Our Story

What is Hey Auntie?

Hey Auntie! is a relationship-building service and community connecting Black women across ages and life stages to learn the rules, gain the tools, and build the networks to thrive at home, work, and everywhere in between.

Today, Black women are experiencing higher rates of depression and anxiety along with other inequitable health outcomes due to stressors unique to both their racial and gender identities.

The lack of safe, culturally competent, and efficient resources leads many Black women to suffer in silence.

Our mission at Hey Auntie! is to offer an answer to this problem. By taking a strength-based approach, we are leveraging our culture and community values to provide a high-quality, sensitive, and data-informed service that centers Black womens’ experiences, deepens their social support systems, and improves her access to quality information and resources.

Our services:

We curate and design 1:1 and group connections, videos and tutorials, resources, and live and virtual experiences, to support women in successfully navigating their day-to-day lives both personally and professionally.

Our goal is to leverage the latest research, data, cultural sensitivity, and technology to weaken barriers and strengthen protective factors to empower Black women to live full, productive, and healthy lives.

Our core values:

and lots of Love!

About the Founder, Nicole E. Kenney, MPP

Fun Facts:

I am the oldest of four girls
I'm a proud West Philadelphia native
My favorite movie is Love and Basketball
I graduated from an all-girls high school and an all-women's college
My favorite music is anything '90s, especially R&B

Ever since I was a little girl, I have had big dreams and audacious visions to make the world a better place. I’m a proud graduate of both an all-girls high school and an all-women's college, which means I learned very early that women are leaders and global change agents.

Couple my academic experience with traveling and studying around the world, very early on in my life I developed a global perspective that informed how I see the world, my work, and what I believe is possible for Black women and girls.

In short: everything!

My diverse professional background as a Buyer for Ross Stores (because I love fashion) to curating events for entrepreneurs and creatives for a non-profit in Philly, to leading communications at the NAACP, the largest civil rights organization in the country, to advising social change leaders with my own social-impact company, has sharpened my skills as an innovator, researcher, problem-solver, and connector and positioned me for this moment.

I am also a lifelong student, always excited to learn at every opportunity. I earned a Bachelor of Arts from Smith College in Government and Psychology. I also was awarded the Barbra Jordan Public Policy Award. I studied abroad at the University of Sydney, where I took International Politics, Psychology, and Business classes. I received my Master of Arts in Public Policy from The Johns Hopkins University.

I am also deeply committed to my community. I serve as Fitness Instructor at my childhood YMCA, am President of the Alumnae of Smith College Philadelphia Chapter, and am an active member in my local church, the Church of Christian Compassion.

The Story Behind Hey Auntie!

The idea behind creating Hey Auntie! stems from my personal experience and my professional and academic career innovating and leading communications and programs at the intersection of advancing racial, gender, health, and economic equity.

I had the idea for Hey Auntie! after my aunties helped me navigate my own experiences with stress and anxiety as a millennial, which I captured in my documentary, It Starts! With Me! for a community-based filmmaking class project in 2016.

What started as a class project turned my entre into an entrepreneurial journey and founding my own social impact consultancy. I was invited by non-profits, companies, churches, academia, and even to the Hill in Washington D.C. to host screenings of my documentary, often with my aunties right with me, and to facilitate conversations and trainings on different topics impacting mental health, among women and especially Black women.

In 2018, while working on projects to advance racial, gender, and economic equity, I curiously accepted an “out of the blue” invitation to attend a conference called Project NorthStar by Black and Brown Founders. There I was introduced to Black technologists who shared my passion for social justice and equity. So, for the next two years, I emersed myself in technology spaces to listen and learn more about the industry, all the different opportunities, and what was possible in the future.

In 2020, during the racial reckoning around the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor, I was consulting, advising, and engaging in conversations on diversity, inclusion, and equity. Yet, again, I was again deeply concerned about how Black women's voices were being left out of conversations, the lack of culturally sensitive and safe support systems addressing topics that were most pressing to us, and the lack of resources addressing our unique needs both inside and outside of the workplace.

In October 2020, the Economy League in my hometown of Philadelphia launched the #WellCityChallenge, inviting creative solutions to address millennial health. I seized the opportunity and pitched, Hey Auntie! Over 100+ applicants applied, and in December 2020, I was accepted into a one-month incubator. In March 2021, I was announced a finalist for my idea, Hey Auntie!, and received $10K. In April 2021, I advanced into the four-month accelerator and in July 2021, I was awarded the $50K Grand Prize.

Today, we are using this investment to build our Hey Auntie! MVP!

Why the name Hey Auntie?

Hey Auntie! is inspired by the many conversations I have with my auntie, Dr. Deborah Darlene Roebuck, who has spent her life and career working to improve women's health outcomes. She embodies and inspires the platform's values: safety, integrity, community, cultural sensitivity, compassion, and love. She has served as a nurse, missionary, program administrator, and most recently, she is the founder of a global health and wellness company called Going Thru the Change, LLC.

The name, Hey Auntie!, is also inspired by the historical and cultural legacy of the Black Auntie who can be traced back to West Africa. Aunties have served as a protector factor for our mental health for generations, and I am excited to build on that legacy for the 21st century and beyond.

You can hear more about the legacy of the auntie in my conversation with sociologist Dr. Regina Sowers, Ph.D. here.

Everything auntie says and does is done with deep care, personalization, and concern and is the ethos for every connection, resource, and experience you have with us. I hope you can immediately see our passion, dedication, and how much we care about you.