Hello Sunshine, Hey fam.
Today on the bright Side, chef and TikTok star Joanne Mulinaro talks about her pivot from corporate lawyer to food influencer, why she weaves family stories into her recipes, and how she's veganizing Korean food.
One dish out of.
Time, whether it's a dish that I make, a recipe, I develop a little short story that I append. There's this wonderful idea called smut, which literally means seasoning of the hand in Korean. She means everything that touches me. You're getting a little bit of me in that, and how beautiful that is.
It's Tuesday, April thirtieth.
I'm Simone Boye, I'm Danielle Robe and this is the bright Side from Hello Sunshine.
Danielle. How's your week going.
I'm having a slow start because i was up way too late watching Sex and the City, and I'm now on season six because it's on Netflix now and I've been binging and I have rewatched this series I think six seven times over. I never get sick of it.
Wow, you're a connoisseur of Sex and the City at this point.
Truly, I just feel so seen by that show.
What is it for you that makes you feel seen about it?
At every point in my life that I watch, I get different things from the characters, from the storylines, and I just think they did such a great job talking about dating in your thirties.
I didn't watch the show. Are there any points of wisdom that are really sticking with you or takeaways?
Oh?
Girl, six seasons and two movies, and I can't just pick one you have to watch.
I don't have that kind of time. Unfortunately, I wish I did.
Well, you did have time to watch a movie. You came in here talking about this film that you love.
Yes, I saw Challengers one on a date night. It was a perfect date night film. It's really really fun. This is Zendaya's new movie, and I'm just like, I don't know her, but I'm so happy for her because it did really well at the box office this weekend, fifteen million dollars. And I think that's so cool because she wasn't just an actor in it, she was also a producer. So this is just a huge win for female producers and also talent who become producers to take an ownership.
Why do you like it so much? You know?
It's part sports movie, part steamy romance film. I really love the director, Luca Guadanino. He did call Me by your Name, and he really has this knack for bringing out these erotic scenes and queer themes with his actors and in his films.
The whole internet went crazy over that scene. There's a threesome.
Apparently, Yes, there is a threesome scene, and it's pretty juicy, pretty steamy. They all had to get intimacy coordinators and work with them for that, but.
She said it wasn't steamy filming it.
Well, I think because they spent so much time and were really intentional about getting to know each other and bond off screen, so that way they felt comfortable doing.
That, because that is a lot.
I mean. The best part is so and I see her talk about how her family reacted to it, because she was like, they've seen the movie so many times at this point, yeah, and they're sort of unfazed. But you know, she's twenty seven years old. I'm thirty three. I don't even like when my mom listens to the podcast because I'm like, you don't need to know everything.
Mom, same, I can't even imagine taking my parents to go see a film like Challenger, so I can't imagine being in it and then watching it with them.
That would be crazy.
But I also really love this character that she played, Tashi Duncan, because to be honest, this character is just really ruthless and selfish, and we don't always get to see black women portraying those characters. We love an unlikable woman, right, Yes, I don't even know if the term. I don't even know if an unlikable character exists. I think they're just complex women. But we we love that.
I don't know so. I mean, anybody can be unlikable man or woman.
I think so.
But then I start thinking, well, this is just a character that exists in the gray area, and they're just like really human, you know.
Yeah.
Serena Williams wrote a review of this movie in Vogue, and she straight up agreed, like this character is just mean. Serena Williams didn't hold anything back. First of all, she said that she was really impressed by how they played tennis.
That's what I wanted to know if it was real or not.
Yeah, it was real.
She said that they were so good that they probably could have gone on tour if they started earlier. Wow, but she said she hated the ending. She wanted more. The film left her wanting more.
I love seeing Olive Zindiya's tennis inspired outfit. Oh my furthest tour like she's killing it. The fashion on this Prush tour incredible, incredible, And I'm also hoping. I loved Queen's Gambit, which was obviously about this amazing woman playing chess, and I'm kind of hoping that Challengers does the same thing with tennis. I think Dick's Sporting Goods is going to see a quick rise in tennis racket and tennis ball sales.
I want to play tennis now after watching this viel.
Yeah, that's what it does.
I wanted to play chess after Queen's Gambit.
How's that going for you? Not well?
I played my dad a few times and gave up. I feel like it's something you need to learn when you're young, or.
Something I really want to work on tennis and golf over the next four years. I want to get into my country club era.
