Cultivating growth, empowering change, and building futures.
Let’s talk about how we can support your mission or empower your community.
Our Mission is to create safe and inclusive workplaces for diverse individuals to achieve a common goal.
Safe Places Coaching & Development helps small businesses, nonprofits, and youth-serving organizations align their intention with their impact by offering strategic planning, funding readiness, capacity building, leadership, and workforce development services that prioritize safety, sustainability, and emotional wellbeing.
We envision a better world
where workplaces, especially in community-serving sectors, are intentional, trauma-informed, and aligned with their mission to heal and empower. We believe a safe workplace is only sustainable when the people within it are equipped, supported, and valued.
What We Offer
Our work is organized into two core divisions designed to create impact from the inside out. Division 1: Organizational Growth & Infrastructure supports mission-driven organizations in building sustainable systems, securing funding, and aligning operations with purpose. Division 2: Workforce Empowerment & Readiness equips youth and young adults with the tools, support, and real-world experience they need to thrive in today’s workforce. Together, these divisions drive lasting change across communities and organizations.
Organizational Growth & Infrastructure
We help organizations align their mission with their operations so they can scale sustainably. From grant writing to HR systems, we lay the foundation for long-term impact.
Workforce Empowerment & Readiness
We partner with churches, schools, and community groups to deliver workforce development programs for youth and young adults (ages 16+). Our flagship program, S.T.E.P. Forward, provides life skills, career readiness, and paid job shadowing.
Our Founder's "Why"
Raised on the South Side of Chicago by a single mother who was frequently laid off from unsafe or unsupported work environments, founder Jada Smith experienced the deep emotional and economic toll of workplace instability from an early age. Her personal journey shaped a vision for Safe Places: to disrupt the cycle of harm in organizations and ensure that leadership, systems, and services are intentional, supportive, and sustainable. Safe Places was created to ensure that people who come to serve or be served leave lighter, not heavier.
Abundant Life Missionary Baptist Church, December 2024
This assessment stretched us in the best way. We’ve developed a new mindset about how we operate as an organization. If this is what Safe Places is designed to do, then you’ve truly created something transformative. The process helped us connect the dots we thought were already in place—only to realize they weren’t. Thank you for helping us come together as an organization. This change will empower us to make a greater impact in the blighted community we serve.
Youth Violence Intervention Through Sports, December 2024
For two years, I looked for someone to help me get my organization funded—no one could do it. Then I met Jada. She didn’t just help; she did everything she said she would. She took my vision, built the plan, wrote the grant, and helped me secure nearly $1 million in funding. Nobody else had a clue. Without her, we wouldn’t have a dime. She got it done—and that’s what matters.
