The Young Independents

It’s time to celebrate Jacksonville’s Young Independents – the bright, passionate, entrepreneurial up-and-comers who are making an impact in our community. From kicking their careers into high gear and supporting charitable causes to enjoying all the River City has to offer, these emerging leaders are lighting up the local landscape in a big way. Let’s get to know a bit about these young go-getters: what sparks their interest, what touches their hearts and what they love about the city we call home.

---

Brooke Brown

Brooke Brown’s interest in educating people about breast cancer began at an early age.

“When I was really young, my grandmother died of breast cancer,” said Brown, 23.

A Jacksonville native, Brown began volunteering for The Donna Foundation, the nonprofit founded by breast cancer survivor – and now Mayor – Donna Deegan. While still in high school, Brown self-published a fundraising cookbook, collecting recipes from local celebrities and breast cancer survivors. The cookbook went through several printings, raising thousands of dollars to provide financial assistance to women undergoing breast cancer treatment.

“I loved doing the cookbook, because everyone was so eager to help and be involved,” she said. “Cooking and recipes just bring people together, and what better way to raise money for a good cause than by bringing people together?”

Brown also made breast cancer awareness her platform while participating in local pageant programs. In addition to being named Miss River City Outstanding Teen 2018, she was named Jacksonville’s Distinguished Young Woman 2019, a Whataburger Hometown Hero and was also one of 23 students selected for Youth Leadership Jacksonville 2018. In 2019, she was the first recipient of the Florida Times-Union’s new Aspiring EVE Award – a category created with Brown in mind to recognize accomplished teen girls.

After graduating from Christ Church Academy in 2019, Brown attended Jacksonville University, earning both a bachelor’s degree in Economics and Marketing and later an MBA. While attending college, she worked as a hostess at Taverna in San Marco – an experience she credits with teaching her valuable lessons about the business world.

“The restaurant industry is like no other – you learn so many things,” she said. “It teaches you to solve problems on the fly, to think on your feet and you learn so much about customer service by interacting with different personalities.”

Now employed as a case manager with personal injury law firm Nooney & Roberts, Brown is “getting her feet wet” with a goal of pursuing a legal career. When she’s not applying to law schools, she can be found doing Pilates at HiReformance Institute, taking a yoga class at Hot Spot Yoga in San Marco or browsing among the tents at the Riverside Arts Market.

And she continues her passion for breast cancer education and awareness by volunteering on the marketing committee for Pink Ribbon Jax, which raises money to provide free mammograms to those who lack insurance coverage.

“At the time my grandmother died, there weren’t a lot of resources available,” Brown said. “I’m so glad to be alive at a time when we are changing that.”

Angelina Budnik

At 21 years old, Angelina Budnik knows what she wants and isn’t afraid to pursue it.

This ambitious Jacksonville native graduated from high school at age 16, attended college for two years and began working as a medical assistant. But the COVID pandemic prompted her to reevaluate her career choice.

“Things changed a lot in the medical world once COVID started, and I just decided on a whim to go to a nail program because I always had a creative side to me,” Budnik said.

In February of this year, she started her own business – Nails by Angelina – working out of her own studio space in Riverside’s Sola Salon. Budnik says it was easier than she expected.

 “When I initially decided to go out on my own, it was kind of terrifying… but I had a really good support system of friends, family, and all of my clients,” said Budnik, who proudly professes to be a creative extrovert.

“I’ve always wanted to do something in relation with people in my career and I like the creative side to it,” she continued. “I feel like I’m able to make a better connection with my clients, which is really important to me, because I don’t want anything to feel transactional.”

Budnik also paints live portraits at weddings with her sister, Esther, who is a full-time artist. She said it’s a fun side gig that also combines her two passions: art and people.

“I absolutely love meeting new people… and when we work these weddings, we’re typically seeing around 100 new faces,” she said. “So, you come across all sorts of people. It’s a pretty cool environment to be in, and it’s always something slightly different.”

When she’s not working, Budnik is spending time with her large family. In addition to her five brothers and sisters, her parents and a 1-year-old niece all live in Jacksonville. Budnik and her siblings are also first-generation Americans: Their parents immigrated separately to the United States from Belarus and met here in their 20s.

