My Journey
Buckle up, this is a wild ride.
I want to tell you my story.
I did not set out to become a nonprofit founder. I started as an anxious, overachieving artist with a camera and something to prove. I wanted to show that creativity was not a hobby. It was real work.
Photography eventually led me into telling the story of global dementia. That experience shifted everything for me. I saw how powerful artists can be when they are not just making beautiful things, but shaping how people see the world.
At one point, I had a choice. I could build a career around my own name, or I could build something bigger than me.
I chose to build, and that decision became the Developing Artist Collaboration. I built it from scratch with no business training, no roadmap, and no safety net. Just belief and a willingness to figure it out in real time.
Over the last decade, I scaled DAC into a half million dollar creative workforce organization. I also hit burnout (multiple times), got into a tricky debt situation, made leadership mistakes that cost me some of my closest relationships, but it allowed me the space to rebuild systems, and I learned what actually makes something sustainable instead of just exciting.
What I know now is simple. Inspiration does not scale… infrastructure does. Community without structure falls apart. Vision without systems burns people out. Building DAC forced me to grow up as a leader and understand how ecosystems really work.
Now my focus is clear. I build scalable growth models for artists and creative leaders who are ready to stop romanticizing the struggle and build something that lasts.
Where it all began.
Waiting
For my final project in art school, I told the story of my great-grandmother, Treva Yohe, who was in her 13th year of living with dementia. I spent hours with her in the memory care unit, surrounded by others navigating the same quiet, disorienting reality. She didn’t know who I was — her days were lived in a kind of suspended present, where the past flickered in and out and the future no longer existed. It felt like witnessing childhood in reverse.
That body of work earned a place in the 2011 Photo District News Photo Annual, and with that recognition, I made a bold decision: to leave art school early and pursue photography full-time at the age of 20. It was the first step in understanding how art could hold space for humanity, and how I could use it to tell stories that matter.
A One-Way Ticket with Purpose
After photographing my great-grandmother’s experience with dementia, I began searching for global perspectives on the disease. I noticed a troubling pattern: stories about dementia in developing countries were often paired with photos of Western patients. I wanted to change that.
Through Alzheimer’s Disease International, I found a network of global organizations — and soon after, an opportunity to intern with a community development program in Kenya. In September 2014, I sold everything I owned and boarded a one-way flight to Shimoni.
There, I used my creative skills to support local education and economic initiatives. This looked like designing health guides for mothers, marketing tools for women’s groups, and visual resources that made life better. That experience showed me the power of art as a tool for change, and sparked the vision that would become the Developing Artist Collaboration.
Bridging Worlds Through Photography
While in Kenya, I had the opportunity to work alongside a local clinic and learn how Community Health Workers (CHWs) support rural villages. Most medical care relied on volunteers, with only occasional support from a nurse practitioner or doctor.
Our role was to help educate CHWs on various health conditions, often turning to “Dr. Google” to guide our lessons. I partnered with a nurse from the UK to teach a session on dementia, but many of the symptoms she described didn’t resonate with the CHWs. That changed when I shared photographs I had taken of my great-grandmother, Nana, during her own dementia journey. Suddenly, something clicked.
They immediately recognized those behaviors in members of their own community and began taking me to meet people showing similar signs. I was able to document their lives while giving visibility to stories often left untold, and using photography as a bridge between knowledge and empathy.
After my internship in Kenya, I reached out to Alzheimer’s South Africa, sharing the images I had captured and my desire to document how people in Africa live with dementia. They welcomed me to their office in Cape Town and later invited me to their site in Bloemfontein — a rural region outside Johannesburg.
When I arrived in Bloemfontein, the project became something deeper. I witnessed the harsh realities faced by elderly people with dementia in rural townships where stigma and misunderstanding often led to isolation or even abuse. In some communities, symptoms were believed to be signs of witchcraft.
I partnered with a Traditional Healer who shared stories and guided me through these communities. He explained that my photographs could help educate other healers and families, offering a new lens to understand dementia, grounded in both cultural context and compassion.
