoot.

Javondlynn Dunagan spent 25 years as a US probation officer, retired at 49, and built JMD Defense around a thing she used to be terrified of. Her Ladies of Steel Gun Club® has grown from seven members to 760, ages 20 to 80, and a documentary about them is making its way through film festivals right now.

What We T...

Ep 126: From CFO to Venue Owner with Nadia S. Anderson of Lavender Hill

Part of noseyAF's 31 Days of Black Business series 🖤

What do you do when you buy the building, follow every rule they gave you, and then they change the rules?

Nadia S. Anderson left her CFO job at lunch one day and never went back. Ten years later she runs Virginia Grace Event Management and owns Lavender Hill, a 1934 brick colonial in Richmond she turned into an event venue with garden grounds and a coworking space. She's fighting her city right now...

Ep #124 — Closing the Health Literacy Gap with Dr. Madalyn McKnight of Project Healthvocate

Part of noseyAF's 31 Days of Black Business series 🖤

Did you know 9 out of 10 people don't understand basic health information, and that the fix might just be talking like real people talk?

Dr. Madalyn McKnight built Project Healthvocate to close the gap between complex medical language and the way people actually speak, born out of her time in the Southern Poverty Law Center's Advocacy Institute. What started as a summer project has grown into a nonprofit, a podcast, a newsletter, and a pub...

Ep #123 — From Camera Gift to Creative Empire with Rhonda Nunn of Just Keep Smiling Productions

Part of noseyAF's 31 Days of Black Business series 🖤

What happens when you refuse to pick just one lane — camera, director's chair, mic, or sewing pattern?

Rhonda Nunn got her first camera from her dad in sixth grade, walked onto Chicago State's campus determined to be known as "the photographer," and built that into Just Keep Smiling Productions — an apparel line, photography and videography business, and independent film studio, all rooted in a philosophy she landed on one night in prayer...

Ep #122 — Building Community for Autism Moms with Sabrina Bonaparte of Monochromatic Mommies

Part of noseyAF's 31 Days of Black Business series 🖤

What do you do when you love your child fiercely, but no one around you understands what your life actually looks like now?

Sabrina Bonaparte built Monochromatic Mommies — a nonprofit supporting mothers of children with autism and special needs — after her son Aiden was diagnosed at age two and she realized there were plenty of resources for him, but almost none for her. What started as a Facebook post looking for other moms who under...

Ep #121 — From Coloring Books to Culture Trips with Tiffany Heard of Hues of Africa

Part of noseyAF's 31 Days of Black Business series 🖤

What if the way we learn about Africa has been broken this whole time — and the fix is a coloring book?

Tiffany Heard built Hues of Africa, coloring and activity books plus culture immersion trips after a six-week study abroad trip to Ghana left her crying because she didn't want to leave. What started as one book has grown into three, with group trips to Ghana, Tanzania, and Thailand and nearly 100 travele...

Ep #120 — Building a Green Space for Youth with Ted Gloster of The Forgin Initiative

Part of noseyAF's 31 Days of Black Business series 🖤

What happens when you come home during a pandemic and realize the community that raised you is stuck in survival mode?

Ted Gloster left Detroit's District 2 in 2018 and came back during the pandemic — and instead of leaving again, he built The Forgin Initiative, a green space and after-school program teaching young people economic literacy, civic engagement, and emotional intelligence. This is a conversation about healing yourself before you can lead anyone else, a...

Ep #119 — From Loss to Home Care Business with Que Maxwell of Two Caring Hearts

Part of noseyAF's 31 Days of Black Business series 🖤

What do you do with your grief when you couldn't save the people you loved most?

Que Maxwell built 2Caring Hearts — a home care and wellness business serving elderly, disabled, and post-hospital clients — after losing her father and her husband suddenly, within years of each other, and feeling the weight of not being able to do anything for them. Now she and her sister run a home care agency that's grown to 14 fam...

Ep #118 — "Start With What You Have" Denzel Turner on Building Black Fridays Podcast

Part of noseyAF's 31 Days of Black Business series 🖤

What if the podcast you started on Zoom during 2020 became the reason you're now running black-owned business bus tours through Detroit?

Denzel Turner built Black Fridays — a podcast with 200+ conversations with Black entrepreneurs — out of a need to get civically engaged after George Floyd's murder, and it's since grown into brand deals, a coaching business, and a literal bus full of people spending money at Black-owned shops. This is the episode that kicked of...

This episode was recorded live at Lumpen Radio on Saturday, July 11, 2026

Ep 117: More Than a Movie: Building Community Through Black Film with Troy and Chi of Black Film Club Collective

What happens when a love of movies turns into a movement?

This week, Stephanie sits down with Troy and Chi of Black Film Club Collective, a Chicago-based platform creating spaces for people to gather, watch films, and have the conversations that happen after the credits roll. From apartment screenings to citywide events, they share how film became a catalyst for community, connection, and...

Thank you for listening to noseyAF! So happy to have your ears!

Join the noseyAF Dispatch 📬

At the end of the month, your inbox gets a little happier all the month's noseyAF episodes sent straight to you.

Ep. 116: Detroit WiFi Energy: Building 31 Days of Black Business

Summary

I'm checking in from Detroit with a little voice note from the middle of things.

In this episode, I share an update on 31 Days of Black Business, the audio series I'm producing for Black Business Month featuring Black entrepreneurs from aro...

Introducing: The Art Biz with Alison Stanfield

Today's feed drop comes from a podcast that has had a meaningful impact on how I think about building a sustainable art practice: The Art Biz with Alison Stanfield.

If you've ever struggled to title your artwork—or wondered whether titles matter at all—this conversation is for you.

In this episode, Alison Stanfield sits down with artist, writer, and educator Fran Gardner to explore why titling artwork is much more than an administrative task. Together they discuss how titles help artists understand their own work, deep...