We are excited to introduce our newest blog installment of what we are calling INSPIRE!
So many people are doing so many wonderful, creative and inspiring things around us. We’ve sent Meredith Raffel, The Arts Alliance Executive Director and Founder , out into the hither lands to search high and low for these all-inspiring people who move us to new heights! We can’t wait to read about all of the fascinating individuals she encounters and writes about.
Creativity isn’t limited to a brush on a canvas. It’s what moves you. It’s the thing that gives back. It’s the thing that you grow. INSPIRED will take us into the spaces, living rooms and offices of those people who are creatively inspiring us each and every day. They quietly navigate through their missions and dreams to achieve things large and small.
Meet Rachel DesRochers, Chief Gratitude Officer of The Gratitude Collective:
She’s enchanting. With her doe eyes, wide smile and big laugh, she’s just that kind of person you want to hug when you first meet her, so you do…and then you’re hooked on her.
Rachel DesRochers has found her own kind of success that is smothered in goodness. She’s grown her business with her warmth, charm and good old fashioned kindness.
This rare bird sits in her office in Newport, KY, that shares the philosophy of her business, “my office is your office.” It doubles as the coffee makery, storage and a place to sit down and chat…anytime.
The word “gratitude” is her mantra. It follows her around like her shadow. In a way, gratitude holds her up and steadies her. She’s managing her family, multiple businesses, staff members all with this sense of grateful goodness and grace.
The Gratitude Collective is the concept that Rachel has nurtured, grown and stirred in her heart and soul for the past six years. It’s evolved and continues to do so, as she hopes to bring people together and bridge them through food. Generosity and Gratefulness guide her, hence her signature branch of The Gratitude Collective is called Grateful Grahams, vegan, handmade graham crackers, which she founded in 2010.
The Gratitude Collective includes brilliant ideas and business concepts that are designed to build a business and to grow and nurture a community, that include, but are not limited to the Incubator, Hatchery, Coop which are the three for rent kitchens that provide our local food truck vendors and just plain folk the place to create and prepare their food. The Good People Festival helps to support Rachel’ mission, and cooking classes are up and coming and in the works.
Her wheels are always turning. Her mission is always growing.
Rachel has a “attitude about gratitude” and it shows. She says that food is love and that gratitude and grace have a spiritual component that she wants to share. She loves that those who work and play in her kitchens are comrades, and they support each other’s efforts.
Her recipe for success and creative spirit are as follows:
Stop and be grateful.
Gratitude equals mistakes without guilt.
We all have good days and bad days. Embrace them all.
Be humble.
Gratitude always gives a clearer perspective.
Thank you, Rachel DesRochers for a lovely afternoon.
With gratitude,
Meredith Raffel
Who inspires you? Share them with us at info@the-arts-alliance.org.