Good luck with that.
I'm going to do it. Just watch.
My parents always told me that those are the two sports you have to learn how to play because you can play them throughout your whole life.
And they're great for business too, because everything for me just comes back to see dollars.
You see money and you can go get it. You see the money, you make the money, you take the money. There you go.
Okay, we have to celebrate some good news because Gabby Douglas is back. If you remember, she's the decorated gymnast. She competed in one gold in twenty twelve and twenty sixteen. I'd venture to say that she's inspired the generation of gymnasts that we're seeing on the floor today. But she hasn't competed since then, and now at twenty eight, she's getting back into it and she's trying to qualify for this summer's games in Paris, which are less than three months away.
This is really interesting. We never see athletes do this, try to make a comeback in this way.
Well, I read that she never quite said that she retired, and she did that on purpose because she never wanted to quit on a bad day and she sort of had a tough ending in that last season of her career. She's pulling a Michael Jordan.
In my opinion, I cannot wait to watch.
I love that she's twenty eight too, because in the last Olympics the average age of a gymnast was twenty one, and even that was older than it had been in the past. Like Olympic gymnasts are known to be teenagers literally honest, literal teenagers. Yeah, so this is pretty amazing. I try and live by the phrase that trying is winning, and I see her trying. She's out there trying. Yes, girl doing her backflips and trying.
Her trying is my winning. Yes, I mean did I say that right?
Yes?
Her trying anything is like way more than I could ever do.
So Okay, before we really get into our show today, we need to discuss eyebrows.
Oh, let's discuss what's up with eyebrows.
I saw this article about the golden ratio for eyebrows, and anytime I see eyebrow trends, I am triggered. Because I shouldn't say I'm triggered, I WinCE. My mother was traumatized from the eighties with the plucking of the thin eyebrows, so she would never let me touch my eyebrows growing up. Do you ever touch yours?
I really don't do anything to them now I did way too much when I was younger.
What'd you do? You wax, tweetze, threaded?
Yeah, exactly all of the above. But then I just realized I needed more, not less. So now I'm all about adding instead of subtracting. So now I pencil them in.
So have you heard of Anastasia of Beverly Hills. Of course, she's like the eyebrow Queen right first. Yeah, like she gets it. She came up with this golden ratio thing. And what I like is that it's for whatever eyebrows you have, thin, thick, bushy, not whatever. It's all about finding balance and symmetry on your individual face. And I feel like there's so many trends with women, and I hear this line. My body is not a trend. My eyebrows are not a trend. Okay, it flip flops every generation.
I just want my eyebrows to be my eyebrows. Tell us how you really feel, Danielle, Yeah, I'm fired up over this. Okay, So do you do anything to your eyebrows? No, my mom won't let me. Still I'm there.
Do you have to fill them in at all? Or do you do gel or what's your routine?
Like?
Have two quick things. I use the Jones Road dark brown pencil, and then I use the Anastasio browgel.
Nice. So what is the golden ratio of eyebrows? Though?
It's basically math for your face, but it's not so complicated. You draw an upside down triangle from your eyes to the tip of your nose, and it's designed to find balance and symmetry on your face.
That makes a lot of sense because I noticed that whenever my eyebrows are off, whenever the ratio is off, if one side is like smaller, or if I didn't fill them in enough.
My whole face looks different.
Yeah.
Can you imagine if I came in tomorrow with just bleached eyebrows. I really want to try it.
Julia Fox did that. It was kind of a vibe.
Yeah, you could do it. Maybe I will.
I really want to try microblating, took How of scared are.
You hopping on all these trends micro blady fighting?
Micro blading is something that's going to make my life easier. That's why I want to do it, because then I don't have to wake up and do the filling in of my brows.
After the break, we're taking a seat at the table with Joanne Molinaro, and we're learning how she veganizes Korean food and koreanizes everything else.
Stay with us.
You may know our next guest as the Korean Vegan. Joanne Lee Mullin. Arrow's cooking videos took off on TikTok during the pandemic and now with millions of followers Anna James Beard Award, She's making her mark through her recipes and her stories.
I have such a girl crush on this woman. She captured our hearts and appetites after she made the jump from trial lawyer to food blogger, and her blend of cooking, heritage and the inspiration is exactly what drew us to her here on the bright Side.
Jo Anne, Welcome to the bright Side. Hey guys, I'm so excited to be here.
