Today we’d like to introduce you to Kristy Bruns.
Hi Kristy, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
For most of my career, my work has centered around one question: How do we help people build the skills and confidence they need to create an independent and happy life?
I am currently a high school special education teacher, but my experience working with individuals with disabilities began long before this chapter of my career. My background includes working in Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), and I hold a master’s degree in Human Behavior/Psychology. Over the years, I have had the opportunity to work with individuals with a wide range of abilities, needs, strengths, and goals.
The classroom has taught me so much, but it has also allowed me to see what happens as students get closer to adulthood. There can be a significant gap between what students learn in school and what they need to successfully navigate employment and adult life.
I kept coming back to the same thought: What happens after graduation?
Our students have talents. They have interests. They have things they are incredibly good at. But sometimes they need more time, more practice, different teaching methods, or someone willing to create an opportunity for them to demonstrate what they can do.
That question became the beginning of Kinship Bridge.
Kinship Bridge is a nonprofit, 501(c)3, I created to help bridge the gap between school and meaningful adult opportunities. I have continued my own professional training as well and am now a certified job coach, with additional training focused on employment services and helping individuals develop skills that can transfer into real workplaces.
My goal is not simply to help someone get a job. I want to help individuals of all abilities develop skills that lead to greater independence consisting of increased communication, workplace expectations, problem solving, self-advocacy, task completion, confidence, and the ability to take what they have learned in one environment and use it successfully somewhere else.
But as I began developing Kinship Bridge, I realized something else was missing.
We could teach skills, but our students also needed real places to practice them.
That realization eventually became part of the vision for Brew & Barrel Craft House.
Brew & Barrel is something my husband and I are building together. From the beginning, we wanted to create a place that felt like us…..a welcoming community gathering place centered around great coffee, wine, beer, food, and connection. As we talked through what we wanted Brew & Barrel to become, we realized we had an opportunity to create something that could serve our community in a much bigger way.
My husband has been an important part of bringing Brew & Barrel from an idea into something we are actively working toward. While Kinship Bridge grew out of my professional experience and passion for helping students prepare for life beyond the classroom, Brew & Barrel became something we could build together by combining entrepreneurship, community, and a space where people genuinely want to gather.
Brew & Barrel and Kinship Bridge are separate organizations with different purposes, but the vision allows them to complement one another. Kinship Bridge can provide structured training and support, while Brew & Barrel can offer a real-world environment where skills can be practiced, strengthened, and generalized.
And that community connection extends beyond employment training.
One of the pieces we are most excited about is The Local Exchange, which will create opportunities for local businesses, makers, and entrepreneurs to have their products represented within Brew & Barrel. Instead of simply filling shelves with products from large distributors, we want those shelves to tell the story of the community around us.
The Local Exchange creates another layer to our mission. Our students can learn through interaction with actual businesses while understanding inventory, merchandising, customer service, organization, marketing, and entrepreneurship, and local small businesses gain another place to be seen and supported.
We also want to intentionally feature young and emerging entrepreneurs. There are incredibly creative young people who have ideas and talents but may not yet have a storefront, a large following, or the resources to get their products in front of customers. We want Brew & Barrel to be a place where those entrepreneurs can be celebrated and given an opportunity to grow.
That is what makes the entire vision so important to me. It isn’t really about opening a coffee shop, and it isn’t only about creating a nonprofit program.
It is about building an ecosystem of opportunity.
Right now, we are still in the building stage. I continue to teach while completing additional professional training and developing Kinship Bridge’s programming, partnerships, and future employment services. At the same time, my husband and I are working together through the many pieces required to bring Brew & Barrel to life. From finding and preparing the right physical space to navigating permits, equipment, operations, funding, and community partnerships.
There have already been challenges. Building something like this requires constantly adjusting the plan when a location, regulation, cost, or other obstacle changes what is possible. I’ve learned that sometimes the vision stays the same even when the path to get there has to change.
And the vision has stayed very clear.
I want a student who may have spent years hearing about the things they struggle with to walk into our programs and begin discovering what they can do.
I want them to learn a skill with support, practice it until they gain confidence, use it in a real environment, and eventually take that skill beyond our doors.
Success does not have to look the same for every person. For one student, it may mean independent competitive employment. For another, it may mean supported employment. For someone else, entrepreneurship may be where they thrive.
Our responsibility is not to decide how high someone else’s ceiling should be. It is to give them the skills, experiences, support, and opportunities to discover that for themselves.
My long-term hope is for Kinship Bridge to become a true bridge between students, families, schools, employers, and the community. I want local businesses to see our students not through the lens of disability, but as future employees, entrepreneurs, coworkers, and community members who have something valuable to contribute.
And my husband and I want Brew & Barrel to be a place where that philosophy is visible every day. Not because we advertise ourselves as an inclusive business, but because inclusion is simply woven into how the business operates.
A cup of coffee, a locally made product on a shelf, a young entrepreneur being featured, a student mastering a new workplace skill, or a local employer willing to give someone their first opportunity may seem like small things individually.
But connected together, they can change the direction of someone’s life.
That is the bridge I want to build.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
One of the biggest lessons throughout this journey has been learning that having a strong vision does not mean the path to get there will be straightforward.