When Budnik and her siblings get together, they love to play a (somewhat) friendly game of pickleball. You’ll find them at Donner Park Pickleball Court in Atlantic Beach or the courts at Blue Cypress Park in Arlington.

Nick Diaz

Nick Diaz has called Jacksonville home for about 18 months and is settling into the First Coast nicely.

He grew up in Tampa, went to school at the University of Central Florida and moved here for work.

“There’s much more of a community feeling in Jacksonville than there is in a lot of the larger cities in Florida,” said Diaz, who likes to explore Riverside and San Marco in his spare time. “There’s a lot of things to do in Jacksonville, but there are also times when it feels almost like a small town – in a good way.”

Diaz works as a quality engineer at Allied Plastics, where he gets to wear many different hats.

“We’re not a huge company, so I’m able to do a lot of different things, which keeps things kind of fresh for me,” he said, adding that his favorite part of the job is seeing a product progress from the initial development stages through to final delivery. “Every day is a new journey.”

While his career occupies much of his time these days, Diaz loves to go home after work and play music. He’s proficient with multiple instruments.

“Music is something that moves me in my free time,” he said. “It’s something I’ve always loved to do since I was a kid.”

He also worked as a disc jockey in college and still takes the occasional DJ gig at a club or private party.

On the weekends, though, you’ll find this self-described outdoorsman on one of Jacksonville’s beaches.

At some point in the future, Diaz said he hopes to pursue a master’s degree. But for now, he’s enjoying all that Jacksonville has to offer.

Gabriela Haddad

Gabriela Haddad – “Gaby” to her friends – has been making charcuterie boards since she was 5 years old.

“My mother is a very bougie lady,” the 27-year-old Jacksonville native joked. “She throws lots of events and loves to host people. And so, every time she would have an event, I would love to help her put all the cheeses and meats and fruits together.”

A trip to Italy as a teenager cemented her passion for creating beautiful gourmet spreads with the finest ingredients – a talent that would ultimately lead to starting her own business, G’s Charcuterie.

But being an entrepreneur wasn’t always the plan, Haddad said. Both of her parents and her brother are physicians. Haddad would accompany her parents on medical mission trips as a younger girl and help serve impoverished communities.

After two years at UNF on the pre-med track, however, Haddad’s passions began to shift. She changed her major to Communication with a focus in Public Relations, and after earning her bachelor’s degree, pursued a master’s in Communication Management with a Business concentration.

In the fall of 2022, she took the plunge and launched her charcuterie business, which offers her a creative outlet.

“My favorite part of the job is seeing an empty table, and then creating a vision of what it can turn into… I love seeing the vision come to life, and then seeing it be devoured,” Haddad said with a laugh.

Haddad strongly believes in supporting local businesses. She sources all of her ingredients from locally owned shops like Grater Goods in Murray Hill and Cline’s Custom Meats in San Marco. She also gives back to the community by donating charcuterie boards and tables for non-profit events.

In addition to being a business owner, she’s also a third-degree Black Belt who taught martial arts classes at Watson Martial Arts in San Marco for nine years. That experience played a significant role in her decision to start her own business.

When she’s not working, you’ll find Haddad walking with her dog, Paul, to the Riverside Arts Market for some shopping and yoga or enjoying a nice meal with her girlfriends at Taverna.

Nicole Hamm

Nicole Hamm is on a mission to make her native Jacksonville a healthier place to live, work and raise a family.

Hamm, 31, is the executive director of Blue Zones Project Jacksonville. The national movement grew out of the 2004 project that identified five communities around the world – including Sardinia, Italy; Ikaria, Greece; Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica; Loma Linda, Calif. and Okinawa, Japan – where the residents enjoyed significantly longer, healthier lives. So long, in fact, that residents there lived to 100 at rates 10 times greater than the United States.

“Baptist Health was the leader in bringing the Blue Zones Project to Jacksonville,” Hamm said, crediting partners such as Brooks Rehabilitation, Community First Credit Union and other local institutions with joining together to bring the health initiative to Jacksonville.

