We had the opportunity to talk with Brandi Keeler, who started the initiative Toast2U, which focuses on the empowerment of women and girls in Detroit. She discusses why she is invested in this type work and what it means for her to be doing this in her hometown.

Lexus Killingsworth: You’ve got two awesome initiatives that focus on the empowerment of women and girls. Could you tell me a little bit more about them?

Brandi Keeler: I started Toast2U—I guess it’s been two years now. I originally started with a group of friends as a space of recognition. I have all these amazing women in my life and I wasn’t spending enough intentional time celebrating them and their victories. So I gathered a group of friends to announce what was going on in their lives and we would end with a toast with champagne or sparkling juice. After that first one, someone was like, “Ok, when is the next one? This is a great thing that you’re starting.” I hadn’t realized I was starting a thing! So I did another one the next month and people brought friends. Then it really started to grow and, with the growth of the space, there’s been more intentionality put into what’s happening in that space. I started to do some of the coaching work that I already had been doing outside of Toast2U—doing personal development exercises, or Expånd Sessions, as I call them.

LK: What types of milestones do you celebrate?

BK: Often we’re so hard on ourselves as women; we don’t take the time to celebrate, honor, and acknowledge where we are in life; or we’re thinking we need to get to the next milestone in order to be valid, or worthy, or whatever. Yes, we can celebrate if you get a raise or, you know, if something great happened in your career. But we can also celebrate that you took the time to paint your toenails this month! Or you made it through a month of depression and you’re still here. We celebrate a wide array of things. One of my favorite Toasts was a woman celebrating that she literally just stayed alive for the month and that she left the house to come to Toast. There was a mother whose doctor had told her she wasn’t gonna be able to breastfeed her daughter. Within the first month of her daughter being alive, she succeeded in breastfeeding, so we celebrated that. That’s the type of stuff I try to get women in the habit of celebrating.  

LK: What have the reactions been so far?

BK: It’s funny because the audience has shifted and the reaction is different based on the age range and experiences of the people who are attending. So I started off with folks that were my friends, so people in a similar age range to me, and I think my little cousin and my grandmother were there too. And, since, I’ve had Toasts where the majority of the women were over 50 or 60,  looking for things to celebrate in their lives, and they’re like “I did all the things I wanted to do in my life!” I would say for the older women, many see this as a way to impart wisdom on other folks at the event. For folks who are my age, it’s a mood booster for them. There’s always at least somebody who comes in thinking they don’t have anything to celebrate and says, “I’m glad you worked with me to find something that I can acknowledge about myself.” And I’ve had really young ones, from five years old to high school age. It’s just fun to see young women or women-identified people standing in pride and it’s not their birthday or graduation—they might say, “I’m glad I was nice to my friends” or whatever it is that they find to celebrate. So, there’s a mixed range of reactions, but they’re all positive.

LK: How does Toast2U fit into your overall vision for Expånd?

BK: Expånd is my larger picture. While Toast2U is really an event series that I do, Expånd is coaching and group facilitation work and is not gender specific or age specific. Typically, though, I am working with young adults or women. There’s a space in Ferndale, here in Michigan, called the SheHive, and I do a lot of Expånd programming there. To celebrate the New Year, for example, we did a half-day seminar called SheSoul, where you would choose your word for the year, envision your ideal day, set three- or five-year goals, and create a vision board, that type of stuff. With Expånd, I’ve also worked with school groups and organizations like Future Project that works in high schools helping students to identify their purpose and their passion and then using that to build programming for their school or community.

LK: You were born and raised in Detroit.  What does it mean to you to be doing the work that you do in the city you’ve lived your whole life?

BK: It’s funny because, you know, you wanna be cultured, you wanna experience and live in different places so you can bring that wisdom, that knowledge, back to your home base. But I keep finding that every time I’m gonna leave I say, “Wait, this is happening right now?!?” I’ve been in Detroit my whole life and I’ve been in downtown Detroit since 2006, and there’s this huge shift in the development that’s happening and the creative scene in Detroit is growing. There are a lot of conversations about gentrification and types of change in Detroit. I feel like leaving Detroit right now would be like leaving Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance. There’s just so many opportunities and there’s so many places you can have a say. I feel like I would be remiss as a person who’s from this place to not be an active participant in the development or change that’s happening right now.

I feel like I am helping individuals, especially young people, know that they are enough and then stand in their enoughness to be able to take advantage of opportunities. Typically youth in my city are told they not going anywhere, but I know how important the people who invested in me and my growth and my path were, and I have to reinvest that energy.

LK: One more, kind of silly question. Which woman or femme identified person would you most want to have dinner with, and what would you discuss?

BK: Oh Lord! There are so many and mine probably sound cliche cause I’m like Erykah Badu, Janelle Monae, Oprah. Lisa Nichols is someone who I would love to sit down with. She is a personal growth visionary, a life coach, and motivational speaker, who’s also a mother. She talks a lot about her relationship with her son and I would talk to her about being successful in multiple areas of life because a lot of times women that I talk to think about life in terms of sacrifice. I would just ask her to give me some tips on balance.  This is a hard question. Do I have to choose one? Can I just host a Toast? {laughs}