UPDATE: After tallying the scores from our judging panel, sponsors, and nearly 4,500 votes, we are thrilled to announce our 2023 #highfivegrant awards!
$10,000 Grant:
🍯@howsyourdayhoney
$5,000 Grant:
🎶 @harmonymusictherapy
$2,500 Grant:
🐦 @shopbirdieblue
Honorable Mentions ($1,000 Grant each):
@babylearnslanguage
@itsmyleche
@melospeech
@spouse.ly
@strandsoffaith
Congratulations to all our amazing finalists! Their passion, efforts, and ambition to build their businesses are inspiring. They are all moms who make the world better! 🌎
Thank you to our judges and sponsors for their hours of work and support.
Drumroll, please…
After many hours of reviewing applications, both individually and collaboratively, our judges have selected eight exceptional women as our 2023 High Five Grant for Moms finalists.
These companies (and the women who run them) exemplify all the traits that make moms such good business owners. They’re innovative, diverse, smart, and committed to building supportive, inclusive communities.
Without further ado, we’re thrilled to announce our 2023 finalists:
Peipei Zhou of Baby Learns Language is passionate about helping children everywhere learn languages through songs and music. Their press-and-play sound books help kids learn languages in a fun and engaging way, without the use of a screen. Baby Learns Language books have been featured by Buzzfeed and Amazon, and Peipei is using that momentum to develop products in seven additional languages: Arabic, French, Hindi, Korean, Russian, Vietnamese, and Tagalog.
BirdieBlue has built huge momentum in its first year, and Kate Harvey is on a mission to protect the environment and bring joy to the ski slopes. Her company keeps old ski and snowboarding gear out of landfills by upcycling it into sustainable, personality-filled fanny packs, zipper pouches, and sling bags. Committed to celebrating what she calls “geriatric millennial joy,” each product is named after iconic 90s pop stars, toys, games, and TV shows.
At Harmony Music Therapy, Jaycie Voorhees provides music therapy services to kids, teens, and adults with special needs, mental health challenges, or neurologic impairments. Using music empowers their clients to communicate, build relationships, achieve personal goals, and most importantly, celebrate what they can do instead of what they can’t. Their work reduces the impact of disabilities and contributes to a more compassionate and inclusive world for people with disabilities and their families.
Elisha Bixler of How’s Your Day Honey is the bees’ knees. Literally. Her unwavering commitment to sustainability and bee preservation means she can often be found removing bee infestations from residential and commercial properties and relocating them to safe locations. She supports their bee rescue efforts in part by selling delicious honey from her hives in addition to other bee-inspired products. Her passion for educating her community on the vital role bees play in our world is putting a new face on environmental stewardship.
Trish Clifford and Jenney Korasick founded It’s My Leche to modernize the storage and preservation of breast milk. By freeze-drying customers’ breast milk and turning it into a powder, they hope to make preserving and donating breast milk easier and more efficient. But that’s not all. They’re also working to create a breast milk enhanced formula that could help bring the benefits of human milk to more homes.
Melospeech Inc. is a tech-based, mobile speech therapy practice headed by Dr. Givona Sandiford. Her company delivers critical early speech interventions via teletherapy and in-home services for patients from birth to age three. She led her team to pioneer a hybrid-remote workforce using self-developed technology and automation that allowed them to quickly scale to five regions within two years.
Monica Fullerton created Spouse-ly to help military and first responder entrepreneurs build and grow their businesses. By hosting and supporting verified military and first responder makers, creators, and entrepreneurs, Spouse-ly has given this often overlooked community the opportunity to help and support one another regardless of posting or assignment location. Fullerton and her team know that shopping small can have a big impact.
Strands of Faith is a purpose-driven beauty brand that has been featured in People magazine and is led by Ameka Coleman. Specializing in clean, botanically powered hair care for individuals with textured strands, Coleman is passionate about helping her customers access sustainable, inclusive beauty products. But Strands of Faith is about more than hair care–they’re ultimate goal is promoting self-love, combatting texturism, and advocating mental wellness.
After visiting their websites and socials to learn more about our finalists, please head to highfivegrant.com and vote for your favorite candidate. The Grand Prize is a $10,000 grant, the First Runner Up is a $5,000 grant, the Second Runner Up is a $2,500 grant, and there will be five Honorable Mentions who receive $1,000 grants.
Public voting is limited to one vote per device and will remain open until 11:59 pm MT on October 26, 2023.
We cannot fully express our gratitude to the High Five Grant for Moms judges, sponsors, and applicants. It has been affirming and humbling to see all the good our community of mompreneurs is doing. High fives to you all.
