MIKAILA ULMER

Mikaila Ulmer is a social entrepreneur, a published author, and a college student. She is the founder and CEO of Me & the Bees Lemonade, which she started in 2009 when she was just four years old. Using her Great-Granny Helen’s flaxseed lemonade recipe, she first sold her product at a children’s entrepreneurial event, then in front of her home in Austin, Texas. Around the same time, Mikaila got stung by two bees in one week. Instead of continuing to be terrified of them, her parents encouraged her to learn more about them. She found out that bees were dying at alarming rates, so she decided to help save them by allocating a portion of her lemonade stand sales to help save the bees. She even added honey to Great-Granny Hele’s recipe to tie her product to the bees and infused purpose into her brand since its inception. Today, the award-winning lemonade comes in five refreshing flavors and is buzzing off the shelves at retailers in all 50 states across the country, including Target, Whole Foods Market, and World Market, and online at www.meandthebees.com. Mikaila is determined for Me & the Bees to become America’s favorite lemonade, all the while keeping the company’s mission of helping save and protect the bees as her focus. In 2018, Mikaila launched the Healthy Hive Foundation non-profit, where a percentage of profits from Me & the Bees Lemonade goes to saving the bees. Over the years, she’s dedicated a lot of time to speaking at events worldwide, leading workshops on saving the bees and participating in social entrepreneurship panels. She wrote the bestselling book Bee Fearless: Dream Like a Kid published by Penguin Random House in 2020, so she could continue to share her story further with the hope of inspiring even more members of the next generation of changemakers. Mikaila is currently in her third year as a Woodruff Scholar at Emory University, studying economics.