Work

February of 2020, I opened the doors to Maker on Main, on Main Street and that location. As the first grocery store really in all of Central Mass, especially in Worcester, that supported local food and local makers. The name change came from a couple things. One, it was imperative that when I changed from Lettuce Be Local to Maker to Main, because the vision and the, and the mission was changing slightly in the sense that I wasn't just supporting local food makers, but the goal was to support all makers of local things. So, if the guy who's making dog treats from spent grain from craft breweries in Massachusetts wants to sell the product in the store, well, that fits. That should definitely go in there. Or the woman that makes candles, because that's the new direction that she took her career, great, let's support you too and have a space for that as well. So, it was a maker of all things that were—and small businesses and to support and to incubate even more local businesses to move forward, all in one space within 1700 square feet. Ultimately, Maker to Main was not just bringing makers to Main Street. It was also to bring makers to mainstream, to give them an identity, to project their story and their voice so that as an independent little tiny business, they could be heard in a larger and to really highlight them.

What I think we have to work on more as women is lifting each other up…make each other highlight each other’s accomplishments and treat each other as our potential, not our shortcomings, to really build each other up.

So that was the basis for The Good Citizenship Project, which is now morphed into something entirely different, except for that it's based on the idea that, everybody, everybody, doesn't matter who you are, what your diagnosis is, what culture, ethnicity, anything, we all need meaning and purpose. Every single one of us needs a reason to get up in the morning, and for The Good Citizenship that means going and helping other people by helping out in farms and barns. So, parents with people that have autism will contact me. I will go pick them up at their house and we'll bring them to local farms and barns, and I teach them how to do all the chores. Through that, they get to interact with all the animals that are there. Sometimes it’s horses, sometimes it's llamas and peacocks, sometimes it's cows and we do all the chores and I mean all the chores, cleaning up the manure, moving the hay, fixing fences, learning how to trim the goats' hooves. And everything that goes in between that. So, they get these marketable skills that they need to be able to go out into the world and be positive contributing members of the community. And the barn owners get much needed help...So, everybody wins and I am there to make sure that if there's someone confused, they don't know what to do or maybe there's a better way to do that chore, I teach them. I teach them how to do it and I base that on my own autism and obvious signs of autism throughout the family and all the years working in the field.....I'll never be rich doing this financially, but I will always be rich in spirit. Always. Because I know that what I'm doing helps other people and I'm teaching others to be helpful and kind and involved in community. At the very basis of it just giving back and doing good where you can, and that's enough for me.

Kellie Hamilton is a Worcester, Massachusetts resident who was born in 1991. She is originally from East Brookfield, Massachusetts. She attended David Prouty High School in Spencer, Massachusetts. She grew up with her younger sister, mother, and father. After graduating from high school in 2010, she attended Worcester State University where she earned a degree in nursing. She is currently working as a registered nurse at UMASS [University of Massachusetts] Memorial Medical Center, a hospital where her mother and father previously worked. After reading a book on holistic nutrition, she became fascinated by the subject. As time passed, individuals started coming to her for advice about holistic nutrition, and she started a Facebook page, A Better Path to Wellness. In the early months of 2021 Kellie decided it was time to grow her passion and make it a business. Hard work and dedication fueled her efforts to become an entrepreneur. Kellie is an extremely passionate individual. She is an inspiration to many women around the country and continues to work toward leaving her own legacy.

I work at Bowditch and Dewey, which is a 120-year-old law firm, and one of my partners, he is like one of the greatest litigators of all time. He just took me under his wing, he takes all of us under his wing. So just having the ability to have access to one of the most well-respected lawyers in the city really helps you to gain invitations to rooms you wouldn't necessarily be invited in. And then once you get there, you prove yourself, and suddenly you're invited to do lots of things. You know? So I think mentorship from the legal community in terms of Bowditch and Dewey. But then there are women who run other companies that I just sort of met along the way who helped me get into other rooms that Mike Angelini is not going to get into, certain rooms like Linda Cavaioli from the YWCA used to. It's like the mentors have been people who were, I think, excited to see a Worcester kid grow up and stay in Worcester and succeed. I've been lucky in that way, too, where people just offered help, and I quickly knew it was okay to ask for help or to reach out to people and make connections. But it's been in the professional world, definitely, that I've gotten my most mentorship and my best friendships are other women who don't necessarily work at the same firm as me or are even lawyers, but they're in positions of—I don't want to say power—they're in high level positions, and they struggle with sort of the same things I do, where it's tiring to be the only chick in the room and kind of young still. It used to be really hard for me. I'd be 32 years old, looking around, there’s nobody under the age of 60, all white dudes. And it's nice to have people who've already done it, or people who are doing it in other spaces to just talk to throughout the time. I don't know. I think I would have gone crazy by now, 14 years later, because there's not that many women. All of my lawsuits, it's very few that I have women as opposing counsel. So, it's nice to have women outside of my every—like in my real interactions. I'd argue that I'm one of the few women litigators, business litigators, at the whole firm. Everybody has their niches, but I'm like the traditional—when you picture what I do, you picture a 50-year-old white man. So, it's nice to have women who, whether they sit in healthcare or in nonprofits, are the equivalent.  They expect me to be a 50-year-old white guy, and here I am.