We're so happy to have you here, Joanne mull and Arrow, the Korean Vegan. Before we jump into today's conversation, we have to wish you a happy birthday. Yes, you just turned forty five and you celebrated with some special cake.
Yes, I made a sponge cake, a vegan sponge cake that I was really proud of. It was less proud of the final product. Because vegan whip cream still has a little bit of a learning curve. It looked so good on Instagram, though, girl, okay good because it tasted amazing. I could not stop you.
It looked really good.
I'm gonna have to get that recipe because I'm a dairy free gurly, so finding cakes for us it's hard, Joyanne. Before you published your best selling cookbook, The Korean Vegan, before how you blew up on social media, you were a partner at a law firm and you were eating meat at one time. So can you walk us through those transitions which came first. There're two big transitions. Definitely, the elimination of meat from my diet came first. That happened in twenty sixteen.
I was a young partner at that time at the law firm, and my then boyfriend now husband, he wanted to go vegan and it took a lot of arm twisting, but eventually I joined him and got rid of meat and all other animal products from my diet.
You know, one of the things that has always stuck out to me about your work is that it feels like you are a chef and you cook, but that's not really what your platform is about. You're a storyteller to me, and you kind of walk us through a recipe as you teach us something or tell us something about what's on your heart. How did that begin?
Yeah, So I've always enjoyed writing. That's been sort of my creative outlet. It's either music or writing, So I really leaned into the writing aspect kind of like midway through my legal career. When I went plant based in twenty sixteen, I added cooking as a necessity. There wasn't really any Korean vegan food that I could purchase, so I needed to make it myself. And what I wanted to do was marry those two creative outlets in some way.
So I started sharing my very like short short stories and the captions of my Instagram posts in twenty seventeen, and when I started sharing videos in twenty twenty on TikTok, I literally just read out loud my Instagram caption. And I think people enjoy kind of watching the preparation of food and then listening to something that might not have anything to do with that food, but was, you know, similarly captivating.
A lot of people might be surprised to learn how hands on you are during the content creation process. I mean, you're.
Shooting, you're writing, you're editing a lot of the time. That's a lot of work, and you still show up every day and you pour your heart and soul into this content that you make.
What's your why? That's a really good question, and I think it's an important question for any entrepreneur, any artist, any content creator to continuously ask themselves, because if you don't do that, it can get a little depressing and a little demoralizing. And I think there are two things, one of which was harder for me to grapple with. I think the reason I started sharing stories is because I felt that the immigrant story in the United States
was not being adequately and fairly represented. And I felt that a lot of people in America didn't really know what it was like to grow up in an immigrant family, and particularly in an Asian immigrant family. And I really wanted to unveil that for people in a non threatening way. And there's like, really nothing less threatening than here's a bowl of food, Come sit at my dinner table, and let's have a chat, and I'll tell you a little story.
And what I really wanted to get.
Across to people was things may look a little different, and they may smell a little different, they may sound a little different, but there's actually a lot more in common between us than you might realize, and that was really important to me. I also think part of that, and wrapped into that, was again this idea of allowing a group of people who had historically felt unseen to feel seen, and that of course is my parents, my
mom and my dad, that generation of immigrants. I wanted them to feel very powerfully seen in a compassionate and empowering way. I also wanted to feel seen, and I think that there's a little bit of shame for some people admitting that. Oh so I have a need to feel seen. I have a need to feel heard, and
I want to do it in this way. And I think that this was a way for me to explore my creativity, explore a side to me that was otherwise going untapped at work, you know, as a lawyer, and do it in a way that was fun, exciting and inspiring.
Joanne, there's this quote that stuck with me from your website. You say, I veganize Korean food, I koreanize everything else.
What do you mean by that?
The first part is pretty straightforward, right. I started the Korean vegan because when I went vegan, there was nothing out there for me, and I was like, well, I'm not giving up my kimchi and my kyabees and all my favorite Korean foods just because I made this change to my diet. I just have to figure it out. And so that was the first part of the quote, which is, Okay, I'm going to viganize all my Korean favorite foods. The second part was a little bit more glib, right, like, okay,
and I'm just going to creanize it everything else. And at first it was really a reference to the fact that anytime I made something that wasn't overtly a Korean dish, I would end up figuring out a way to incorporate soy sauce or tinjung or quo jujung or some of the very popular Korean ingredients that I was really learning a lot about at that time. I always felt like, Okay, well, I just think that this marinera would taste a little better with cujajong. I think that this risotto would taste
a little better with tinjong. Just a little bit doesn't
need to be a lot. So I think That's what I meant at first, but then I think later on, especially once the Korean vegan became much more about storytelling, it was also just how I put so much of myself into my content and into my recipes, Like you're getting a heavy dose of Joanne with everything, whether it's a dish that I make, a recipe, I develop a little short story that I appenned to whatever it is I'm making, you get my voice, sometimes you get my face.
