What’s up with these practices? How many projects and businesses do I have? Read on for the whole story.

Practice #1: Building Practical Skills For Individual and Collective Resilience

Aria is the founder of MakeWith Hardware & Learning Center, a small business providing community-focused emergency preparedness and resilience skills education to help individuals and communities adapt to shifting economic and climate conditions.

Founded in 2023, MakeWith’s first 2 years focused on providing hands-on workshops on home maintenance, repair, emergency preparedness, and other self-sufficiency skills in our brick and mortar location in SE Portland, OR. During this time, we hosted over 200 workshops and helped build the skills and confidence of 1200+ participants.

In addition to our regular monthly workshop offerings, we created a powerful, weekend-long learning event called Skill Up, in collaboration with many incredible partners, hosted a storytelling event highlighting the skill-building journeys of women and queer-folks called Power Tools, and launched The Handy Homeowner, a hands-on 6-week series designed to help them keep their homes safe, functional, and comfortable. Five percent of all of our tickets were significantly discounted for queer/trans, BIPOC, and low-income folks with support from our community.

Practice #2: Supporting Mission-Driven Entrepreneurs & Organizations

Aria has been supporting entrepreneurs and organizations in creating more informed, impactful, and equitable decisions for over 13 years.

They currently coach women and gender-expansive entrepreneurs through Oregon’s Xcelerate Women, mentor student entrepreneurs at Portland State University’s Center for Entrepreneurship, and provide bookkeeping and advisory services through their newest firm, Mighty Fine.

Though no longer their day-to-day, Aria has supported dozens of businesses and organizations to develop customer- and community-centered programs and strategies through their previous business, also called MakeWith 🙃, and a host of other firms and collaborators. Especially passionate about working with economic development, public service, and journalism organizations, some of Aria’s favorite past projects include:

• Improving Digital Access to Local News Through Library-Newsroom Collaboration with Hearken

• Designing The Philadelphia Media Founders Exchange Pilot with Zebra’s Unite

• Conducting Research for Strategic Planning with the Southern Documentary Fund

In 2022, Aria co-founded Design Justice Portland, a local node of the international Design Justice Network. They co-organized the node until 2024.

Aria is always happy to chat about opportunities to facilitate strategic planning, research, or design processes with mission-aligned organizations.

Practice #3: Advancing Economic Democracy & Equitable Development

From 2018 to the present, Aria has been involved in a variety of efforts focused on advancing economic democracy as a promising alternative to the dynamics of extractive capitalism.

They’ve conducted graduate studies on equitable economic development models at Portland State’s Urban Studies Program and are a founding member of Zebras Unite, an international and intersectional hybrid cooperative and non-profit creating a more ethical, inclusive, collaborative, and sustainable approach to building businesses, and the now-defunct Oregon New Economy Project.

In 2022, Aria was honored to be selected for the Cooperative Development Foundation’s Cooperative Leaders and Scholars program, and spent several years developing a field-building initiative focused on education for economic democracy in collaboration with the Bronx Cooperative Development Initiative, the United Federation of Worker Cooperatives, Rutgers Instite for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing and the CUNY School of of Labor and Urban Studies Community and Worker Ownership Project.

They have contributed to collaborative presentations on several platforms, including The Solutions Journalism Network, Non-Profit Quarterly, and the prestigious Kelso Workshop at the Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing. Unfortunately, it was not the right time for this initiative to take off in the U.S., and it was backburnered at the end of 2023.

Aria would love to support educational, entrepreneur-support, and economic development organizations to better understand and integrate economic democracy models into their efforts to create a more equitable economy.

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Aria has called outer SE Portland home for most of their life. When not working, they can be found working on one of their many hobbies (no surprises there) or camping near large rocks in the PNW. They hold a bachelor’s degree in Religious Studies from Reed College and are always interested in opportunities to learn and collaborate.