FoundHERS Suite Celebrates 1-Year Anniversary

LaTanya Orr is the owner of the FoundHERS Suite, a coworking space in Beverly. Photo provided by LaTanya Orr.
LaTanya Orr is the owner of the FoundHERS Suite, a coworking space in Beverly. Photo provided by LaTanya Orr.

FoundHERS Suite Celebrates 1-Year Anniversary

By Tia Carol Jones

LaTanya Orr opened the FoundHERS Suite in Beverly because she wanted it to be a space for women entrepreneurs to work and collaborate. A year later, the coworking space, which is located at 1808-10 W. 103rd St. is celebrating its one-year anniversary and is providing a space for the community to interact and engage.

In the year since it opened, Orr and the FoundHERS Suite have been engaging with the community. Orr is part of the Morgan Park-Beverly Hills Planning Association, and the FoundHERS Suite has been hosting events for the community, as well as serving as the site for tenants to host public and private events.

Coming into the space, Orr said, the intention was for it to amplify women entrepreneurship. What she found was that people in the community, including men, were interested in renting out suites. One of the men who wanted to rent out a suite in the beginning is still a tenant, still loves being there and is still supportive. It let Orr know that the FoundHERS Suite was something that was needed in the community.

Orr said the suite tenants found out about the space through the newspaper and had been looking for a coworking space and they liked that it was in the community. She said being able to serve the need in the community with the space was a big part of why she chose the location, and it was a goal of hers. She wanted to be in the city and provide a resource for the people in the community.

“To be able to provide that resource, to be able to provide this hub and not just for women. It is a multipurpose space, we do business, we do ministry, we do vending opportunities, we do community outreach in the space. We’re definitely serving the needs that people have,” she said.

She said having a dream to come true and to see it flourish has been very rewarding. She said hearing feedback from people about the events taking place in the space makes her excited about hosting future events.

Along with celebrating the one-year anniversary of the FoundHERS Suite, Orr also released a book, FoundHER: Finding Me. It was something she was working on while simultaneously opening the FoundHERS Suite. She said the book is about her finding herself in the process of starting a new chapter opening the coworking space.

“The book is sort of a manifesto, my story, the backstory to my why,” she said. “This one is about finding myself, being on the other side of 50, really finding myself in this season of my life.”

Orr said she wants people to read the book to know they can also find themselves. She said the book has a spiritual context and she wants it to be a resource for people to know that it’s never too late to begin again.

For more information about the FoundHERS Suite, visit www.thefoundherssuite.com.


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