Innovating Wellness with Tracy Skelly

Join Erin Cox and Scott Knox on this episode of Lead and Live Well as they interview Tracy Skelly, the dynamic founder of the Little Cocoa Bean Company. Tracy discusses her unique career trajectory, from her early days in theater to her impactful work in education and food access. She also delves into the creation of her business, emphasizing the significance of cultural cuisine and nutritious food for children. Tune in for an engaging conversation filled with inspiration, practical advice, and Tracy's powerful reflections on intentionality and legacy.

Hosted by Erin Cox and M. Scott Knox
Edited and Produced by Stephanie Cohen

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to the Lead and Live Well Podcast
• 0:35 Meet Tracy Skelly: Founder of Little Cocoa Bean Company
• 1:39 Tracy's Career Journey: From Theater to Education
• 4:58 Teach for America and Charter School Experience
• 8:24 Transition to Tech and Amazon
• 10:40 Founding Little Cocoa Bean Company
• 24:25 The Third Place Concept and Community Impact
• 29:10 Advice and Reflections on Entrepreneurship

Transcript

Welcome to the Lead and Live Well podcast. My name is Erin Cox, and I'm thrilled to be here with my co host Scott Knox on the Lead and Live Well podcast. We sit down with leaders in the social impact world to learn about their leadership journeys. 

We talk about their strengths and passions, the transitions they have made in their career, And how they have crafted their own paths to leadership.

Our goal is to highlight a diverse array of leaders and journeys, so that our listeners learn from relatable and compelling examples of what it means to lead and live well.

Scott: So today we have a really special guest, and I'm excited to share that Tracy Skelly is joining us. As folks may know, if you don't, Tracy is the founder of the Little Cocoa Bean Company, a wellness brand dedicated to increasing consumption of nutritious food.

She is a mother, educator, and passionate food justice advocate. With a Master of Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, 20 years to working in education technology and food access striving to make a positive impact on communities and children's health. Welcome Tracy.

Tracy: Thank you, Scott. Thanks, Erin. Thanks for having me.

Erin: so excited. I'm going to jump right in because I think your background is so incredibly interesting and you're, as Scott highlighted in your bio, you're, you've been on a really interesting journey and have been successful in a number of sectors, including as an entrepreneur. And so I'm itchy to get there, but we have some foundation to lay before we do that.

So, I'd love to have you just ground us in your career journey. One of the things that we'd love to hear from our guests is about the choices you made along your career trajectory, because some of them might have felt like they were intentional choices, and some of them may have come about through chance, and we find that juxtaposition to be really interesting.

So tell us a little bit about how you got to where you are. Hang

Tracy: Sure. my career hasn't been linear. There haven't been these like clear steps from, one place to the next. I've made some pretty big leaps from sector to sector, role to role. And I think it probably started Back in college. I was a theater studies major going to the University of Evansville in Evansville, Indiana.

My high school in L. A. was a feeder. I fell into and fell in love with the theater and thought, I would go on and and who knows, write scripts, study theater history, teach, work at the local improv . I don't know what sort of vision I had for the future, but it involved something creative.

And I was in my junior year of college when I was required to complete, like electives and I signed up for something now I couldn't even tell you what the name of the course is, but education related. And I think I was studying like philosophies on education, something like that.

And part of that course required that we do a practicum at a local school in Evansville. Well, Evansville is a really interesting Southwest city because they call themselves a major metropolitan city, but with a population of about, I think a hundred thousand people. So small still major I guess is as far as the southwest or so goes.

But still like a small city compared to Los Angeles, where I'd come from. And the city is divided literally by train tracks. So there is one side of the train tracks and then there's the other. And so my school assignment was at an elementary school in a pretty underserved community.

And I fell in love with the students, with the administration, with just wrapping arms around these young people in the community and doing whatever I could to not only teach them and guide them, but also create moments of joy for them. So remember, Leading kind of a step class after school for some of the kids who wanted to learn stepping and tutoring kids one on one.