I am still a full-time teacher, so much of the work of building Kinship Bridge and Brew & Barrel happens outside of the school day. At the same time, I have continued my own education and professional training to make sure the services I eventually provide through Kinship Bridge are built on more than good intentions. Becoming a certified job coach and continuing to expand my credentials has required an investment of time, but it is important to me that the programs we create are meaningful, structured, and truly prepare students for employment and greater independence.
Building Brew & Barrel with my husband has brought an entirely different learning curve. We have had to learn about leases, financing, equipment, food service, licensing, occupancy requirements, fire codes, accessibility, and the many regulations involved in opening a physical business. There have been moments when we thought we had found the right location or had a plan figured out, only to discover that a building requirement, additional construction cost, or permitting issue meant we needed to reconsider it.
That has probably been one of the hardest parts of the process. We have had to become comfortable changing the plan without changing the purpose.
There are also financial realities that come with trying to build something from the ground up. We want Brew & Barrel to be a sustainable business, and we want Kinship Bridge to grow responsibly rather than creating programs simply because they sound good. Every decision has required us to balance what we would love to do with what makes sense financially and operationally.
Another challenge has been explaining a vision that does not always fit neatly into one category. Kinship Bridge is not simply a job placement program, and Brew & Barrel is not simply a coffee shop. The Local Exchange is more than retail space. Each piece has its own purpose, but together they are designed to create opportunities for people to learn, work, connect, sell, grow, and become part of their community.
We are still very much in the process of building all of this. There are permits to navigate, partnerships to develop, funding to secure, programs to refine, and a physical space to bring to life. I know there will be more obstacles ahead.
But every challenge has forced us to ask better questions and strengthen the vision. Sometimes progress has looked like moving forward, and sometimes it has looked like realizing something will not work and finding another way.
I tell my students all the time that learning a new skill takes practice, flexibility, problem solving, and the willingness to keep going when something does not work the first time. Building Kinship Bridge and Brew & Barrel has reminded me that those lessons don’t stop when we become adults.
In many ways, I am living the same message I hope to teach through Kinship Bridge: the goal isn’t to remove every obstacle. It is to develop the skills, support, confidence, and determination to find a way forward.
We’ve been impressed with Kinship Bridge Co. and Brew and Barrel Craft House, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
At the heart of everything we are building, is one idea: creating opportunities for people to learn, contribute, connect, and belong in their community.
Kinship Bridge is the nonprofit side of that vision. We help students and young adults of all abilities develop practical workplace and life skills that lead to greater independence and meaningful employment. Our focus goes beyond classroom instruction. We want students to learn skills, practice them in real-world environments, build confidence, and eventually carry those skills into other workplaces and areas of life.
Through the years, I have seen how capable students can be when given the right instruction, practice, and opportunities. Kinship Bridge is built around that philosophy. We don’t want to define success for our students; we want to give them the tools to begin defining it for themselves.
Brew & Barrel Craft House is the for-profit business. It will offer coffee, wine, beer, food, events, and a comfortable place to gather. What will set it apart is what happens beyond the coffee and drinks.
Brew & Barrel will also provide a natural, real-world environment where skills can be practiced while giving the community a way to be part of what we are building.
An important piece of Brew & Barrel is The Local Exchange, where we will connect customers with local small businesses, makers, and entrepreneurs. Their products will be featured in our space, supporting local businesses while also creating opportunities for students to gain experience with inventory, merchandising, customer service, marketing, and entrepreneurship.
We are especially passionate about featuring young and emerging entrepreneurs, giving them a place to showcase their products and stories and experience the support of their community.
That connection between education, employment, entrepreneurship, small business, and community is what sets our model apart. We aren’t trying to create a simulated workplace. We want students gaining experience with real customers, businesses, products, expectations, and eventually employers. Brew & Barrel can be one part of that bridge, but the larger goal is to develop transferable skills students can take into workplaces throughout our community.
We also hope Kinship Bridge becomes a resource for local employers who want to employ individuals with disabilities but may not know where to begin.
I am most proud that each piece has its own identity while sharing the same purpose. Kinship Bridge is about building opportunity. Brew & Barrel is about crafting community. The Local Exchange connects that community with the people and businesses within it.
Together, they represent something much bigger to us: Where Community Supports Ability.
We are not building a business and then attaching a mission to it. The mission is influencing what we build from the beginning.
What matters most to you? Why?
What matters most to me is creating opportunities for people to discover what they are capable of and giving them the skills to build a future with greater independence and purpose, regardless of their background and abilities are.
I believe everyone deserves the chance to contribute, to be valued, and to have meaningful opportunities. Sometimes that means teaching a skill differently, providing additional support, or simply creating an opportunity that may not have existed before.
I want our students to leave Kinship Bridge with more than job skills. I want them to have confidence in themselves, experience success, and know they have something valuable to offer their community.
I also want to help change the way businesses and communities view individuals with disabilities….not by focusing on limitations, but by recognizing strengths, abilities, and potential.
Ultimately, what matters most to me is helping build a community where opportunity isn’t reserved for a select few. If we can give someone the skills, support, and opportunity to take that next step independently, then we have done something meaningful.
Because when someone truly believes in you, it has the power to change the direction of your life.
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