And of course there's this, you know, wonderful idea called son mut which literally means taste of the hand or seasoning of the hand in Korean, which means everything that touches me, everything that goes through my hands. You're getting a little bit of me in that, and how beautiful that is.
I'm not as familiar with Korean dishes. What should I start with?
Oh God, that such a great question. Okay, So I would start with the stews. And the reason I say the stews, I have a whole chapter on soups and stews in my cookbook, and number one, it's because it's the easiest out of all of the recipes. So no matter what level you are at in the kitchen, it doesn't really matter. These are very very easy dishes, and then thank you for that. No, it's okay, there's no
judgment here. I'm a home cook too. And also in almost every Korean meal, breakfast, lunch, or dinner, you're going to have a Korean soup or stew, so it's such an integral part of Korean cuisine.
And then from.
There I would specify probably the tindunk jigue, which is a fermented soybean stew. It is one of the most popular recipes out of my cookbook, which was very surprising and gratifying. And it's also that one dish anytime you go to a Korean restaurant, it's going to be there, like, it's almost inevitably going to show up on the table. So it just is a great introduction to Korean cuisine and it's also really easy.
It makes a ton of sense to me that a natural next step for you was to write a cookbook. People were dying over your recipes. What doesn't always come with a cookbook is a James Beard Award for your first cookbook. That is such a huge honor. How does that come about?
I honestly don't know how it comes back I just I remember when I was told that I was nominated. I was like, well, I didn't even know that I was up for considering, and like it's such a surprise. I will say, like one of the most important things when you are writing a good cookbook or you know your first one, is to surround yourself with a really supportive team. I literally had the best team in the world.
They you know, were almost all women, and they just really understood how important this book was to me, to my family and of course the stories behind it. So they submitted the book for consideration by the Games Beer Foundation. They didn't tell me, and so it was like came as a huge shock. I went to the ceremony and my parents are so cute because it was in Chicago luckily, so you know, I told my mom and dad about it, and I was like, you know, you don't need to come.
I'm never going to win, so like there's no point, like just just stay home and be comfortable, and they were like, no, no, of course we're going to come. And I think even then I didn't realize like, like the magnitude of.
This, Shoanne, this is like the oscars of food and but here's The thing is, I really did not think there was like any chance that I would win.
There was absolutely no scenario in my mind. I didn't prepare a speech because I was like, well, there's no point. I'm just going to go and enjoy myself and like fangirl Padma Lakshmi's going to be there and I'm just going to get everyone with autograph. Like That's what I was thinking. So when my name was announced, it was probably one of the most surreal moments of my entire life.
How did it change things for you?
I think that there are very few things in my life that I can look back towards and say that was a moment where I allowed myself to feel more confident. I think confidence is one of the most difficult things in the world to understand, earn, and retain, at least especially for women. I think it's like every single moment of every day, somebody's trying to drag down your confidence. So it is a very hard earned thing to keep.
And I think when I was recognized by the Jamesuar Foundation as well as my peers for the work that went into that book, it was one moment that I can say, Okay, I will accept this. I will accept this as a sign that I deserve to be recognized and that this book is actually a wonderful thing.
Joanne, the kitchen seems like a confessional for you, a church, a sanctuary, all of those things rolled into one. How does it shift your energy when you get into the kitchen. That is a wonderful question.
For me.
I get very focused, and that's really important because I have a hard time focusing. I'm very much like a multitasker. I have so many things going on at the same time in my head. I've got multiple fires that I'm
trying to put out mentally, physically, logistically. And so when I get a chance to just be in the kitchen and cook a special meal or cook something for dinner, and I don't have to worry about anything else, I turn on a good book, you know, I listen to a lot of my books, or I turn on some you know, my favorite music, and I just get to focus on making delicious food that I know I'm going to really enjoy eating at the end of it. That
is one of the most relaxing times. It is a time when I feel most myself and most empowered because I don't have to answer to anyone other than myself, and I really love that.
