Uncrowned Community Builders

UPDATE: 2012 Ms. Stafford, has been a lifelong heath advocate and in 2011 became the author of "From Fast Foods to Slow Foods: How to Wake Up Laughing". She founded the Natural Living Institute, an organization the helps people help themselves to excellent health. She is an active advocate for holistic approaches to health. She is a health coach and event producer.

Yvonne Stafford was born in Harlem, USA. Although she grew up in a real estate family, her educational background and first career was theatre. She holds a Masters Degree from New York University where she majored is the multi-disciplinary arts and theatre. She received a Ford Foundation Grant that allowed her to study voice production and movement, for a full year under, Kristin Linkleter, noted teacher from London. It was while she was teaching Communications at Hunter College; CUNY that she realized her heart was in the community, not the university. So she has spend the next thirty years as a wife, mother, event planner, store owner, writer, professional development coach, commercial real estate broker - successful and happy - making money, having fun, giving back.

Her entrepreneurial spirit led her to open a gift shop on Broadway at 105th Street in NYC, which she operated until she had to leave to make room for the famed Birdland Restaurant and Jazz Club. She is a founder of the Cultural Enrichment Gallery where she was able to promote artists and cultural events for many years. The Cultural Enrichment Gallery provided years of experience in organizing and hosting events, seminars, workshops, and parties. As owner of Something Different Event Planning she organized workshops and cultural travel to Cuba, Brazil, Canada, and Dominican Republic. She has organized major functions for not-for-profits such as the Harlem Business Alliance and the Urban League.

Ms. Stafford studied real estate at New York University. After being trained at some of the leading brokerage houses downtown, in 1983, she established Stafford International Realty which today boasts of being a good thing in a small package. SIR is one of the leading commercial real estate brokerage companies in Harlem. Ms. Stafford, affectionately called the real estate doctor, by many of the small business owners she has advised along the way, has taught real estate at City College and Brooklyn College.

Her relationship though real estate with many emerging and established business led her to become aware of and motivated to do something about the failure rate and lack of holistic support of African American businesses in not only in the Harlem community where she lives and works, but nationwide. This concern became so intense with her that she has become a community activist for the cause of small business. She embarked on a crash study of the business incubator industry that culminated in her visit and one on one total immersion in the methodology taught by C. Dean Kring, Executive Director and Founder of the first certified for- profit business incubator in the nation. Out of this experience came the vision and the reality of The Cooperative Business Association (TCB) Harlem (An association of independent businesses, organizations and professionals formed for purposes of mutual help and protection and to assist each other in market expansion, Branch and the Entrepreneurial Development Group, a for profit business incubator).

Ms Stafford is the founder of The Entrepreneurial Development Group (EDG), a professional development incubator that provides the resources and methodology to accelerate business growth of client entrepreneurs, businesses, institutions and career advancement individuals. Ms. Stafford is Chair and manager The Cooperative Business Association- Harlem Branch (TCBHarlem), which serves as a catalyst for community empowerment, economic development and social change. She currently serves on the Boards of The Harlem Business Alliance, The Greater Harlem Real Estate Board, Birth Fathers Support Network, and Sugar Hill Communications Institute.

Ms. Stafford's unique and varied background earned her the title extended by the Net Work Journal as one of the 25 most influential women in the tri-state area. She has four children all of whom are college graduates; one of which earned his Doctorate in Chemistry from UCLA in 2003 at age 27.