Deepening the Work in South Africa
Expanding the Story in Guatemala
After returning to Rehoboth Beach in 2015, I knew my work documenting dementia care wasn’t finished. My research led me to Guatemala — one of the most progressive countries in the world when it comes to dementia support. With the help of a translator, I connected with Grupo Ermita Alzheimer and was warmly welcomed into their community.
In March 2016, I flew to Guatemala City to continue photographing dementia care across different settings. I attended the graduation of a university program dedicated to memory care, visited families with trained, in-home caregivers, and saw firsthand how deeply rooted support systems can be even in places with limited resources.
In one low-income zoña, I met a woman who had opened a facility for abandoned elderly people living with dementia and mental illness. There were only a few caretakers for over 30 patients, and though some were restrained for safety, they had what they hadn’t had elsewhere: food, warmth, and love.
A few months after returning from Guatemala, I shared my photo series from Kenya, South Africa, and Guatemala with Alzheimer’s Disease International, the very organization whose website first sparked this journey. They were deeply moved by the work and wanted to license the images for use across their network of global associations.
But it didn’t stop there. They invited me to London to discuss the project further and officially commissioned me to continue the work. It was a dream come true.
In 2017, I was hired to photograph the ADI International Conference in Japan, followed by a project in India. My images became key visual aids for major international presentations, including when dementia was brought to the stage at the World Health Organization Summit in Geneva in 2016.
My Big Break
From Side Hustle to Something Bigger
Back home, I started picking up small mural and chalk art gigs at local businesses, enough to make a little money, but I struggled to truly value my work or see myself as a “real” artist. I realized I wasn’t alone. So many artists in our community were incredibly talented but unsure how to turn their creativity into a sustainable livelihood.
We began as a small Holiday art sale at the Starboard in Dewey beach, soon evolved to a group of my artist friends doing pop-up shows and community art projects, and in 2017, I turned that momentum into something official: the Dewey Artist Collaboration (DAC).
With zero formal training in business or nonprofits, I dove in headfirst. That inexperience led to a lot of creative innovation. We were denied our 501c3, so I incorporated us into an arts education organization (unknowingly setting us up for today!). We transformed empty warehouses, hosted massive events, launched programs, and built a team. But without a solid organizational foundation, it quickly became clear that passion alone wasn’t enough. By 2018, we had held over 100 events.
Most organizations fail in their first five years. DAC could have been one of them. But I was determined to learn what I didn’t know and to keep this thing alive, not just for me, but for the artists counting on it.
Closing the Chapter on Global Dementia
In July 2018, I was commissioned by UK-based dementia organizations to continue my work in India. I spent six whirlwind days in Mumbai, partnering with ARDSI, a remarkable dementia advocacy organization, to photograph patients in both the city and surrounding rural areas.
I had the rare privilege of documenting life inside dementia care facilities and private homes across cultures, and the responsibility to share these stories, plus balance my life, was becoming overwhelming. My trip photographing in India was the first time I had been paid for this work, and the pressure to perform took a big emotional toll on me since I was barely making ends meet at home.
That moment forced me to confront the pressure that came with being commissioned; the expectation to produce images under pressure changed the project for me. A few months after my India project wrapped, the organizations that commissioned my work were dissolved by the government, and I decided it was time to let go of the project.
I reflect on this moment in my life often… and know the choice to move forward as a founder rather than a photographer was big one.
For years, while building DAC and traveling to photograph dementia care, I was also creating murals for local businesses at the Delaware beaches and exploring fun, expressive art collections as I searched for my signature style.
After returning from India, I put down my camera and picked up a paintbrush with purpose. I’d spent years doing small chalkboards and unpaid creative projects, often compensated in “exposure” or trades. This time, I committed to building a real art business that could support me while I grew DAC.
There weren’t many resources out there on how to make a living as a working artist, so I figured it out on my own — and before long, I became one of the go-to mural artists in town.
