Kemberly Deane celebrated the birthday of her Pilates studio by gifting other women wellness leaders. Deane, the founder of Kinfolk Pilates and Wellness, also discovered a welcome partner from an unlikely source: Grammy-nominated rapper Olu, also known as Johnny Venus of the EARTHGANG rap duo.
After Olu came across Deane’s studio on Instagram, the pair collaborated on a wellness event this past Sunday in honor of International Women’s Day, providing Atlanta-based entrepreneurs grants and gifts to thank them for their dedication to the wellness space.
While the paths of Deane and Olu collided thanks to social media, the groundwork was laid a couple of years prior. In 2023, Olu had taken his wellness practice to another level, training for hundreds of hours in Bali, Indonesia, to become a yoga teacher. He then started Compxss, a company empowering other people on their wellness journeys.
Then the universe did its thing.
“I saw her studio and her page, and I liked the energy,” Olu shares with ESSENCE, referring to Deane’s Atlanta-based studio. “I saw that it was Black woman-owned, and I was, like, ‘tight, I’ve never done Pilates before.'”
Olu dropped in for a session, and the on-screen energy of Deane’s studio translated in real life. After the pair spoke, Olu had an idea to celebrate women during the weekend of International Women’s Day. March 8 also happened to be the one-year anniversary of Deane’s studio. Even for yoga and Pilates practitioners, you couldn’t ask for better alignment.
Deane’s path to being a wellness entrepreneur similarly emerged from a career shift. The former tech professional wanted to regain control of her body after her first pregnancy, which occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. “It was my first time experiencing my body change so drastically,” shares the mother of three.
“I feel like a lot of women, after pregnancy, lose sight of pouring into themselves because they have this newborn that we have to continue to pour into. I needed something to fill my cup and regain control of what was happening to my body.”
Deane started doing Pilates in between weight training sessions and fell in love. She formed a wellness practice in 2023, through which she teaches nearly a dozen professional athletes who incorporate Pilates into their physical training. In 2024, she opened her physical studio in the Westside of Atlanta.
With Deane’s success, she wanted to pay it forward. “I’ve had female entrepreneurs support me along the way, and I want to do the same for other women and [give them] a community and a village. They have another entrepreneur that wants to see them win.”
This is especially impactful for women, many of whom are marginalized in the wellness space.
“Just as a baseline, as females, we’re underrepresented. Then when we get into [racial] diversity and the lack thereof, that’s another layer,” Deane notes. “So we wanted to make sure that we brought out a really diverse audience,” she adds.
For Olu, supporting women comes from seeing how Black women shoulder the role of being healers and nurturers. “That responsibility falls so heavily on women. Half the women on my mother’s side were nurses, and they enjoy it.”
But he’s also aware of the social expectations that can confine and limit women to those roles. “To say that it’s a woman’s job [exclusively] to nurture society is just not fair. So as men who have resources, we wanted to just pour back into other people’s cups.”
Putting his money where his values are, Olu worked with his Compxss business partner, Kevius Morgan, and connected with the Imperative Fund, an endowment for which he’s a board member, and raised funds for the wellness event. Imperative Fund provided a total of $10,000 to gift the small group of participants. They also secured corporate sponsorships from Nike, The Honey Pot Company, Bala and Luster Products, with Local Greens, an Atlanta-based vegetarian restaurant, supplying a catered lunch.
The intimate wellness day for the select group of women practitioners consisted of a Pilates session that Deane led, a Yoga class from Olu, gift boxes provided by the event’s sponsors, and the monetary grant, which was a surprise to the guests.
The implications of fostering this community aren’t lost on either Deane or Olu. “What I learned from 2020,” Olu begins, referring to the mass, global protests against police violence, “[is] there are a lot of people who want to get involved. But we also need people to not just post. We need to do tangible things in alignment with our value systems, and this was one of those things.”