Our Founder
THE VISIONARY BEHIND EACH + EVERY COLLECTIVE
Janis Middleton
“I am not building a shared workspace, I am cultivating a modern sanctuary of collaborative energy.”
Janis Middleton has spent the last 20+ years in advertising questioning the traditional binaries of brand and audience strategy — building brand trust through loyalty and community, and examining how professional spaces shape the output and the work the world sees.
Combining her background in cultural curation with an unwavering belief in community architecture, she founded each + every collective as an answer to professional isolation: a space for connection and growth from the inside out.
The Genesis
How It All Began
In 2016, Janis stepped into a role, and a purpose, that would shape everything that followed. She began cultivating her workplace into a space of inclusion and belonging, rooted in a deep belief that different experiences and perspectives aren’t just welcome, but essential to how we connect as people.
In 2024, that belief became a call. Janis reached out to women of color in Atlanta working across advertising, marketing, PR, and communications. At the inaugural event, more than 80 women of color showed up. What started as a gathering became a community: First, Not Only Network, built on Mary Church Terrell’s charge to “lift as we climb.”
Today, each + every collective is where all of it meets — Janis’s beliefs, her work, her purpose. In one place, built for all to grow.
The Genesis
FROM BELIEF TO BEING
What I believe doesn’t stay mine for long. It becomes the shape of the space, the tone of the room, the way people are welcomed in. It’s the seed and each + every collective is what grows from it. Our community doesn’t just witness that belief, they get to stand in the shade of it, live inside it, build their own next chapter within it.
I believe it first. Then I build it. Then our community gets to live it.
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