I’m honored to announce that as an AANHPI business owner, Brim Branding has been awarded a grant via the National ACE Foundation and UPS. Overall, they provided 27 $5,000 Grants to #AAPI-Owned Businesses from their “Proudly Unstoppable Fund.” Read more and meet all the winners at AAPISTRONG.com

Maraming salamat – HUGE THANKS to National ACE for making my dream come true!

I will be using the National ACE #AAPIstrong grant to launch the very first female Filipino American-owned font foundry in the U.S.

The font foundry will be called: Font Infusions.

(What’s a font foundry? What’s Font Infusions?? You can read more here.)

I encourage you to read and learn about all of the other grant winners and their businesses. I hope you feel inspired seeing a breadth of AANHPI entrepreneurs and their stories. Our community is a thriving and essential part of U.S. commerce, and we are here to stay.

Shoutout

I’d also like to give a major shoutout to my business consultant/ace up my sleeve, Tara Gardiner of Gardiner Connections. She found this grant opportunity for me *and* (this is key) gave me the confidence to apply.

So many of these types of grants have felt out of reach for me. I usually fell into the defeatist mindset of, “Oh, those are for someone else. I don’t have a chance. My story’s not cool enough.” But during one of our consultation sessions, Tara said, “I think your story is compelling enough to win. I have a strong feeling about this.”

“I think your story is compelling enough to win.”

And when I didn’t win after my first application, it was Tara who encouraged me to reach out to the National ACE to see if they could give me feedback that might help me win future grants. And sure enough, one of their representatives was kind enough to take the time to give me feedback. (Note: This person was not on the team who reviewed my winning application.)

The rep said my story was there and it was compelling. I just needed to help people see that connection a little more clearly. (The fact that this was essentially and ironically a self-branding project was not lost on me.)

Thank you, Tara – and again, National ACE – for making my dream come true!