News from Yvelette Stines

Dear Friends and Colleagues:

I hope that each of you are doing well and staying on track with your goals and chosen path. The last two months have been wonderful, stressful, busy and entertaining to say the least.

One of the strongest lessons that I had to relearn is how to let go and stop worrying about what I can't control. I feel that I was tested through many people and experiences. During this process I can say that the lesson is finally learned and understood. The universe will repeat situations with different faces and places until we fully get it. We just have to sit still, listen to our intuition and be quiet for a minute.

This month I have interviewed two women who started their own publications. They had a vision and saw the need of a new voice in the industry. Cynthia Good is the CEO and Editor of PINK Magazine and Claire Sulmers is the founder and Editor of The Fashion Bomb.

Happy Spring and I will see you in June for the big one year celebration of Yvelette's Monthly Muse!

xo,

Yvelette

Leading by Example

Cynthia Good is a woman who is happy to have a successful career and family life. She is also ecstatic that she has the opportunity to influence women to live their best life everyday. In 2005 she launched PINK Magazine, which is a global community of women in pursuit of a beautiful career and life. Now the community has grown to a daily newsletter, Little Pink Book, an online community www.pinkmagazine.com and a national award winning event series.

The motivation behind the magazine was "a wide open niche. No one was offering a national women's business magazine, event series and online community so we had to fill a need and address issues that keep women from having every opportunity to pursue their dreams and take ownership of their career and life," she says.

Good is proud that PINK has succeeded and is optimistic about the future of the publication. "We almost hit the five year mark. Most woman-owned companies and private companies in general don't make it that long. Best of all we have had the honor of empowering millions of women." Her advice for future entrepreneurs, "get business savvy if the numbers don't work you won't have full control of your own destiny."

For more information visit www.pinkmagazine.com.

Fashion Forward

Claire Sulmers

Claire Sulmers has a passion for fashion. She worked full time at Real Simple Magazine as a fashion journalist and interned at Upscale, New York and Newsweek Magazine. The Harvard Graduate who now lives in Paris, France freelance writes for Essence, AOL Black Voices and Heart & Soul as well as maintains her daily blog The Fashion Bomb.

Starting the site in August 2006, the Brooklyn born writer saw, "as a member of the magazine industry and a consumer of magazines, I have been well aware of the lack of diversity in Media. I created The Fashion Bomb to highlight the style and contributions of women of color in the fashion industry," she says. Since its inception her blog has grown from hundreds to thousands of readers per day and been featured in publications such as Teen Vogue, New York Post, Uptown and Upscale Magazine.

As a writer and editor Sulmers feels that her blog has "helped her meet a lot of people in the industry and also become more of a brand." She is also proud that The Fashion Bomb is the only blog in its genre to meld fashion and race in an intelligent way. In the future, she would like "to write a book and introduce Fashion Bomb TV. I envision a show on BET," she says.

For more information visit www.fashionbombdaily.com.