The Origin
Built by someone who just wanted to find the right people.
It started with the journey so many 20-somethings go through — trying to find themselves, trying on all these different hats, wondering if it's worth it to go back to school, imagining starting a business. As people around me headed off in different directions, I felt a sense of urgency. Just do the next thing so you don't fall behind. I also felt warning bells telling me to hold off on school, that not all knowledge needed a degree to go with it, and that maybe, just maybe, I could build something of my own organically.
The rush and hustle of the world wanted me to keep pushing without questioning. I preferred a much more organic and slow approach — I wanted to meet people, build a genuine network based on real connection. I craved intellectual intimacy, real skills. But to do that, I needed to find likeminded individuals. I could think of no better way than through a book club. Not an ordinary book club — we'd be working in units, examining profound topics more deeply, engaging with the content by living it. Journaling alongside each book, reflecting at the end. Naturally, though, the people I met began wanting to just get together and create. So we expanded to workshops, connecting with local artists.
Meanwhile, at my day job at the Family Center on Deafness in St. Pete, I was planning field trips and workshops for kids in the Deaf community. I was spending weeks cold-emailing people, networking at markets and community events, scouring the internet — trying to track down individuals with real skills who'd be willing to share them. Not organizations. People. A Florida farmer. Authors. Ceramicists. Foragers. Seamstresses. I kept wishing they all existed somewhere in one place, on a map, findable. So I decided to build it for myself — and if others loved it too, even better.
The problem I kept running into was invisibility. The algorithm rewards the already-noticed — the creators with followings, the teachers with great SEO. But some of the most knowledgeable people I've ever met don't have a TikTok presence. They have a backyard dye pot and thirty years of practice. They want to run workshops but don't know where to start, don't have the connections yet, and can't afford to spend hours gaming a platform to find their first student. That gap felt wrong to me, and fixable.
So Mavens is two things that belong together: a directory where skilled local people are discoverable by name, and receive the profits of their teaching rather than sharing it with a studio — and a community of people who believe that the best education is hands-on, local, and human. We started as a Women's Reading Circle — a small group of women who wanted to think deeply, read honestly, and grow alongside each other. That's still the very heart of it. But we also show up for our broader community: volunteering, creating together, giving back. The platform just makes it possible for more people to find each other.
"A Maven is someone who accumulates knowledge. The word, in Yiddish, means 'one who understands.' What they want, more than anything, is to tell you about it."
— Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point