And then of course, like doing whatever my daily duties were as part of this practice, I'm like copying worksheets, et cetera. And that's what sparked my love for education. And so from there I caught the bug and wanted to continue working in urban communities to serve kids and to support them and to give them access to a really phenomenal education that I had been afforded and given access to.

So I ended up joining Teach for America post college. And this was back in 2006. So Katrina had just happened. And pretty much if you would put Texas anywhere on your list of preferences, and I think it was like city number three, Houston was like number three or four on my list of preferences.

They were sending you to Houston because they had gotten so many kids from Louisiana. post Katrina. I taught for a few years in Texas, moved back to California where I'm from, and I taught there as well for a year before moving to Massachusetts for graduate school. I'd never been to Massachusetts before didn't know much about it but went to the Graduate School of Education to HGSE really got excited about charters and the work that charters were doing to really close the education gap.

And I was just on fire to like, Either support an existing, exciting, cutting edge charter management organization or to start my own. And that is what led me to the Edward Brooke Charter School. And so that's where I met Scott and we were newbies at Brooke together and we both just shared this insatiable kind of desire to make positive change in our community. Starting with the students and staff at Brooke. So we'd be driving to work before the sun would rise in the sky. I mean, I'm, I'm talking like, 5 a. m. 

Scott: there were early days. 

Tracy: But keep in mind, we were getting in the car at 5 a. m., but the school's only 10 minutes, maybe max from where we were. So we were like clocking in, like getting to school, getting to work in the early morning hours because it is that important to us to do our jobs well. And we knew how important. It was like our work was to teachers being able to focus on teaching and learning so that students could focus on learning and learn in their classrooms.

And I really enjoyed that work. I, it filled me in so many ways. But charters are tough. Charters are tough because it's almost like working in medicine. The demands are so high, and it almost never stops. Like, I can remember having 105 fever, and coming to work, To lay out all the, like, morning activities for the kids.

Like, I shouldn't even have been there. Like, and now we're on the other side of COVID. We know, like, stay home if you have an infectious disease, which I clearly did. But at the time, what seems so unreasonable to me now was just, like, very reasonable. And that is the culture in high performing charter schools.

That is just very much the culture. But what happens is You know, people that do what Scott and I did eventually burn out, especially when you start to think about that next phase of your life where you're hoping to have family and you're hoping to see a future where like, can I do this for 10 years?

Could I do this for 15 years? So I knew that I was looking to transition and I got an introduction to someone who was starting a tech startup and was looking for operational support, which was what I was doing at Edward Brooke, but I didn't mention that already. I was on the op side not the academic side of the school.

And I was excited about the technology. It was tech to support English language learners. And I was like, yeah I think this should exist in the world. And I want to do my part to see it, grow and and for students all over the country to have access to it. And so I joined that organization when it was very tiny, I think I was employee number seven. And what, and it was my first experience working at a true startup. And so what I quickly learned was that while I had been hired for an operations role, nothing was ever defined. Nothing was ever written down. And then like you quickly realize when you work for a startup that like, even though you may have this title or you might've come in thinking you were going to do this work, you do anything the company means you to do.

And so I did a little bit of operations. I did a little bit of help desk. I helped our design team a little bit. I did training. We PD for the people who would buy our products. And then ultimately worked my way into sales. And it was simply because I knew the product backwards forward from the beginning to where it had been.

And so sales started to become less about the car salesman, with the slick hair and trying to get over on you and more about you being a subject matter or product matter expert and being able to communicate the value to the person on the other end of the line.

Why do you need it? And frankly, if you don't need it, then the conversation can be cut short because I don't see a fit. And that's just establishing trust and also being just. And informed party in a conversation and so had a very successful sales career there and decided to continue in tech sales. um, Was recruited by Amazon to join their Amazon business team, which was fairly new at the time they were maybe two years old to grow that business line at Amazon.

