This week, join 97.9 The Hill’s Ali Evans for a conversation with Tiffany Griffin, owner of Bright Black , a family-owned candle company based out of Durham.
Bright Black uses “scent as a medium and candles as a platform for sharing positive narratives about Blackness.” Their candles are named for places they want to honor, including Salvador, Paris, Kingston and, of course, Durham! Bright Black was recently featured on Beyoncé’s curated list of Black Owned Businesses all over the country. Yes, you read that correctly… Beyoncé.
Tiffany said she “played in a lot of professional sandboxes” before she and her husband Dariel created Bright Black. After being trained as a social psychologist and completing her postdoctoral at UNC, Tiffany moved to Washington, D.C. to apply her education to a policy setting, and eventually worked in the executive branch for President Barack Obama’s Feed the Future Initiative.
After becoming a wife and a mother, Tiffany said she “started really thinking about the type of control that I wanted over my day to day and the contributions that I wanted to make.” While they were first dating, Tiffany and Dariel discussed starting a candle company that would honor hip-hop music because as they were falling in love, they wanted to share the messages of love in hip-hop too.
In their original business plan for Bright Black, Tiffany set out to use candles and scent as a way to discuss and celebrate Blackness and initiate conversations that can be tense to have. “The mission is just as important as the product,” she said.
To hear more about self-care, ‘lighting a flame under your career,’ and why great minds don’t always think alike, listen to Ali and Tiffany’s full conversation below — an extended version of what aired on 97.9 The Hill! Check back next Wednesday for another introduction to some of the most amazing women in our community!
Join 97.9 The Hill’s Ali Evans every Wednesday for another edition of “Woman Crush Wednesday,” a three-minute weekly recurring segment made possible byMosaic Comprehensive Carethat highlights motivated women and their impact both in our community and beyond. If you’d like to nominate someone to be featured on WCW, email ali@wchl.com.
