Sarah Blais and Tamara Marcus have combined their varied backgrounds to address equity, social justice, and environmental issues in Corridor communities. The friends-turned-business partners have founded a new consulting firm, Empowered Solutions Collective.
Although the duo first launched the collective in January 2024, its official grand opening took place Sept. 7. Based out of Cedar Rapids, Empowered Solutions has worked with multiple organizations and communities thus far to provide services like grant coaching, accessibility and sustainability audits, and several programs and projects for nonprofits.
Both Ms. Blais and Mx. Marcus, who uses the gender-neutral honorific and the pronouns she and they, started the collective after already establishing themselves as resources for the community. Ms. Blais is currently senior director of market operations at NewBo City Market, while Mx. Marcus is the founding president of the Cedar Rapids-based Black Liberation group, and was previously Linn County sustainability director.
“The need for the business grew out of the fact that people were asking for our skills so often that we were giving more away for free than was tenable,” Ms. Blais said. “And so I think our community knows us for being dependable and being someone that they can call on. And so now it’s just the activation of that into a business model.”
One of the collective’s recent projects, and a personal highlight for Mx. Marcus, was a garden and nutrition program that they ran with the Academy for Classic and Personal Success. Mx. Marcus noted that it is one of the few organizations in the area that directly serves Black, Brown, and biracial high school students.
Through the collective’s program, Mx. Marcus was able to share information on topics like redlining and food justice, while also teaching students how to garden and grow food. The collective then donated the grown produce to 24 Cedar Rapids families in need.
“I think it’s a really good example of all of the things: You got the equity consideration, you got the climate action, education, representation, right? I just really like that program,” Mx. Marcus said.
Additionally, the collective has helped with the development of resilience hubs in Iowa City.
A resilience hub is a community-centered location meant to address public needs before, during, and after a disruptive event or a shared disaster, like the 2020 derecho. Locations like the Neighborhood Centers of Johnson County and the Iowa City Bike Library function as resilience hubs, offering resources like access to electricity and safety information.
Empowered Solutions worked directly with these locations to ensure they cater to the needs of the neighborhoods around them.
“There’s a high [amount] of diversity, variability in their design, because they are so neighborhood-focused,” Mx. Marcus said. “Which is then helpful to have planning support to help an organization figure out what makes sense for that organization, and the clients and individuals that they intend on serving at the sites.”
Another aspect of the collective’s community services includes grant management and application writing, which Ms. Blais has extensive experience with. She said grant coaching also directly relates to the goal of getting resources in the hands of the communities that need it most.
Earlier this spring, Ms. Blais assisted multiple local farms and businesses in applying for the Johnson County Community Food and Farm Grant Program. Because the grant consists of funds distributed through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), it accomplishes one of the collective’s goals to help federal dollars reach communities that need assistance.
“I provided direct one-on-one grants coaching to historically underrepresented farmers and restaurant owners and hopeful restaurant owners to write that grant, because grant writing is incredibly tedious. It’s incredibly coded, it’s incredibly academic a lot of the time,” Ms. Blais said. “Johnson County has done a phenomenal job of making sure that their process is equitable. And this was another step for them in making sure that the grants process was equitable, so that immigrants, people of color, people without degrees were able to achieve funding.”
She said she worked with several individuals who did not speak English and were not literate, often spending eight-hour days at public libraries, working one-on-one with clients to ensure they could not only apply for the grant, but also be awarded funding. When the awardees of the grant were announced, Ms. Blais said she noted several of her clients on the list.
Looking forward, Ms. Blais said the firm has a project in progress with an unnamed national partner to work on a year-long storytelling and education program with a local high school. Although the project is unannounced, Ms. Blais predicts the outcome will be “phenomenal.”
“It’s really satisfying to give people the tools to be successful on their own, which I think is a different mission than a lot of consulting firms,” Ms. Blais said. “Our model is very much if we give the skill set and the tools to folks, they can do it themselves, and won’t need us long-term. And that’s the ideal, is that the communities that we’re hoping to serve eventually don’t need us.”
Ultimately, both Ms. Blais and Mx. Marcus said they are excited about the work still to be done, noting that institutions’ opportunities for growth don’t have to be action-oriented, and can focus on educating leadership.
“You don’t have to do it all at once, but you can’t even start the process if you don’t know where your gaps are,” Ms. Blais said. “And that’s, I think, the biggest first step for an organization to take. Once you know them, you can’t stop seeing them.”
Mx. Marcus also noted that while the collective’s work with nonprofits and individuals has been successful, they would also like to see Empowered Solutions work more with local businesses and for-profit entities in the future.
“We’re really good at meeting people where they are,” Mx. Marcus said. “I think that’s a strength; something that sets us apart from other entities doing this type of work. Because we have so much experience in all of these sectors, we can really tailor the solutions to the company and the organization.”