Hamm’s personal journey to leading the local organization began in 2016, when she graduated from Howard University and returned to the First Coast to work in accounting and later sales at Eastern Quality Foods. She soon began seeking opportunities to become involved in the community. In addition to serving as president of the Beaches Rotaract Club, Hamm joined the board of directors for Beaches Emergency Assistance Ministry (BEAM). She also became involved in the Jacksonville Urban League Young Professionals, was a member of the 2021 class of the Jax Chamber Hightower Emerging Leaders Fellowship and the 2022 class of Leadership Jacksonville. Along the way, she also found time to run for Jacksonville City Council.

“Through these experiences, I started to see how all of the pieces landed together to make our city work,” Hamm said. “We can transform our community, but we have to do it with the community.”

Now Hamm is putting that philosophy into practice through the Blue Zones Project. Drawing on U.S. Census data, the organization has identified the city’s Northside, Westside and East Jacksonville neighborhoods as focus areas for its health initiatives.

“We have four focus areas – People, Places, Policy and Schools,” Hamm said.

In practice, that translates into everything from working with grocery stores and restaurants to offer healthier options to working with City Hall on public transportation issues and the schools with anti-tobacco messages.

In her free time, Hamm can be found enjoying live music in James Weldon Johnson Park, shopping at St. Johns Town Center or relaxing at the beach.

“We’re so lucky to have this great, big body of water next to our city,” Hamm said. “There’s just something so soothing, relaxing and cathartic about being by the ocean.”

Colby Nelson

Colby Nelson, 25, may be a black belt in karate, but he knows all too well what it’s like to feel unsure and unsafe.

The owner of Kolby’s Karate Club – which holds classes at Unity Church at 634 Lomax St. – Nelson said that as a child growing up on Jacksonville’s Northside, school was not a positive experience for him.

“I was bullied every year starting in the third grade,” he said. “I was just being bullied every day for no reason. Eventually, you just get tired of it.”

Nelson begged his mother to let him take lessons at a nearby karate program. He credits his first instructor, Lee Barden, with not only teaching him karate, but also giving him confidence in himself.

“He told me, ‘You could be one of the youngest karate school owners in Jacksonville,’” Nelson said. “It meant the world to me that someone believed in me.”

When Barden passed away, hundreds of current and former students showed up at his funeral service. “It made me realize the kind of impact you could have on people’s lives through karate,” Nelson said. “I decided I wanted to have that kind of positive impact on people.”

He began offering karate classes in parks before moving to Unity Church, where he currently offers family classes for students of all ages. His goal is to find a commercial space where he can open a permanent karate studio serving the Riverside, Avondale, Ortega and Murray Hill areas.

Nelson believes the biggest thing students take away from his karate classes is greater confidence.

“People often lack confidence because they feel they’ve never been successful at something,” he said. “Then they come to karate, and they realize, ‘I can do this!’ and that confidence translates over to other areas of their lives.”

While working toward his goal of finding a commercial studio space, Nelson is offering special classes in women’s self-defense as well as a free open house session scheduled for Saturday, July 20 at 4 p.m. Registration is available on Facebook or by calling 904-452-3194.

He also has plans to offer corporate self-defense seminars and team building exercises.

“I’m like the energizer bunny,” Nelson said. “I have infinite zeal and energy for this!”

Fiona Parkinson

Fiona Parkinson recalls going to a Fernandina Beach restaurant with her family shortly after moving to Amelia
Island from her native New Jersey.

“The owner came over and said, ‘I haven’t seen you here before; are you visiting or new to the area?’” said Parkinson, 23, who was in middle school at the time.

“In New Jersey, people are always coming and going, and nobody pays any attention,” she continued. “So, to have that kind of small-town experience really made an impression on me.”

Now an Avondale resident, Parkinson graduated last year from UNF with a degree in English. She is currently pursuing an online master’s degree in Library and Information Science at the University of South Florida. It’s a program that involves a considerable focus on technology.

“A lot of it involves understanding keywords, knowing how to find information and identifying reliable, credible sources,” she said. “It’s more technical than I anticipated, but I find it interesting.”