What I didn’t realize at the time was that this journey was teaching me exactly what DAC needed to become: a place where artists could stop surviving and start building thriving creative careers.
Picking Up the Paintbrush
Connecting with My Purpose Again
In January 2019, after a yearlong break from photography, I felt the pull to pick up my camera again. I’d always been drawn to Haiti, and through some searching, I found the Community Health Initiative (CHI) an organization that trains Haitian Community Health Workers (CHWs) by placing doctors and nurses in remote areas.
I reached out and asked if I could join them to document their work. They welcomed me in, and soon I was on a plane to Arcahaie, Haiti. I fell in love with the project, photographing inside hospitals (even surgeries) and hiking to remote villages to capture CHWs in action.
This experience reawakened something in me. After the ethical weight I carried from India, Haiti reminded me why I started taking photos in the first place: to tell stories that matter, with honesty and heart.
The Pandemic Story
Before the pandemic, DAC was finding its rhythm — hosting pop-up gallery events, renting out artist studios in two warehouses, and launching our Dirty Hands DIY space in 2019 as a creative revenue stream.
Then March 2020 hit. Like so many others, everything came to a halt and we barely had enough operational funds to make it through the month. I did what I knew how to do: I used my mural business to keep DAC alive.
Overnight, we turned our in-person DIY projects into take-home kits, and I built an e-commerce platform that took off. With the COVID funds rolling in, businesses suddenly all wanted murals. I would slam out a mural over the weekend, loan the money to DAC to buy supplies, and scale the e-commerce.
With that momentum, I created a program to help artists build websites and sell their work online, filling a huge gap in access and visibility.
From there, things snowballed. I transformed an old adult day care into artist studios, reimagined empty parking lots into bustling public art markets, launched a national e-commerce art kit business, and built a transformational artist development program which was the start of our current Emerge program. In just two years, DAC grew from a small grassroots nonprofit (under $100,000 in 2019) to a mid-sized organization generating over $300,000 annually by the end of 2021.
That spirit of innovation and grit earned us our first major grant from the Longwood Foundation ($150,000!), a milestone that validated everything we’d built with sheer creativity and hustle.
But growth came at a cost. I was still painting murals to pay myself, learning how to manage cash flow on the fly, and often going unpaid. Still, our small team held strong. Our artist members stayed with us. And we leaned into a startup mindset that carried us forward, not just surviving, but evolving.
In 2021, I was approached by the Art Therapy Director of a military hospital in Bethesda, MD, about a complex mural project. They needed a safari-themed installation for a pediatric unit that served patients from newborn to 22 years old — but it couldn’t be painted directly on the walls.
Over two years, I designed a custom sunset-to-sunrise mural on my iPad, then hand-painted 32 animals in my studio. Each piece was scanned, scaled, and turned into life-sized decals. The final installation stretched across the unit, grounded by a hand-painted horizon line that tied it all together.
For a long time, I thought photography was the tool I was meant to use to uplift people. But I’ve come to realize it was never about the medium — it was about me. I was put here to create things that change lives. That’s the thread that runs through everything I do.
The Medium Was Never the Point
When Growth Outpaced Structure
By 2022, DAC looked wildly successful from the outside. We had secured major grant funding. We had expanded into four physical spaces. The West Side Creative Market launched. The creative workforce program was building momentum. I had just completed the largest mural project of my career.
It was a lot of expansion at once.
What I didn’t fully understand at the time was that our operational foundation hadn’t caught up with our ambition. I was still leading like an early-stage founder while running a half-million-dollar organization. I was making fast decisions without understanding cash flow, carrying too much personally while not asking for help, and building forward without reinforcing structure underneath.
The Start of the 3 Year Change
At the start of 2023, dissolving DAC was a real possibility. From the outside, it looked like a funding problem. In reality, it was a leadership problem. I had wrapped my identity into the survival of the organization. I equated being indispensable with being valuable. I struggled to delegate. I was leading from urgency instead of steadiness, momentum instead of structure. The organization had grown quickly, but I had not yet evolved at the same pace.
