Amnoni L. Myers

Amnoni L. Myers is the Founder of You Are the Prize LLC., a service-based company that offers speaking, training and consulting to child welfare agencies, educational institutions and foster parents who work with young people who have experienced trauma.

Amnoni became a ward of the state at birth, and through her experiences, in foster care, she became committed to helping others understand the importance of their voice and experiences so that they can break the cycle of poverty.  Growing up in the foster care system was a challenging experience for her, so she knew early on that she didn’t want any other young person to experience what she did. She felt compelled to write the book: You Are the Prize: Seeing Yourself Beyond the Imperfections of Your Trauma that talked about these challenges to highlight the experiences she faced to help people working with children understand the impacts of trauma. With the success of the book, she turned it into a brand to create awareness, educational advocacy, consulting, speaking and training that would help address these issues with the goal of mitigating trauma by using trauma-informed practices in the care of children.

• Shayna Michel, Marketing Transformation Manager at Accenture

• Funding
• Designed product/service

Amnoni previously worked with the U.S. Children’s Bureau as a child welfare policy consultant as well as interning on both Capitol Hill and The White House Domestic Policy Council where her policy recommendations on improving the system were picked up by a Senator and turned into draft legislation. Amnoni has received numerous awards for the contributions she has made to child welfare nationwide including being a recipient of The Re-envisioning Foster Care Champion Award, The National Urban Fellows Ron Gonzalez Memorial Fund Leadership Award and the Philip J. And The Rockstar of the Year Award. She has been featured on The Root, Huffington Post, Chronicle of Social Change and The White House.

Even with all of her achievements and success, Amnoni has found it challenging not having enough financial capital to get her business off the ground. Some entrepreneurs are fortunate to have financial support or a safety net within their families. Because that is something she hasn’t had in her family, she's had to get creative. One of the ways she's done this is through joining the Sky’s the Limit platform to seek out mentors.

"Mentors are a form of social capital, and I am realizing that an essential element to building a business is being able to rely on people where you may lack experience," said Amnoni.

She was so happy to have benefited from the experience and expertise of Shayna Michel through connecting on the Sky's the Limit platform. Shayna is a Marketing Transformation Manager at Accenture based in Montreal. She has about 8 years of experience in Communications & Brand, Digital Marketing & Content Strategy as well as Event Planning and Project Management. She's led numerous engagements, driving growth for clients and her expertise lies in developing data-driven content and brand strategies to lead meaningful, consumer-driven experiences, grounded in business needs and objectives, that drive growth. Prior to joining Accenture, she worked at Airbnb where she designed bespoke travel experiences for its VIP/VVIP guests and managed and developed relationships with partners and vendors across the world, working together to offer its clients the best possible travel experiences. 

To get more funding, she worked with Shayna on a pitch deck. Building off of her 8 years of experience in Communications & Brand and her expertise in developing data-driven content, Shayna was able to support Amnoni as they developed a pitch deck together to get her ready to bring in funding. Shayna even brought in some extra help from a team of experts!

In addition to Shayna, Amnoni has been fortunate to have worked with several Sky's the Limit mentors. She said, "Each mentor has given me more confidence by affirming the work I am doing. They each have encouraged me to seek after clients who are willing to pay for my services. Because I've stayed firm on my prices, I've seen that I have gained about three clients since."

Achieving the business milestones of funding and designing products made a significant impact on her business. Acquiring funding allowed her to move her business forward giving her the ability to purchase more items for her business and preparing her for more clients. Designing products also helped her increase her revenue stream by offering a variety of products.

She stays motivated by remembering her “WHY” knowing that her book is being used to help make a difference in the lives of young people and that helps her stay grounded in the work.

Visit Amnoni's profile on skysthelimit.org