From Entrepreneurship to Community Organizing

Fern Gillespie

Promoting Sickle Cell Awareness Month every September is personal for Kenesha Traynham-Cooper, the well-known Brooklyn community advocate and business entrepreneur.
Sickle Cell awareness is part of her family mission. In 2015, she founded The Sharon and Stephen Traynham Creative Arts Fund for Sickle Cell Disease. “Sharon Traynham was my mother and Stephen Traynham was my uncle.

They both died from complications of Sickle Cell disease. I lost my mother when I was 18 and was raised by my grandmother,” she told Our Time Press. “The Sharon and Stephen Traynham Creative Arts Fund for Sickle Cell Disease was created as a pain management mechanism to help support patients who living with sickle cell disease to measure pain better. Whether it’s art, massage, yoga, its about managing their pain and making sure that they are relaxed.

It’s about managing their stress level because that’s a major contributor to a lot of our people going into the crisis. I have placed that program under the Sickle Cell Thalassemia Patients Network in Brooklyn.”

Entrepreneurship, civic engagement and community organizing are her passions. Some of her many titles include District Leader for Assembly District 56 in Brooklyn, a Vice Chair for the New York State Democratic Party and the founder of the nonprofit 4 Future Generations, a MWBE certified company with the City of New York and specializes in helping individuals live a better life and teaches youth entrepreneurship.

She serves in several areas such as business development and management, professional development and work readiness, community development, and health and wellness She’s held community leadership roles with Lion’s International, The Chris Owens Foundation, 79th Precinct Community NYCHA Resident Associations and NAACP-NYCHA Branch

Born and raised in Bedford Stuyvesant, she graduated with her Bachelor of Psychology from Medgar Evers College and received her Master of Public Administration from Metropolitan College of New York. Traynham- Cooper is also a minister and chaplain with a Masters of Divinity from Nyack College. She also is a Chaplain instructor with Healing Hearts Chaplaincy under Chief Apostle Dr. Kim Best.

In August, she was appointed as the first Manager of External Affairs for One Brooklyn Health Hospital. It’s her dream job. “I was born at Interfaith Hospital and my grandmother used to be an ICU registered nurse there.

My life has definitely gone full circle,” she said. “I love community and I’m able to do that in this job. It’s also connected to my purpose, which is to educate and to help people, especially in the community. To have a personal relationship with people and connecting them to resources necessary to have better quality of life.”

For many years, she worked as the Mayor’s Action Plan Engagement Coordinator and Program Manager for Neighborhood Safety, working in NYCHA community outreach. The job had originally began as a part of her divinity degree research project and transitioned into a career. “I live in Tompkins Houses in Bed Stuy and I saw the disparities.

I witnessed it as well as I experienced it. If I was poor, I didn’t even know it, because of my mother and my grandmother. I even went to a private school,” she said. “But I have friends that that died when they were young in their teens and 20s. I see pissy elevators and people needing food even though I was able to bring fresh produce every month with a program. My purpose is to help people and save people living in NYCHA.”

At NYCHA, she would mentor on job development, entrepreneurship and civics. “I love community organizing. That’s why I teach that now,” she said. “Because people don’t realize that what they love to do in the community is actually an industry. There’s a place for them.”
“That’s how I live my life now. I go into a place, I analyze and strategize and then I implement,” she said. “I ask people in the neighborhood what they want. It is important for me to understand and learn people around me.”

Politics and community outreach became a part of her life at age nine, when she was introduced to Brooklyn’s Congressman Ed Towns. “I watched elected officials. That’s how I got into politics. I saw my godmother and my mother working with Congressman Ed Towns and his desire for service to his community,” she said. “Because when people put you in position, you don’t just show up when it’s time to run for office. You do things for them that can aid a need. And that’s where I saw I learned that from him when I was nine years old.”

Working with youth is one of her fortes. She’s a former owner of a Brooklyn day care center and was inspired by her daughter Amira-Dior Traynham-Artis to launch a career from a corporate consultant to entrepreneur. When Amira was three years-old, she cut up papers into small pieces and created business cards and started passing them out in daycare.

“When Amira did that, it just clicked in my head that she was a sponge and she was watching everything I was doing. Her brain just clicked on figuring out how to do it. That’s the attitude I had on figuring out how to do it,” she said. “That is what prompted me to start 4 Future Generations Entrepreneurship and Leadership Foundation and teaching entrepreneurship to children as young as three years old.” Amira has created a line of shoes and sneakers that were seen at this year’s New York Fashion Week.

“I believe that everyone has a purpose. My idea was not only to make money, but, also have my passion,” she said. “I believe that everyone has dreams. But the job is executing your passion.”
“That’s how I live my life now. I go into a place, I analyze and strategize and then I implement. I ask people in the neighborhood what they want.” It is important for me to understand and learn people around me.”

In honor of Sickle Cell Awareness Month, Kenesha Traynham-Cooper has organized the One Brooklyn Hospital’s Ballers 4 Sickle Cell Basketball Tournament on September 27 at MS 935 at 76 Dinsmore Place in Brooklyn. For more information contact www.onebrooklynhealth.org