UCLA Education PhD student Diondraya Taylor is the founder of Mindset + Milestones. Serving communities of women has always been her passion and she hopes to be able to do that in more ways than one throughout her life. The information she has learned and the experiences of her own inspired her to write a workbook to teach young women about entrepreneurship and how the entrepreneurial mindset can be an asset in any aspect of life. As a company, Mindset + Milestones furthers this mission each day!

Diondraya got her first exposure to entrepreneurship during her time at UCLA while getting her B.S. in psychobiology, and eventually picked up a minor in entrepreneurship purely out of interest in just how it’s a vehicle for pushing innovation. At the same time, she also began to delve deeper into issues of gender equity and understood education to be a big part of the problem and the solution. So, she decided to ask more questions and is currently working on a PhD in education to do exactly that. As Diondraya worked in and fell in love with the startup space, she recognized entrepreneurship as an amazing tool to encourage innovation, goal setting, and boldness in girls at a time when gender inequity is still a reality.

When she created Mindset + Milestones, her initial vision was to develop a self-guided workbook for girls to explore entrepreneurship. What she quickly realized was that what girls needed wasn’t simply more resources, but rather a safe space, supported by trusted mentors, where they could experience mindset shifts and see for themselves how remarkably possible their own ideas are.