Today we’d like to introduce you to La Juana (“LJ”) Chambers.
Hi La Juana (“LJ”) , thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My story begins in Holly Springs, Mississippi, where I was born to a newly married teenage mother and a teenage father who had just turned 18 years old. My father was enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and had been ordered overseas to Japan for training. Just a few days after I was born, my mother and I traveled to Japan to live with him.
So in many ways, my life began in motion — between Mississippi, military service, young parenthood, sacrifice, and a family learning early that life can change in an instant.
When I was six years old, my mother, father, and I were in a life-altering car accident while my father was still serving in the Marine Corps and stationed at Camp Pendleton, California. We were traveling to Virginia to help care for a family member who was also stationed there when our vehicle hit black ice and flipped several times. My mother was ejected from the car and landed inches from the James River. My father suffered a broken spinal cord and was paralyzed from the neck down. I was knocked unconscious, and I believe my life was saved because my father threw his body over mine to keep me from being ejected from the vehicle.
In the immediate aftermath of the accident, both of my parents were in comas, and I was legally an orphan until they woke up. During that time, I stayed at the Ronald McDonald House in Richmond, Virginia, where volunteers cared for me with extraordinary kindness during one of the most frightening seasons of my childhood.
When my parents came out of their comas, life did not simply go back to normal. My father’s paralysis reshaped our family forever, and I grew up around the VA Hospital in Richmond, Virginia, surrounded not only by my parents, but also by a village of aunts, uncles, caregivers, veterans, and community members who helped raise me.
That experience taught me early that survival is communal. None of us makes it through life alone. I learned that sacrifice is not an abstract idea — it is flesh and blood, family and service, strangers becoming protectors, and ordinary people showing up in extraordinary ways. I come from people who endured what should have broken them, and still found a way to keep loving, leading, and moving forward.
Those early experiences shaped how I see leadership, community, systems, and service. I eventually built my own path through education, public service, and civic leadership. While earning my undergraduate and graduate degrees at Virginia Commonwealth University, I became deeply involved in student government, advocacy, and policy work. One of the defining moments of that season was serving as Student Body Vice President and authoring legislation that helped lead to the creation of what is now the Shockoe Institute in Richmond, Virginia — an initiative connected to preserving and telling the truth about the city’s history and its relationship to the domestic slave trade.
Over time, my work expanded into project management, grant writing, nonprofit development, commercial real estate, public systems, and economic development. I moved to San Antonio and founded Tacit Growth Strategies in 2018 with a clear mission: to help organizations, small businesses, public agencies, and community institutions build the strategy, structure, funding, and partnerships they need to grow with integrity.
My journey has not been linear. It has included reinvention, risk, loss, faith, and seasons where I had to rebuild while still showing up to lead. But every chapter gave me more range, more discipline, and more compassion.
Today, I am a business consultant, educator, commercial real estate professional, board leader, and best-selling author. I serve as Board President of Close to Home, the Continuum of Care for San Antonio and Bexar County, and I am also a tri-chair of the Eastside Economic Development Advisory Committee, appointed by State Representative Barbara Gervin-Hawkins. In that role, I help advance the work of ensuring San Antonio’s historic Eastside is treated fairly, prioritized intentionally, and not left behind by public or private entities as the Spurs relocate their stadium from the Eastside to downtown San Antonio.
Across all of my work, I remain committed to strengthening communities from the inside out. Where I am today is the result of sacrifice, stewardship, and a deep belief that leadership is not just about personal achievement. It is about using your gifts, your lessons, and your lived experience to build something that can outlast you.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
No, it has not been a smooth road. It has been meaningful, but it has not been easy.
Some of my earliest struggles began when I was six years old, after the car accident that changed my family’s life forever. My father’s paralysis, my parents’ comas, my time at the Ronald McDonald House, and growing up around the VA Hospital in Richmond all shaped my understanding of hardship, caregiving, sacrifice, and resilience very early. I learned as a child that stability is precious, that community matters, and that life can require you to mature before you even have the language for what you are surviving.
As I grew older, my struggles changed form. I had to learn how to build a life, a career, and a business without always having a clear roadmap. Entrepreneurship is beautiful, but it is also unforgiving. There are seasons when you are the strategist, the salesperson, the project manager, the bookkeeper, the grant writer, the janitor, and the person who still has to encourage everyone else. I have had to navigate financial pressure, reinvention, grief, major life transitions, and the weight of being a leader while still being human.
