Kia Jarmon works at the intersections of community, culture, crisis, and communication, guiding leaders, organizations, and systems on a pathway of improvement. Over the past 16 years, central to Jarmon’s work is studying and sharing how people are impacted by leadership decisions. In her everyday role Jarmon wears many hats: she leads boutique communications and community engagement consultancy, MEPR Agency; she is also founder and visionary for the Nonprofit Equity Collaborative; and she serves as philanthropy advisor of Give Black, Give Back the first effort from the Black Philanthropy Initiative in Middle Tennessee.
Through the lens of equity and inclusion, Jarmon partners with high capacity leaders – in nonprofit, government, and the C-suite - on mission-driven, high impact initiatives to drive organization, community, or system changes. Specifically, Kia has led and partnered on city and statewide efforts to address industries that are historically under developed in minoritized communities like affordable housing, water conservation, food insecurity, transit, health access, mental health, youth violence, child abuse prevention, elder law, historic preservation, and green space, to list a few.
In addition to working on large scale projects, Jarmon leads two pilot projects aimed at capacity building while closing the awareness, resource, and access gap between philanthropists and nonprofits led by people of color in an effort to design a more racially equitable process. Her mission is to foster an ecosystem of hope, change, and trust that pushes society to see Black people as more than recipients of support but rather as leaders in the 5 “t’s” of philanthropy - time, talent, treasure, truth and testimony. Those projects are The Black Philanthropy Initiative of Middle TN and the Nonprofit Equity Collaborative.
With a heart for and mentorship, Jarmon believes her greatest calling is to serve other people. She mentors dozens of women informally, and also takes great joy in graduating more than 20 young women from a formal mentoring and internship program, the Mentorship Project, for aspiring communications professionals. In addition to time she gives money to a variety of small, “on the ground” nonprofits, and to small businesses through an Innovation Fund she launched.
Known as ‘kiss with a fist’, Jarmon is a highly sought-after facilitator, panelist, trainer, and keynote speaker. She brings an infectious, candidly caring energy to human-centered sessions on collective impact, capacity building, community engagement, diversity, equity, and inclusion, implicit bias, anti-racism, philanthropy, and being a woman founder.
As a result of Jarmon’s commitment to the community and communications industry, she has been recognized by the 100 Black Women of Nashville with the Susan Short Jones Emerging Leader award, the Minority Business Center as the Minority Business of the Year, the Middle Tennessee Diversity Forum as the “Woman to Watch”, and the Nashville Business Journal’s “Top Forty Under 40” and “Women of Influence”, among others. She has also been recognized by her alma mater Belmont University as one of the Top 100 entrepreneurs (2021 & 2023).
In collaboration with her professional pursuits, Jarmon serves as the Vice-Chair of the Metropolitan Beer Permit board, and is Co-Founder for Give Black, Give Black, an initiative with The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee. She was also formerly appointed to the Mayor’s Affordable Housing Task Force where she is Chair of the Creation subcommittee, served as Communications Chair for the Mayor’s Council on the State of Women, the Nashville Farmers’ Market board, as a Tennessean Advisory Member, and neighborhood leadership organization, Neighbor to Neighbor.
AWARD WINNING BUSINESS OWNER
Because of her work, Jarmon has won some incredible awards. While the awards are appreciated, her mission is to use the platform these awards provide to enhance representation among students of color, particularly Black students and young professionals.