I love the way that your videos offer advice to people on heartbreak and friendship and family and navigating life's challenges. When you look back at your body of work, is there a particular dish or recipe that you associate with a life lesson that was hard to learn?
Yes, this is funny.
It's probably my duck book recipe. It's takmandukuk in the cookbook. And I've talked about this a couple of times, and I actually mentioned it specifically in the book. And I remember when I shared this story, my editor was like, I think you need to remove this story because it's too depressing, and I was like, nope, We're keeping it
in because it's really important. The story is about four months before my first wedding is New Year's and in Korean culture, you eat rice cake soup for New Year's and it was like something I look forward to all the time. And my mom made rice cake soup and she invited me over to her house and I showed up and she hands me this bowl of soup and my father's there, which I thought was kind of weird, but you know, he was there and with the soup is a Hallmark card, and I'm like.
Oh, are they giving me money for New Years?
Is just also Korean tradition, but one that we had not partaken in many years. Right, So I opened a Hallmark envelope and and it is a card. Basically, both of my parents beg me not to walk down the aisle and to call off my wedding, which was happening in four months. Needless to say, that didn't end well. I did not enjoy any book. I was so angry. I just screamed at my parents and then I stormed out of their house. And what I learned from that was, you know, I remember telling my mom and my dad,
what's the big deal? I love this man. Isn't that all that matters. That's the most important thing in any marriage, and that's the only thing that matters. And I remember my father said, Okay, yeah, you're right, you're right. But my mom she did not agree. She didn't say anything. She just kind of looked very sad. And many many years later, when I got a divorce and when things sort of fell apart, I learned that lesson that while love is incredibly important in a marriage. It's not the
only thing that's important in a marriage. You need respect, you need trust, you need partnership. There's so many other things that go into a successful relationship with your life partner. And that was a very difficult lesson for me to learn, and I think about it every single New Year's when I eat the boop.
Now, thank you for sharing that story with us. I just I am constantly in awe of how open you are and how real you are. And I hope it's okay that I ask you about this, but you've been really open about your relationship with food and struggling with eating disorders, and I think that you've made so many people feel seen through your candor on this topic, and so I'm curious how the work that you're doing now is allowing you to process your own relationship with food. Life has a way.
Of getting in your way, sometimes right, and sometimes it's good. You learn a lot from those hurdles, You build muscles from those hurdles, you learn strategies about avoiding them and jumping over them and all of those things. But sometimes those hurdles just suck, and it's so easy to just give in and say, you know what, that hurdle is there. I'm tired of jumping over them all the time. I'm just gonna sit this out and I'm just gonna give in.
And that's really a very dangerous temptation. But the lovely thing about the Korean Vegan is it's always there saying.
No, no, don't give up. You can't give up. You gotta come up with another recipe, You gotta come up with another thing.
No, you got a cookbook, try, you gotta eat eat food, Please eat food, you know, and like it's hard to not get emotional about it because of all the things that I talk about, my ongoing struggle with food is probably.
The only thing that is a present struggle that I share.
A lot about.
But that's what the Korean Vegan does for me, and it's always cheering me on from the sidelines, like you can do this, you can keep fighting. Because there are so many times in my life I gotta tell you where I just don't want to. I just want to give up because it's so freaking exhausting. But look at this amazing community I now have that keeps me, keeps me going.
Yes, oh wow, Okay, wanted to ask you about just veganism overall, and what that term means in our society today. I mean, you've been outspoken about the implicit bias and exclusionary politics that can often be present and vegan and plant based spaces.
Why is it important for you to take that on and challenge that. Let me answer that question by sharing sort of this interesting story. When I was like nine years old, my dad he walked into my room with his like busted up, nasty typewriter and he was like, Okay, your job now is to type up all these letters for my boss, or for the bank, or for this. And I was like nine, barely. I did not know how to type. I didn't even know how to turn
the typewriter on. But he already knew then that I had a better command of the English language than he did, and that I was better at making things sound more official and professional than my father, you know, And that was that was true, And for a long time I hated it, and I grew to resent it. I said, you're the adult. Why do I have to do the adult things here?
Right?