There have also been times when I felt underestimated or unseen, especially while working in rooms where decisions were being made about communities I cared deeply about. But those moments sharpened me. They taught me to prepare, to document, to build coalitions, to speak with clarity, and to stay rooted in purpose instead of performance.
What I know now is that struggle is not always a sign that you are off course. Sometimes struggle is the road. It can refine your voice, deepen your compassion, and force you to become more honest about what matters. My life has taught me that resilience is not about pretending everything is fine. It is about continuing to build, serve, lead, and love with integrity, even after life has asked you to begin again.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Tacit Growth Strategies is a business consulting, project management, grant writing, and economic development strategy firm that I founded in San Antonio in 2018. At its core, TGS helps organizations move from vision to implementation. We work with nonprofits, small businesses, public agencies, community-based organizations, and entrepreneurs who are trying to grow, stabilize, secure funding, improve systems, or bring a major idea to life.
We specialize in project management, grant strategy and writing, nonprofit and small business development, commercial real estate advisory, strategic planning, economic development, and ecosystem-building. In plain language, we help people organize the work, fund the work, manage the work, and sustain the work.
What sets Tacit Growth Strategies apart is that we do not just write plans and walk away. We understand how systems actually move. We know how public funding, community trust, stakeholder engagement, procurement, real estate, compliance, operations, and implementation all connect. I often say that our work lives at the intersection of strategy, structure, and stewardship.
We are especially known for helping organizations take complex ideas and turn them into fundable, manageable, measurable projects. Over the years, I have supported organizations pursuing and managing millions of dollars in funding, building stronger internal systems, launching community initiatives, and navigating growth in a way that is both practical and mission-aligned. Tacit Growth Strategies has also had the great pleasure of supporting the establishment and expansion of healthcare institutions, including the Texas Kidney Foundation and Ma Hila’s Heart Foundation, helping mission-driven leaders build the infrastructure needed to serve communities with greater reach and durability.
Brand-wise, I am most proud that Tacit Growth Strategies has always been rooted in service. The firm was founded on San Antonio’s Eastside, and some of our earliest work included providing free project management support to small business owners. Tacit Growth Strategies also served as the back-office, administrative management, and leadership infrastructure for one of the nation’s first African American community archives and museums chaired by a Black woman and founded by native community voices. As a result of the foundation laid by Tacit Growth Strategies, that community archive and museum grew into a key employer and multimillion-dollar cultural institution for San Antonio.
That matters to me because I believe business can be both profitable and principled. Growth should not require people to abandon their values, their community, or their sense of responsibility.
I want readers to know that Tacit Growth Strategies is built for serious builders — people and organizations who are ready to do the real work of growth. We are not a surface-level consulting firm. We help clients think deeply, plan clearly, execute responsibly, and build with durability.
Whether we are helping a nonprofit pursue funding, supporting a small business through expansion, advising on commercial real estate strategy, supporting healthcare institutions, or helping a public-facing initiative move from concept to execution, our goal is the same: to help good work become strong enough to last.
How can people work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
People can work with me through Tacit Growth Strategies if they are building something that needs structure, strategy, funding, implementation support, or stronger systems. We support nonprofits, small businesses, public agencies, healthcare organizations, community-based institutions, and entrepreneurs who are trying to grow responsibly and sustainably.
The best collaborations are with serious builders — people who have a meaningful mission, a complex project, or a big vision, but need help turning that vision into a plan that can actually be funded, managed, measured, and sustained. That may include grant strategy and writing, project management, strategic planning, nonprofit development, commercial real estate advisory, economic development strategy, stakeholder engagement, or back-office infrastructure support.
People can also collaborate with me through speaking, teaching, training, board service, and community-centered initiatives. I love working with organizations that care about leadership, public service, entrepreneurship, housing stability, local economic development, and building institutions that serve real people well.
The most practical way to support me is to refer mission-driven organizations, small businesses, public-sector leaders, foundations, and community builders who are ready to do serious work. I am always grateful for aligned introductions, thoughtful partnerships, speaking opportunities, consulting opportunities, and collaborations that help move good work from conversation to execution.
More than anything, I want people to know that I am interested in building what lasts. I welcome opportunities to work with people who care about excellence, integrity, community, and impact — people who understand that strategy is not just about growth, but about stewardship.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://growthistacit.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/growthistacit
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/tacit-growth-strategies-llc/about/?viewAsMember=true
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGxhcE5lgQfeiQecK1eYB-EPCkIaHWJwX
