By KAREN WALKER
[email protected]
UNIVERSITY PARK — A group of Penn State interns is helping a Chicago-based start-up expand its reach globally in its mission to help Black mothers take control of their physical, mental and financial well-being.
Lavelle Smith Hall founded MOMLogics in 2018 to help fill a void she saw in the support of Black women. That year, she lost her good friend, Sara, to a heart attack at the age of 47, discovering too late that Sara had been ignoring some medical red flags while dealing silently with stress caused by family struggles.
Hall said this is not an uncommon experience within the Black community.
“Statistically, we know that a Black woman is treated differently than women of other races when she goes to a doctor, often with worse outcomes,” Hall explained.
In addition, she said, Black women are often expected to remain stoic and handle family issues privately, as previous generations have done.
“In our community, going to a therapist is not easily accepted,” Hall said. “When a mom is struggling, she might not have the skills or the knowledge or the power to handle it on her own. When she goes to her elders, you know what they tell her? ‘Pray about it.’”
With this in mind, Hall, a mother of two and a former educator and advertising executive, started presenting workshops in the Chicago area under the name, “MOMLogics.” Initially, she used Facebook to reach her intended audience: middle- and upper-class Black mothers.
“There are a lot of resources already out there for the underprivileged, single Black mom. What we found in our research is, it’s the middle- to upper-class Black mom that’s not being served. In fact, because of her social status, she sometimes suffers even more…. because there is an assumption that she should have it all together,” Hall explained.
Hall eventually developed a curriculum called “MOMLogics University.” Women can sign up to take courses within the framework of MOMLogics’ four pillars of success: Parenting and Education; Health and Wellness; Financial Literacy; and Entrepreneurship. They can also participate in individual one-on-one coaching sessions.
MOMLogics has grown into a community of more than 5,000 people, with six executive team members, and about 36 “MOMbassadors” to help with outreach. The business has expanded well beyond Chicago, partially aided by the pandemic, which forced them to take their workshops and other events online.
“Once we went virtual, that opened the entire world up to us, so now the sky is the limit with how many moms we can actually impact and help to transform,” Hall said.
Indeed, Hall’s goals are ambitious, as she says she hopes to eventually serve one billion mothers across the globe. She feels that one step toward accomplishing this is through an app — specifically, an AI (artificial intelligence) app, using an avatar called “Melinda” (much like Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri) to help Black mothers develop and track good health, wellness, and financial habits, find appropriate resources near them, and prepare a legacy for the future.
She believes that the privacy and accessibility afforded by an app will encourage even more participation among a demographic that is traditionally private about their struggles.
This is where Penn State enters the picture.
Hall explained that in 2021, she participated in a mentoring program offered by the ParentPreneur Foundation. Her mentor was Nicola Corzine, executive director of the NASDAQ Entrepreneurial Center (NEC). The NEC and its Institute for Equitable Entrepreneurship collaborate with Penn State’s Health and Human Development Design for Impact Lab (HUDDIL) on research surrounding ways to create economic equity for minority and female-led businesses.
Upon learning about the MOMLogics mission, Corzine introduced Hall to Meg Small, director of HUDDIL at Penn State. Small connected Hall with a Penn State donor who was looking to fund a techbased business, as well as with Penn State student interns, some from the College of Health and Human Development and some from Surge Business Development, a State College-based business incubator.
For three semesters, the interns have been conducting market research, running empathic inquiries and focus groups, and helping to streamline a design for an app prototype.
One of those interns was Eric Weah, a recent Penn State Data Sciences graduate and the project lead. While much of his focus was on the technical aspects of getting an app ready to be sent to a developer, he said the reasons behind the app are not lost on him.
“Part of the mission is to promote health and wellness, because Black moms go through a lot in life, and that may cause them to ignore their health or mental wellness. So the app will be utilized as a way of prevention,” Weah said.
Erica Morse, a junior majoring in biobehavioral health with a minor in psychology, helped to conduct about a dozen empathic inquiries and focus groups via Zoom to help determine what the community felt was most important to be included in an app. She found the experience to be enlightening.
“Listening to the stories of the moms and having conversations with them, I learned a lot,” she said. “A lot of them go through stuff and they don’t tell people about it because they have all these other challenges and responsibilities, and they can’t let this one thing stop everything else. So they don’t prioritize their health, and it affects a lot of other things in the long run.”
Amanda Gwinn, a senior security and risk analysis major, also felt that she learned a lot during her research for MOMLogics.
“For one of the health metrics projects, we looked at the statistics and the differences between Black moms and White moms. It was very eye opening,” she said.
Hall intends to continue working with Penn State interns. She said the app is currently in the prototype stage and they are now seeking funding.
“I know we have a mountain to climb. I’m not afraid of a mountain. And if we’re shooting for the moon and we end up in the stars, I’m really happy. I know that we have already made a lot of impact and changed some lives.”