Parkinson hopes the coursework will prepare her for a position working in the community – a desire that grew out of working at the YMCA.

“I consider myself to be rather introverted, but working at the Y helped me to become more extroverted,” she said. “I really enjoy helping people.”

Within the library realm, she hopes to use her degree to help kids improve their reading levels.

In her free time, Parkinson can be found enjoying a cup of coffee at Bold Bean, running through Avondale, roller skating through Riverside’s Memorial Park or searching through the stacks at Chamblin Bookmine for books related to her master’s coursework. Her current project: developing a lesson plan related to children’s fairy stories.

“I told the cashier at Chamblin’s, ‘I didn’t know I’d be reading so many fairy stories to get my master’s degree!”

Alex Stone

Like many First Coast newcomers, 32-year-old Alex Stone moved to Jacksonville while serving in the military.

Originally from Fredericksburg, VA, Stone was stationed at Naval Air Station Cecil Field in 2017 while serving in the U.S. Coast Guard. He was part of an aviation unit that chased down smugglers and rescued stranded boaters off the coast of Florida.

After 12 years of service, Stone took a civilian job as a train dispatcher at CSX Transportation. While he’s not shooting at drug smugglers from a helicopter anymore, his new career is just as fast paced, and the stakes can be just as high.

“The best way to describe it would be air traffic control for trains,” Stone said. “I’ve never pictured myself being able to work a desk job, but it’s a highly engaging job.”

From the CSX Operations Center, Stone monitors real-time activity on up to 700 miles of railroad tracks, carefully overseeing the movements of about 20 trains and just as many maintenance crews each day. It’s an environment where mistakes can be life-threatening to those working on the tracks.

“It’s my job to authorize any personnel or equipment and the movement thereof on the track, down to the milepost to make sure nobody’s going to get hurt,” Stone said. “It’s anxiety-inducing to a certain extent, but I really like that because it keeps me focused.”

Outside of work, Stone is very active. He’s strict about hitting the gym regularly and getting outside as much as possible. He finds the warm Florida weather and sunshine much more agreeable than the mid-Atlantic region where he grew up.

“The heat did take some getting used to, but there’s just lots to do outdoors-wise, whether it’s playing pickleball or playing golf or exploring other parts of Jacksonville,” he said.

Stone also enjoys walking to restaurants and shops in Avondale where he lives. His favorite place to grab a bite is Biscotti’s, joking that he’s “obsessed” with their Smash Burger.

Above all, Stone loves spending time with his 7-year-old Alaskan Husky, Kana. If they’re not out for a walk in one of the Riverside parks, you’ll find them socializing at Kanine Social in Brooklyn or BrewHound Dog Park + Bar in Neptune Beach.

“She’s just a sweetheart and I couldn’t have asked for a better dog, that’s for sure.”

Bryce Yazdiya

Growing up in Jacksonville, Bryce Yazdiya’s world revolved around school – he attended Assumption Catholic and Bishop Snyder High School – and sports.

“Hockey, football, golf, basketball, you name it,” he said. “I also earned three black belts in karate, but I got too busy to continue with it.”

These days, Yazdiya spends his time in another kind of arena. A dual Political Science/Communications major at FSU, he has combined his coursework with hands-on experience volunteering for political campaigns.

“During my sophomore year, I volunteered quite a bit for Ron DeSantis’s gubernatorial campaign,” said Yazdiya, who has also contributed articles to local newspapers. “I also contribute articles to the Florida State Political Review.”

Future goals include possibly pursuing a career in sports journalism. But for now, the FSU senior said he enjoys spending his free time indulging his love of movies – the Lord of the Rings trilogy is his favorite – reading comic books and playing video games with his brother.

And despite being born and raised in Jacksonville, he never tires of living close to the beach or spending time at some of the River City’s many golf courses.

“You can find me anywhere there’s a golf course!”

---

Know a Young Independent?

Do you know a young, single professional who’s making his or her mark on the city? Submit their names, contact information and a brief description of what makes them a good candidate to [email protected].