Welcome!! My name is Anasa Troutman and I am the founder and CEO of Eloveate, a Nashville based production company that produces high quality, high impact media that opens hearts and minds to the power of love! That’s why Eloveate is spelled this way, because love is in the center of everything we do...cheesy, I know, but true!
I have spent the last 20 years as a writer, producer, cultural organizer and music industry executive. Many people know me for my work and my friendship with Grammy award winning singer/songwriter, India.Arie and the truth is that my work with her is a big part of how i got to this moment.
When we were young, and India’s first single, “Video” came out, after a performance, a women came up to me and asked me to thank India for changing the way her daughter saw herself. I was
bl
own away.
See, when i was 23, i started a record label because i had a notion that music could
change people. I wasn’t sure how to
do it but i knew how music had changed me and i wanted to find a way to bottle that power, to direct it and be intentional about how we transformed people and into what.
That woman coming up to me and telling me that her daugher loved and respected herself more because of music that I was connected to emboldened me to keep going and working harder to find the formula.
Finally, I had proof that music could change the world.
Fast forward 20 years and my view of my work has expanded. I know now that it's not just music that changes people but its storytelling in all forms. I have built a career, a company and a life all around my continued belief in love and in my belief in storytelling as the vehicle for that love to be shared and to break the chains of all that keeps us separated from ourselves and from each other.
I’m always working to innovate, experimenting with new and exciting ways to tell stories that I think are important to tell but recently, I gave birth to an idea that really spoke to me in a way nothing else i have ever done has. Its called SheStories.
Last year, i was approached by several young women looking for mentors. They were artists, storytellers, aspiring managers, producers, all looking for women that had already been down the road they were stepping onto.
I called some friends, women with experience in the industry, and invited them to spend some time with these young women. My vision was simple, time together to build community and find ways to connect and support each other...just for a few hours...and then we would see.
The stories that were shared in the circle that day, some of triumph and some of defeat, spoke so powerfully to me, and I wasn’t the only one.
We all needed that space. I needed it and I didn’t even know I needed it. We all needed to feel safe, to feel supported, to get an amen, a course correction, a laugh, some encouragement...we all just needed to feel heard.
Many of us left that day feeling transformed and I left that day knowing that i needed to spend time to making space for women to speak, thus SheStories was born.
Shestories is a platform for stories told by and about women that have the power to touch and transform us all. These stories cultivate deep personal exploration that compels women to express love for themselves, their work, their lives and their communities while being candid about the challenges, pitfalls and hardships they face personally and those we to face in our communities and our world.
SheStories tells the story of women and exalts them as champions of transformation. It gives women the freedom to honor their stories, to be bold, vulnerable, inspiring, and transform that inspiration into real healing and action for social equity.
Our team had the honor of launching SheStories in January at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. We were able to gather powerful women and also speak to women from all walks of life about who they are and their vision for their lives and for our country.
Now, more than ever, it’s critical that we continue this work. We have amazing plans for SheStories for 2017 and beyond. In a few weeks we will launch our MySheStories storytelling circles pilot which will create a way for everyday woman to create their own SheStories in community with other women!
This summer, we launch the SheStories podcast, in the fall, we will see the mySheStories and SheStories live come alive and before the year is over we will start production on the first SheStories short film!
We can’t do this without you!! We need your support to do this work. Please make a donation and share this information with your friends, family and colleagues and ask them for their support as well.
Thank you so much for your support!
anasa.
$15,000 will allow us to launch She Stories, but we have so much more we'd like to do!
Check out our Stretch Goals!