And I loved it, but then COVID happened and when COVID happened and I had a baby, so two things happened. I had a baby in 2018, COVID happened in 2020 and two things spurred on kind of the, or catalyzed this movement to where I am now. Food security had been a concern across the country. Really, frankly, before COVID, but COVID exacerbated the issues around food security.

And at the time, Amazon was part of a pilot, a nationwide pilot, to test out online grocery ordering for SNAP recipients. I thought the work was super interesting. And one day in, back in 2019, reached out to the woman who was leading that initiative just to talk about her work and get to know her.

I wasn't interested in leaving my existing role, but I was really interested in learning more about what she was doing. And that was encouraged in the Amazon, just like like exploring and learning about other people's work. Christina Herrin, she still goes down as like, Just one of the most amazing bosses one could have, like such a visionary, someone who just really believes in this work, but she was gracious enough to grant me time to talk about her work.

It was really interesting, and we kept in touch, but there was no, like, pursuit of a job. She wasn't looking for me or anyone else in a role but we stayed in touch, and then when COVID happened, her team, Not surprisingly, it got ramped up very quickly. So they needed to go from pilot to like full fledged.

Everyone across the country needs to have access to online grocery ordering to stay safe, to stay in their homes, including snap recipients. And she reached back out and that was all she wrote. I joined this food access team. Our community access team was just me and another woman, Nancy Dalton, also an amazing leader, amazing visionary we took this across the country, worked with policy makers, local leaders nonprofits to ensure people had access to grocery, to ensure people had access to food when they needed food safely to be delivered to their homes.

So that was my career before Cocoa Bean.

Erin: We definitely want to get into Cocoa Bean. But before we do, I think I heard chance bookend that's that story like the chance of being assigned to a required practicum in a school and in a community that you just fell in love with. And yay for experiential learning.

Yay, we love that. And and then at the other end of this part of your journey, at least, this kind of chance of being, staying in touch, and, not that we would want to redo COVID, it did result in some interesting transformations for businesses and communities some of which I think had positive have had positive lingering effects that you talked about, and you were a key part of building.

And then I think I heard a whole lot In the middle, like choosing to go to HGSE, choosing to go to a charter school like Brooke, like that. It sounded like those were a little bit more deliberate as you were building your your trajectory.

And, but that was my interpretation of your beautifully told story. how did you experience it all?

Tracy: I definitely think there was choice in there but I think our lives are so interesting because, one different move and so much, changes, right? The whole story changes. And so. I think much is chanced. I think think the story of our lives is written and we're on the journey.

And not to say that we're like aimlessly like wandering, but I do think I don't know. It's exciting because I do think there's choice in it, but I think that along the way, there are people who are meant to be part of your life, like your life and influence you in certain ways. Like Scott was meant to be part of my life and tell me, what I You know, about the startup or, it's just for me I'm excited about the journey.

I, I think there is some choice in it. I am an active participant in my life, but I don't, I think there's a little bit of futility and trying to control all of the things that happen or to even just like believing that I can control all those little things that are happening. Oh

Erin: Well said, for sure. have one more quick follow up on this section and then we'll get to Comparing the culture at a tech startup to a high performing charter. Like, you touched upon it a little bit, but I'd just love to hear your high level thoughts. Like, same, different. They both sounded pretty intense.

Tracy: Yeah, but yes and no, like I would say I look back on the charter years and I think to myself the work was incredibly meaningful, but like, how do people survive? Like, how do we create a system that people can survive in? Like even during COVID when there was all the like, teachers don't want to work.

I can't believe them and masks and all the things like I can't help. But. Empathize with like, of course the parents, I'm a parent, but once you know what happens inside of those walls, like you can't help but think like, it's an impossible job the way it's set up here in America. So I would say the culture of like, we were doing incredibly meaningful work, but the actual like roles were just so impossible.

And I think at Amazon at a large the work felt less, particularly before my food access work, it felt a little less meaningful. But it felt much more sustainable. It felt like I didn't have to build as much. I have to nurture it and improve it. And so I could see myself staying longer, but then I had the itch to, to actually contribute in the world, right?

