Merge York
Hosted by: The Grotto Community Center on Thursday, October 2nd, 2025Featured Entrepreneurs
Mieshia Jackson
Founder: Chef Mi and Kids
Chef Mi and Kids works with students primarily ages 8-14 years old in extracurricular development centered around cooking classes—after 6 years of operations, the organization recently officially transitioned to a 501(c)(3) nonprofit to leverage greater donor support for its services.
Challenges: Scaling up the number of students that the organization can serve, potentially by launching new lines of business like Brand Boxes, which can be shipped to students anywhere and don’t have the same in-person constraints around group class sizes.
Tannisha Fuentes
Founder: Your Employment Services & Talent Decode
With well over a decade of experience in workforce development and human resources optimization, Tannisha Fuentes founded Your Employment Services in 2021. The firm specializes in Temp-to-Perm staffing, Contract Employment, Direct Hire Placement, as well as Flat Fee Recruiting for high-volume hiring. Now, Tannisha is building Talent Decode, an AI-powered talent matching platform for enterprise employers and staffing agencies.
Challenges: Balancing a growing and bootstrapped services business, combined with the new startup costs and challenges of building a AI-based product that requires collaboration with additional external stakeholders and development teams.
