Sustaining small business during COVID

CovidBusiness
Written By Brooking Gatewood

Episode #31

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Visionary entrepreneur Vanessa Pope connects economic and environmental sustainability through community leadership

Small businesses have been struggling amidst the constraints of COVID-19, but Vanessa Pope’s story of Mudlab is one of resilience, resourcefulness, and the power of community-based business. In this episode, we learn how this visionary Oakland resident has built a hub for reuse community with creative partnerships, serving locals a lot more than just coffee. We also hear Vanessa’s take on how reuse can save businesses money and help weather difficult times.

Vanessa Pope is an educator by trade, an associate with ReThink Disposable, and the cofounder of MudLab, a community resource center, event space and zero-waste grocery store in North Oakland.

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Brooking Gatewood

Brooking hosts Upstream’s The Indisposable Podcast and guides our team on virtual collaboration and culture-building. She has worked with Break Free From Plastic US since 2016 as a facilitator and strategist, and has spent much of the last decade supporting collaborative leadership for many ambitious change efforts - from saving monarch butterflies to curbing diabetes. In her spare time, Brooking can be found writing and performing poetry, or hosting community-connection events in her local LA neighborhood.

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Myth-busting with public health experts: The safety of single-use