Last year, I was asked, “What is something you’re passionate about that you would want to bring to FEE’s Education Entrepreneurship Lab?” Almost immediately, I blurted, “A writing mentorship program!”
Before I knew it, I was running quarterly writing workshops for founders and building a digital community to empower rising stars in education policy and education entrepreneurship to write and share their stories on a national platform.
The Education Entrepreneurship Lab’s Emerging Voices Program for Storytellers was born.
People often ask me how I got so involved in writing and public speaking. I’ve been a passionate writer for most of my life, starting to journal, write short stories, and willingly craft essays in my homeschool program outside of what was required in the curriculum by age 11. By the time I was a teenager, I was writing curriculum, developing language arts training for students, and starting a blog. I was also eventually writing for college, as one of the youngest in my classes, and my professors always said they loved reading my papers first because they were “always so engaging and well-written.” Now, in my early twenties, I’ve written graduate-level papers, gotten published in a variety of news outlets, blog frequently, authored multiple books, and often write for the Lab.
This didn’t happen overnight. It took years of encouragement, learning, and lots of peer mentorship to get to this point. At times, it was stressful and intimidating. Almost everything I found to help me grow in my writing and storytelling skills took years of trial and error, and there are a lot of things I know now that I wish I had known then. Speaking to dozens of parents and education founders in my time as a homeschool coach, I realized that this was a major barrier to entry for people to write and share their stories on a larger platform. Sometimes, they didn’t even share their stories at all; they either didn’t know where to start or felt intimidated because they didn’t think their stories would have any impact. So many have said to me, “What can I say that is different from what anyone else says?”
Reflecting on this got me wondering: Was there a way to avoid all of the searching, nervousness, and hesitation so common amongst founders, many of whom are former public school educators and parents? Our movement is sustained through storytelling. That is what informs legislation, improves decision-making, and empowers more people to see what is truly possible outside of the traditional school system. If we have stories no one hears, it does our movement and the world a disservice. So, when the question was posed of what I wanted to do at the Lab, I set out to change the way people saw storytelling and help people find their voices.
In 2025, I started hosting quarterly workshops for emerging voices in the education freedom movement—founders and parents with stories to tell, looking to grow their skills. Step by step, with lots of coaching and peer-to-peer feedback in between, I took participants through the process of writing good articles, getting more comfortable with public speaking, and building a trustworthy personal brand. Within a few weeks, a thriving Discord learning community was launched to connect every graduate of the quarterly program with continued mentorship and special access to guidance on new content they were working on.
In just three cohorts, we have over 20 alumni in the community now, and the number continues to grow every quarter as our waitlist fills with new applicants looking to learn the art of storytelling. It has been an amazing success.
Alumni have told me amazing stories of their successes following the program, including first-time invites to conferences as speakers, collaborations on articles for think tanks and news outlets, and much more. Three of our program’s alumni are now Senior Contributors at the Lab, getting republished regularly for FEE.org and sometimes even being featured in FEE’s magazine, The Freeman. Alumni frequently visit new cohorts to offer their advice, and the impact continues to ripple. I cannot wait to see where they go from here!
I’m now in the process of planning a fourth cohort. If you’d like to be a part of it, you can join the interest list here. I am so excited to continue growing this program and empowering founders, teachers, and parents to find their voice and change the world, one story at a time. Will your story be next?
