I am a sewist, a novice spinner and weaver, and a new farmer. I am a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister.
I believe we can talk across lines.
I am many things, and so are you.
I think that makes us friends.
SownWell is my heart’s work. Hello, I’m Kristen Buchanan.
While I was running my tech startup, I started to realize something very important: I was not building a business that was working as hard for me as I was for it.
And suddenly, that realization changed everything. After years of personal counseling and expensive business coaching, it finally took giving birth to my son to help me realize that I could choose to be both happy and successful. I didn’t have to give up the values I had in my personal life to run a good business. It was just going to take elbow grease and a vision to realign my work with my life - not the other way around. In addition, I was becoming increasingly drawn towards my lifelong goal of farming, building a large garden, and working with fiber and textiles.
SownWell is the outcome of over two decades of business creation and growth. It is also the embodiment of all of my interests and values: I have chosen not to be someone I’m not just to gain business. I have chosen to combine what I love with what I want to do in the world, and that is to offer my community the same joy and fulfillment I receive from cultivating a beautiful, often messy, life.
I have loved making something for someone for a long, long time.
My very first “business” was illicitly selling holy cards I’d printed off my parent’s computer, carefully gluing the prayer side and the picture side before I laminated them with an old turn-crank laminator. I eventually graduated to all sorts of childhood commerce endeavors, including selling my art at local galleries in high school and designing jewelry and traveling to fairs to sell it.
During college I helped local art galleries sell their work and I worked in the Career Planning office helping soon-to-graduate students prepare their resumes and interview skills. After studying Museum Education and Art History in college, I moved from North Carolina to Oregon. My first real job was at an economic development nonprofit, designing learning programs for marginalized entrepreneurs. In the city, that often meant people for whom English wasn’t their first language, or who’d had trouble getting support from traditional institutions like big banks. In that role, I worked with hundreds of business owners through teaching classes and coaching. I moved on to become a sales person for a website development company, and quickly started my own consultancy.
My first real business, Edify Education Design, developed learning programs (like manager development and conflict skills) and employee onboarding programs for businesses of all shapes and sizes, both locally and around the globe. Next, I took my onboarding skills and developed a software startup. I raised over $2 million in venture capital funding from investors across the United States. At our height, we had 11 employees and 130+ companies using Edify’s innovative onboarding tool. In mid 2022, I realized the company wasn’t going to make money in the current tech environment, and that we would struggle to raise more venture capital. Over the next few months, I laid off employees and helped them find new jobs and eventually closed my startup. In my post-startup world, I continue to consult and help businesses and government agencies develop and grow.