Change Labs offers Navajo entrepreneurs tools for business success
What started in 2013 as a once-a-year event to help Native American small business owners has grown into a launchpad for Navajo entrepreneurs.
Based in Tuba City, the nonprofit Change Labs offers a modern workspace, classes in business strategies, coaching and financing for Native entrepreneurs with a business idea. The program allows them to set up and grow their companies and in turn help their communities.
Heather Fleming, co-founder and executive director of Change Labs, had a 20-year career as a product design consultant in Silicon Valley. She eventually started her own business in San Francisco, where she worked in the international development community with social entrepreneurs, mostly in East Africa and India.
Through a mutual friend she met Jessica Stago, who at the time was trying to develop an incubator for Navajo businesses.
The women, both Diné, conceived of Change Labs as an event for Native entrepreneurs.
'Our first event was in Shiprock in 2013 at the Diné College Library. We didn't really expect anybody to come, but we had sold out our tiny little auditorium that holds about 80 people,' Fleming said. 'It was good for us to see there were enough people interested in building a business community and saw the potential role entrepreneurs play in our own Native economies.'
For five years, Fleming and Stago hosted events like the first one in Shiprock, before realizing that their target market needed more help than once a year.
'There is a need for a presence in our communities 365 days out of the year where people can access these conversations, resources, knowledge and tools,' Fleming said.
When it came to developing brick-and-mortar infrastructure for Change Labs, Fleming and her colleagues decided to settle in Tuba City, the most populous community on the Navajo Nation. Although the plan took two years longer than they anticipated due to factors like cost increases during COVID-19, the organization has settled into a 1,400-square-foot work and event hub. The Tuba City 'E-ship' offers work space where business owners can connect to Wi-Fi, use resources like a color printer, Cricut machine and other tools to develop a marketing plan. Entrepreneurs also can book coaching appointments with the Change Lab team.
So far, 69 owners have graduated from its business incubator and 961 entrepreneurs have visited the E-ship hub. Nearly 300 people attended coaching sessions and 470 participated in workshops in 2024. Change Lab has funded 76 businesses and offered $441,444 in business loans.
Today, Native entrepreneurs like Daniel Tullie and Vanessa Tullie say they are grateful to have completed the business incubator program at Change Labs. Each of the siblings own their own business.
Daniel Tullie owns Jinjeeh Coffee and said he fell in love with coffee more than 10 years ago when he worked at Cartel Roasting in Phoenix. Since then, he's started his own coffee business, running coffee pop-ups exclusively on the reservation.
His relationship with Change Labs started when he worked as a designer for the organization, but he didn't get involved as a business owner until later, when one of the coaches from Change Labs, Tim Deel, approached him at a flea market in Tuba City.
'The way I got involved with Change Labs was being a designer and not really keeping up with what they did,' he said. 'Now, getting involved as a business owner, it's really cool to see two different sides of the way they run things.'
As a client of Change Labs, he joined the Kinship Lending Program which focuses on building good financial foundations. With the help of the program, he was able to buy an espresso machine, roaster and other equipment for his business.
As a graduate, Tullie credits Change Labs for giving him the tools to build a business plan now and into the future.
'You get what you put into the program,' he said. 'You can just go through the motions of being a participant, but the only way you are going to succeed is if you really put the time into doing what they ask you to.'
Vanessa Tullie, owner of Ahehee' Shidine'e Homecare, also attributes much of her success to Change Labs.
Owning and operating a home care business for the past six years without a college degree, she recognized there were business steps she was not aware of and was uncertain how to expand her company.
'I never had this guidance before. It was really great to have access to folks that specialize in these fields and professionals that know and have worked with other businesses and entrepreneurs,' she said.
It helped that the services were free.
'That's what I appreciated the most. All the funders that help with programs like Change Labs, I'm very grateful for them,' she said.
After working with the nonprofit, her company has won the Phoenix Indian Center's Business of the Year for the American Indian Excellence in Leadership Award in 2024.
Change Labs receives funding from a variety of places, including Wells Fargo Bank's Invest Native Initiative, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, Native Voices Rising and the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco.
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