And fast forward, you know, three decades from that point, AAPI hate is running rampant in the streets and the first thing I can think about is, oh, I have to protect my mom and my dad. They don't even know what racism looks like. They don't even know what microaggression is. They don't know what that word is, and if it happened to them to their faces, I think they would be very hard pressed to even describe this
as racism. And so then it became my job as somebody who spoke Korean and English, who literally spent her entire life defending her parents against the banks and the insurance companies and Cstomer Service because they couldn't speak the language as well as they needed to. Oh, well, this is what I've been modeled to do. This is what I'm specifically trained to do. I can do this better than most people. And it's the same thing with veganism.
Whether it's a job that I wanted or a job that I decided to take on intentionally, well, it's one that I'm uniquely equipped to do. I am vegan, I believe in the ethics underlying veganism. I am a recipe developer of vegan recipes, so I have this kind of arsenal at my disposal. But then I'm also a Korean American. I grew up as the child of immigrants. I have experienced racism in many shapes and forms my entire life, and it is the one thing in the world that
I hate more than anything. So with these two kind of things happening inside of me, it was sort of natural for me to take that up as just who I am as part.
Of the Korean Vegan.
The Korean Vegan.
Yeah, it's about veganism, but.
More importantly, it's about compassion. It's about empowerment, it's about empathy. It's about making sure that people every single day feel safe to tell their stories.
Beautifully said thank you.
Okay, Joanne, We're about to let you go, but I want to go back to that quote from your website where you said I veganized Korean food.
I koreanize everything else. What should we be koreanizing? There's so many things, you know.
I think for me, it's it's more just like, oh, there's so many wonderful things about Korean culture that you can incorporate in many aspects of your life, whether it's in your cooking, whether it's in your literature, whether it's
in your music. Certainly like come on btas you know or you know, whether it's in movies or Korean dramas, even language, like my favorite tiktoks now are like people who are not native Korean speakers learning how to speak Korean because they're so enthralled with the Korean dramas and they want to really like lean into that language. I think that's beautiful. But I don't think it's limited to Korean culture, right. I think that there are so many
wonderful cultures out there, like my husband's. You know, his father is Italian, and so I've been learning Italian every night. I'm trying to watch more Italian films and more Italian dramas. And you know, obviously no one has to twist my arm to make Italian food. But speaking of koreanizing it, I think that's a wonderful place to.
Start, is you know.
I think that tomatoes and qujajang, they just work really really well together, and they're also the same color, so I think it's kind of perfect. And you know, so that's a really quick and easy way to experiment with incorporating different cultural ingredients, stories, and narratives into your daily life.
Refusion is God's gift too, humankind.
I love whenever two cultures, mix their flavors, their recipes, their traditions.
Oh Chef's Kiss.
Absolutely, Joanne, Thank you so much. I so enjoyed this conversation and I love the podcast.
Thank you, Joanne.
Joanne is the author of The Korean Vegan Reflections and Recipes from Omah's Kitchen. You can find her on Instagram and TikTok at the Korean Vegan. Okay, we have to take a moment to reflect on our conversation with Joanne. What stuck with you?
Simone?
I really admire a woman who has a clearly defined why, and that's Joanne all the way. You can tell that she's really intentional about infusing her heritage into her storytelling, and she's also really intentional about just being real about what she's going through and her struggles and her vulnerabilities. I love the way that she uses food as a vessel for connection, curiosity, and confessions.
Mm hmm, confessions for sure. I love that you said storyteller because I think some people would call her a content creator, and I really view her as a storyteller and a writer. You know, I'm not a huge cook, so not that I don't like watching her cook, but really, I look forward to reading her words, and I think what I really took away was her love of family. This is going to sound so corny, but when she was talking about them, I felt like my heart was smiling.
I know that feeling, and I think that she's probably done that. And then some.
After the break, we're bringing you our first ever giving her Flowers Segment, our monthly award that shines a light on an amazing woman and her accomplishments with an actual bouquet of flowers.
Mind you, Today's bouquet goes to a brilliant young student who, at just fifteen, invented a life saving medical technology. You don't want to miss this. Stay with us.
All right, y'all.
We are back and very pumped to give our next guest her flowers. Fifteen year old Nya Ellis makes me feel like a big time underachiever, Danielle. I mean, she's a freshman in high school and she's already making her mark on the medical field.
