News

Brick by brick: How used LEGOs are making innovation more tangible for KC kids in need

By Tommy Felts / March 31, 2025

Solopreneur Rhonda Jolyean Hale believes that all children deserve access to play — no matter their circumstances. As the Kansas City ambassador for the Pass the Bricks initiative, she’s working to build that reality by giving new life to donated LEGO bricks. “We take gently used LEGO bricks — not the stuff the dog chews…

Read More >

Novel Capital teams with Crux KC to offer growth-focused marketing to early-stage tech companies 

By Tommy Felts / March 31, 2025

An exclusive partnership between two Kansas City-based innovators is expected to help remove a traditional financial hurdle to business growth, said Ethan Whitehill, president and chief strategy officer for the KC Chamber-lauded marketing firm Crux KC. The collaboration between Crux and Overland Park-headquartered capital provider Novel Capital is expected to offer B2B SaaS and tech…

Read More >

Neighborhood smart cans help Kansas Citians save the planet from their kitchens

By Tommy Felts / March 28, 2025

Newly introduced composting technology is already turning new ground in Kansas City, Kristan Chamberlain said, with more solar-powered compost cans arriving later this spring across the metro’s urban landscape. Her social venture, KC Can Compost, installed three of the devices in October — free to use for KCMO residents wanting to deposit their soil-making food…

Read More >

Voodoo Volleyball bounces back in OP: Father-daughter duo doubles as new venture’s setters

By Tommy Felts / March 28, 2025

Quinn Austin put several sports to the test as a preteen — racing from basketball practice to softball to volleyball. But she latched on to just one. “Volleyball. It was my sport. Everyone was having a good time,” she said. “We just loved the cheers — a cheer when we got a hit, a cheer…

Read More >

Black farmers are losing ground in the fight to feed their communities, advocates say

By Tommy Felts / March 27, 2025

More than a century of systemic land dispossession and discriminatory practices has left Black farmers with less than 0.6 percent of U.S. farmland — less than a third of the 16 million acres they operated in 1910, according to local urban farming advocates.  They gathered Tuesday at Independence Boulevard Christian Church to confront this history…

Read More >