Hence the, like, move to the food access team and the desire to build Cocoa Bean. Like I had room left in my brain and my spirit, like I had, Like physical energy available to put into something else. And I don't think I would have been able to create this business anywhere else.

Erin: That's a really important point about like, it brings up for me this question of what gets lost for people who give so much or give all of themselves to one thing. What gets lost in terms of their potential to contribute in other ways, whether that be within your family, within your community, within your career, within your self care.

I think that's a really powerful point.

Tracy: And so true, Erin, like it's like a justice issue too, for me, because I do think that you know how there's a big push for diversity and education, diversity in the workforce, because all of the data shows the more diverse the workforce is, the better your results, the more diverse the academic institution, the better your results.

So like we know diversity works, but for people who are income constrained, or who are parenting alone, or who are just like dealing with all of these adverse. adverse conditions that make it impossible to for them to have the time to like Breathe and think clearly and like exercise creativity and like exist because they were given gifts too.

But yeah, you need the brain space. You need some quiet time. You need that room to go do something about it. And so I think we're until we fix some of our systemic issues. The world will never get to see. What is truly possible because so many in our country and our population doesn't don't have the opportunity to do what they were made to do. 

Thank you 

Erin: for that. That's a really really powerful point. 

Scott: this is so good, Tracy. I'm going to shift gears a little bit. And you know, because you and I had the benefit of being colleagues, actually, like Erin and I I have a little insight to this, but I'm curious how you would answer the question, what would you say you're exceptionally good at?

And as part of that sharing how did you get good at it? So the what and the how.

Tracy: Yeah. So I think I'm exceptionally good at envisioning something. Like having a vision for something and then creating the roadmap from the big vision to like the creation of the thing, like the manifestation of that thing, that vision. I can't do all the parts. Depending on what it is, right?

I'm not an expert in all the things. And so lots of times I have to fill in people, but I'm really good at seeing the thing and then building the plan. And in terms of how you get good at it, I'm a kid of immigrants, right? Like my parents didn't have they weren't formally educated. They came here with very little. And we didn't have much growing up, but what we had was a whole lot of hustle. Like, and a whole lot of hustle and very few excuses.

So for my parents, it's like, you have so much more. Their perspective was like, even if you have less than your peers, and we had a lot less than our peers, you have so much more than the children from where we come from and from what we have. So therefore, there are no excuses. Like do something with what you have been given because you have an immense amount of privilege, even when it doesn't feel like it.

And so it makes you scrappy. It makes you a problem solver. It makes you less of an excuse maker. And even if you get down into the dumps and you feel the field sometimes, and I still encourage my kids to feel the field, that's okay, but then get out of it.

Scott: And that like, being a former colleague, you know, as well as a friend, seeing that ability to translate vision into action and breaking down something that's complex into something that's solvable is, I think, is really what has led to, you know, as your friend looking in from the outside, the success of Little Cocoa Bean.

I mean, you, You took an idea of something and operationalized it, materialized it and continue to expand and grow it.

Tracy: It's been a journey, that is for sure, but There, yeah, there were the early days of just like a simple seed of an idea and now we've got a whole baby tree. But it's still a baby, but it's there and it exists and we have a lot more work to do, but it's been fun.

Erin: Can you tell us or tell the audience just a little bit more about what the company does? What the initial spark was for you to turn in that direction?

Tracy: Sure. So I had been focused on food as you, heard. I had a baby I was really focused on food at home, nutrition in particular, but nutrition and, but through the lens of like cultural cuisine, because I had this baby. And everything changed for me, everything, like, like thinking about I, what I knew I definitely wanted to do was be really intentional about my parenting.

So I need to be intentional about what I feed her. I need to be intentional about the messages that she's receiving, the artwork in her home, the people who are around her. And so it was no different when I started to think about her first foods. I wanted to introduce her to things that were nutritious, but things that also represented our culture.