Nya invented a watch that can detect the early signs of a stroke in adults over fifty five. The invention helped her become a champion in the National Stem Challenge, where she beat out twenty five hundred high school students. The New Orleans native got to present her work in Washington, DC. See earlier this month at the National Stem Festival. NYA, Welcome to the bright Side by congratulations.
Hi, Danielle.
Listen someone lovely to meet you guys and be on y'all podcast today.
If you don't deserve your flowers, I don't.
Know who does.
NYA.
Seriously, NYA, I mean, congratulations on becoming a STEM Champion. You got to present your work in DC. I mean, how did it feel to have your work, this invention recognized in that way.
It definitely felt amazing to be able to travel and go present my project. I was a little scared first, but honestly got comfortable and it was kind of cool. Is to actually get to talk to so many different people.
Can you tell us a little bit more about this stroke detection watch that you developed?
How does it work?
So the project is called win WIN. It is a early stroke detection watch day. Basically, the tech strokes early on through different sensors within a watch, and the different sys is basically monitor your heart rate, eos on, blood pressure, your oxygen levels, if you're on balance because if you're all balanced, that has a sign of having a stroke. And if your words are slur because a lot of people who have strokes tend to go off balance.
I have words that slur.
But there also are different symptoms of just different heart problems. So I mean, it's a stroke watch, but it takes much more than just strokes. Naya, your brain is so beautiful.
You could have probably done a ton of things, and you chose this specific watch. What inspired you to create this?
My grandmother she had a stroke when I was younger, and so seeing how she kind of struggled after having her stroke inspired I felt like if someone could get the symptoms early on, it would definitely be much better because it could cause them from not dying, cause them from just not having a severe stroke. Severe stroke, you could die, you could become paralyzed.
That makes a lot of sense.
Is she's still with us, Yeah, she's still with us today, but you know, as she gets older, it gets harder. So watching that is seeing that there's some way to catch early on was definitely what inspired me.
How long did this take you to put together?
It's still going on, to be honest, but it's been a Muths long process. First it was just creating the idea of it, and when it became something that became so big, it can see you going on and it's still going on.
So yeah, I see entrepreneurship in your future because you're a problem solver and that really is the essence of entrepreneurship right there. But you know, a lot of successful entrepreneurs there's a whole community behind them. So who in your community championed you? Did you have a favorite teacher or mentor who supported you during this process?
I do have a mentor.
My mentor is friendly who got me system Nola, Like, she still finds stuff for me to do to get me outside of the house.
What's next for you, Naya? Where do you want to go next? Do you want to continue learning about this topic specifically?
I honestly want to get this product into stores so then it could help people.
But then what my education wise?
I want to end up going to college.
I want to become an obstecious kind of college, which is obgya Naya.
You know we mentioned that you are competing against twenty five hundred other young people, young students. This is really a huge moment for you. I can imagine a huge moment for all the people that love you. What did this mean to you?
I'm still so nonchalant about it.
And every time someone like, see how you're giving me my flowers right now, everyone is kind of like, oh my god, but I'm very proud of myself. But it's like, I don't it's not really hitting me yet that I want to get so many kids. And I'm all over the place doing different interviews with different people, and what it.
Do start kicking in be like, wait is this yes?
So, Naya?
I know no one Alice Gray stuff.
So yeah.
So on the bright side, we really believe that people working hard to inspire and uplift their communities deserve some extra special love, which is why we are quite literally giving you your flowers today courtesy of Mona's Accents in New Orleans. Naya, congratulations, thank you so much.
And I love that y'all are giving me my flowers and allow other people to hear my story.
So thank you so much.
Nia Ellis is a high school freshman in New Orleans and a National Stem Challenge champion.
Bright Side Besties, we need your help. If you know someone in your community who deserves her flowers. Go ahead and nominate them. Send us their name and your reasons for nominating them to Hello at the bright Side podcast dot com. We'll be showering the praise and giving out flowers once a month.
That's it for us. Today.
Tomorrow we're talking with the founder of mother untitled neha Ushe. She's giving us insight on how to take a step back from work and regain some focus. Simone and I are really excited for this one.
Yeah, this is a good one.
Y'all.
Listen and follow the bright Side on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Danielle Robe. You can find me on Instagram and TikTok at Danielle Robe.
That's ro b a y and it's your girl Simone.
Boys, you can find me at Simone Voice on Instagram and TikTok.
We'll see you tomorrow and we'll miss you in between.