To save DAC, I had to change the way I led. That meant asking for help in a way I never had before. It meant fundamentally changing myself into an entirely different person through personal growth. It meant restructuring leadership, strengthening governance, tightening financial oversight, and building real systems instead of relying on willpower and vision. It meant confronting burnout and recognizing that passion without infrastructure is not noble, it is dangerous
The Year I Almost Walked Away
2023 became the year I had to confront whether I even wanted this life.
I went part time with DAC because I was exhausted, reactive, and stuck in patterns that were not serving anyone. I had built something powerful, but internally I was unraveling. I was operating from fear, from urgency, from old narratives about worth and control. I was self-sabotaging without fully realizing it.
So I made a decision to stop blaming circumstances and actually dig even further into my growth.
I started 2024 on top of Kilimanjaro. That mountain was not symbolic for Instagram. It was a line in the sand. I publicly announced I was leaving DAC to start something new because I genuinely believed the next chapter of my growth might not include it.
That is when things got interesting. We brought in experienced leadership. I surrounded myself with people who operated at a higher level than I had before. I stepped out of being the emotional center of the organization. With new support systems in place, something shifted. I realized I did not need to abandon DAC. I needed to evolve inside it.
The Strategic Pruning
2025 was not glamorous. It was surgical. I entered the year with nine full-time staff. I entered 2026 on my own.
In March, we let go of our Studios building we sacrificed so much for (which was demolished in December). We ended had our final summer of DIY art project programming that I have desperately tried to breathe life into for years. We eliminated off-site pop-up events, including our famous Dewey Sip and Shop that ran for 10 years. We narrowed our focus. The West Side Creative Market remained because it works and it matters, but everything else was evaluated through one question: Is this scalable and sustainable?
For years, I built expansively. In 2025, we refined intentionally.
I had to untangle deep personal friendships from leadership structure, and lost relationships with people I care for so deeply. I had to admit we had too many programs if we were serious about long-term growth. I had to stop building for validation and start building for longevity.
It felt like shedding skin. Slow. Painful. Necessary.
So I headed to Indonesia in the fall of 2025, where I found the answers I needed.
Where I Lead Now
Now I am building from clarity, and leading (and living) my life with an open heart… as scary as that feels. I am assembling a true leadership team, not managers who report to me, but leaders who carry real ownership of our local programs I have invested my blood and tears in since 2015. DAC is lean, focused, and structurally aligned. My role is no longer to hold everything together. My role is to design the next stage of growth.
Emerge is the scalable model born from everything I learned the hard way. Let’s put it this way, my journey with cash flow allowed for me to make an actual functional cash flow projection tool to help artists plan for inconsistent income. I would have never been able to make this if I hadn’t gone through it. Emerge is infrastructure for artists who want sustainable businesses, not hustle culture fantasies. It is expanding regionally and positioning DAC as a creative workforce engine, not just a local arts nonprofit.
Purpose in Progress is the experiential arm of that philosophy. It is where I translate leadership, identity, and evolution into rooms that shift people in real time. It is not therapy and it is not motivational speaking. It is structured transformation through creativity and systems.
I no longer build from survival. I build from coherence.
And this time, the growth is intentional.
Love my story? Let’s work together.
Let’s Connect Your People to Their Purpose
Purpose in Progress is a structured experiential workshop designed for leaders, founders, and creative thinkers navigating growth in real time. This is not surface-level inspiration. It’s identity work, leadership clarity, and practical integration — delivered through a collaborative abstract painting experience that makes the lesson visible. I bring the framework and the room design. You bring the people ready to evolve.
Learn About DAC & The Emerge Program
The Developing Artist Collaboration is a creative workforce organization proving that artists can build sustainable businesses when given the right infrastructure. From Emerge, our structured year-long workforce program, to the West Side Creative Market, DAC operates as a living model of how creative ecosystems scale responsibly. We are not just supporting artists. We are building systems that allow them to thrive.