And what I realized very quickly is that I can't buy that. Like it doesn't, it's not in my grocery store. I can't pick up a cold press cassava and plantain puree, though I would have loved to have had access to that at the time. And so in order to provide the thing, I realized I needed to build the thing.

And in building it, which just meant like making my own stuff, filling up my freezer, experimenting with recipes, experimenting with cooking temps, etc. I realized that other people wanted it. And so that was just the seedling. And then I decided to, I'm just going to establish my LLC. It was a side hustle at the time.

I never really envisioned, branching out and like doing it full time. I just wanted to be able to, right, make sure that for tax purposes, like I was reporting income from this area and like everything was legitimate. And it took on a life of its own. And I think if you continue to listen to people and that's the thing, this company, when I look back from where we started to where we are now.

It's a very different business. The ethos is still the same. We still are hyper focused on wellness during early childhood and we center cultural cuisine, but how that looks, how we do the work is so different than what I thought it would be. I thought that it would be jars of baby food and pouches. What it is now is that we have created what is called are you all familiar with the third place concept? 

Howard Schultz kind of popularized this with Starbucks, but the concept predated him. But the idea is that people want gathering social community spaces that aren't home and work. So home is first space, work is your second, your third place is this other space where you can meet, you can have quiet time, you can gather as a community there, you can get work done, whatever it is, but it's your sort of comfortable, connected community space that isn't your home or work. And so for us, we opened A cafe that is very much like your beloved neighborhood cafe, but it has a play space inside. Our meals are nutritious, but made for any humans.

And we're trying to work on creating a third place for caregivers, a place where you can gather, you can bring your friends with or without children, but you know that there is a place that you can come to where your child will be fed nutritious food, your child will get to try Depending on what's on our menu, food from another part of the world, and they can just be themselves.

So if they don't want to sit next to you quietly and eat, they don't have to. If they need to get up and play in between bites of food, they can do that. Everything is wipe clean where we are. We have extra diapers, we have wipes, we play kid friendly music. We don't rush you to order, like, take your time, get your kids settled, and then if you want to come back or wave us down, we have babysitters, quote, babysitters, in the play area to help mind children if you have a meeting, or if you are sitting and you want to talk to your spouse about lifting your home or whatever, these are things that we've just heard in this space, but we are we are building Third Place for Parents, 

Erin: Love tthat concept so much. And I think it's so powerful on so many levels. I am, I'm going to admit guilty mom moment, I have a 16 year old now, but when he was four, we would regularly go for ice cream because it was the quietest 40 minutes

Tracy: hmm. Mm 

Erin: my week, like that is how I created a third space for myself. He

was happy. He had ice cream. It was everywhere, but he was his mouth entertained. And I could just sit and think for a little while, and I adore him. He was delayed in his speech and then he was making up for it the rest of his life. So, grateful for that, but also grateful for his love of chocolate ice cream. 

Your approach is much better. Love the wellness connection and the different cuisines.

Tracy: But we don't, but 

it's like less, it's not from like, um, it's also not from like a judgy standpoint, right? Like, We have ice cream on our menu, at least during the warm months, but we just make a better version. So what we say is like, we're not about perfect eating, but this is more about making slightly better choices along the way.

So swapping out, Let's say a product with fillers or gums, et cetera, for a product that is much more natural. Or you have ice cream that is, made with real fruit mixed in or fruit based, right? Like sometimes we serve up a sorbet to the kids and they think it's like, the same stuff they might get at J. P. Licks. And it is in fact just like a puree of watermelon and peaches and frozen and then blend it up again with a little bit of agave. And here you have it, something that resembles and tastes amazing, but it resembles their sorbet. So it's just a slightly better version because we still want parents to get those 40 minutes.

You deserve it. And frankly, the world is worse off full circle if you don't get it.

Erin: And even I say it in jest, but there were times when I had that guilty mom moment where it's like, this is where I'm getting my break. And I purposely go to a ice cream shop that didn't have great wifi. Cause I was like, no, I actually don't want to look at my phone.

