Location: Milwaukee
Founder: Nyesha Stone
Founded: 2017
Product: An online media company
Website: carvdnstone.com
Employees: 1
Goal: To highlight positive news in Milwaukee
Milwaukee entrepreneur Nyesha Stone could have continued writing for a local media outlet, but she wanted to use her background and penchant for connecting with the community to build a media company of her own.
Stone, a graduate of University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s journalism program, created Carvd N Stone, a weekly online news site with an emphasis on positive community news. A resident of Milwaukee’s north side, Stone is committed to providing coverage of the stories that traditional news outlets tend to overlook.
“It only makes sense for me as a black journalist and a black journalist from Milwaukee to take my talent and my skills and highlight our community,” Stone said. “We are here, we are very talented, and we have ambition, we just need somebody to see us.”
Stone recently graduated from the The Blueprint accelerator program’s fourth cohort, an experience she described as a difficult journey. Before the accelerator, Stone had no one to teach her entrepreneurial skills and, initially, she was even denied entry to the program.
“Nyesha was not originally chosen as a participant in The Blueprint because her business did not match our targeted industries, but upon further review, her entrepreneurial spirit was more than enough to propel her to get into the program,” said Que El-Amin, co-founder of Young Enterprising Society, which runs The Blueprint.
Stone’s website includes local news coverage of topics ranging from politics to stories of local business owners and independent artists. But she also uses her platform to give back to the community, providing opportunities for people that she wished were available when she was growing up.
CNS partners with local organizations and schools to provide journalism and writing workshops in which students learn the importance of using their voice and the basics of reporting, writing and poetry. She has also raised thousands of dollars in scholarships for local students and, more recently, deployed a series of grants for small business owners in need of economic support during COVID-19.
While stories are a core component of CNS, the media company also has a public relations arm through which Stone crafts media kits and sponsorship packets to help entrepreneurs get media coverage and funding.
“It’s just bridging that gap because a lot of entrepreneurs and specifically black people like me from the north side don’t even know how to get funding or how to go about it,” Stone said.
This past year, Stone quit her job with the Milwaukee Courier to pursue CNS full-time and has since begun generating revenue.