I just want to like sit and enjoy his joy and enjoy a little bit of quiet or chatter from others. And we can just enjoy this moment together. But but yeah, I appreciate all that. 

Scott: Tracy as we wind down, I'm really curious to ask you what some of the best advice you've ever received or given. 

Tracy: Uh,

Yea so the advice isn't a direct quote from any particular person. It is kind of pieces of things that have been said or things that have happened around me from wiser individuals that I have put into advice that I often like to share with other entrepreneurs or young people who seek me out for advice.

And it is that I start with this story about my grandfather, who was the, he was a honeybee farmer, and he was, as far as we know in our family, the first entrepreneur in the family. He I may have said he's my, sorry great grandfather and he lives in Panama, and he raised honeybees, and he bottled honey.

I, of course, never met him. But he, Still to this day, takes up space in all of our family stories and anytime we visit Panama, everyone talks about Turo, his name was Arthur Arturo is what he was called Turo's honey. And it is a family story that gets passed down from generation to generation. We all talk about his honey.

He was never rich, but it was so meaningful in our family to have someone who did something who created something that we all still talk about it and this photo is in my house Right now as we speak. I never met this man. He never made millions. There's not a cent There's not a dime that we can trace back to Turo's Honey. But he did something and so his legacy lives on Well beyond his existence here and so sometimes when I talk to people who are seeking out advice about whether or not to do the thing, I think you have to be wise about the choices you make when you're doing this thing, right?

Make them strategically. Don't, sell your home or quit your job without having an actual plan, but don't make the mistake. Of thinking that you can leave a legacy, that you can leave a mark, that you can be a name on people's lips without making a choice, right? Without actually doing something that people should talk about.

And so, like, do something. Do something that your great grandchildren will be talking about. And frankly, it probably won't necessarily be oh, he works this, high profile job and made a lot of money. Usually it's impact related. Like usually it's about how you made a mark on others or how you changed the world or how you changed the community.

And so do the thing. Yeah.

Scott: I, Tracy I love that. I love, and I love that Arturo was a honeybee keeper. And that idea of the importance of just make a choice, make a choice.

Erin: Well, I thought we got our money's worth with the it's okay to fail the skills, but then get out of it Which I'm gonna write down And in order to provide the thing I needed to build the thing. Which it's a statement a lot of people you wouldn't they wouldn't say the second half like in order and the thing doesn't exist So the thing can't be provided, but you built it and my sense is you're only getting started.

So tell us how people can be in touch with you, can learn more about little Cocoa Bean, et cetera.

Tracy: So, we have a website, www. littlecocoabeanco. com or you can follow us on social channels. Our handle and pretty much all of them is at little cocoa and that's C O C O A. Bean, B E A N C O.

Erin: Amazing.

Scott: Tracy, this has been such a gift. We know we have to let you go because you're the recipient of a grant from the city of Boston. And we are thrilled to be able to share this conversation with our listeners. And hopefully there'll be a part two in the future.

Tracy: Sounds good. Thank you for having me. I'm honored and look forward to hearing the final recording.

Erin: thank you, Tracy.

Scott: All right. Bye. Talk soon.

Tracy: Bye

Erin: So much wisdom in everything that she said. That's all I'm going to say. I took so many different pages of notes. we scratched the surface, but it's like, it's clear to me that she is always in like, like teaching mentoring mode just comes naturally to her, whatever she's doing.

Scott: Totally, And, I think like Tracy's is exceptionally reflective.

And I experienced her as like constantly like absorbing and taking in what's around her um, those she's with. And then, she's able to kind of share that with others.

Erin: Yeah. Yeah. So the reflect back and like. And in an actionable way in a way that you can really hear it and move on it. I can see why she's been such a, such an asset to startups, to growing charters and to her own entrepreneurial endeavors. Wow. That was an awesome conversation. I'm so excited to share it with our group.