While a student-athlete at Arizona State UnIversity, Teniqua Broughton found her love of the arts and interpreting data. After graduation, she took a job in the culture participation department with the university, making key connections with community leaders. Broughton worked for a number of nonprofits, which led to her starting her own consulting firm in 2014 to do the work that inspired her.
Broughton is founder and president of VerveSimone Consulting. The nonprofit provides consulting services to individuals and organizations, including nonprofit governance, executive coaching, project management and DEI/EDI training, assessments and workshops.
“I embody the principles of a change agent for the causes that are important to me,” Broughton said. “I have and will continue to be a champion for age diversification, equity, diversity, and inclusion as well as leadership development.”
The firm was established as a means to build an organization in which Broughton could control where her efforts were applied, working on the issues most important to her. Those include arts and culture, women and girls and marginalized communities. “Her commitment to providing operational management for small businesses, grassroots or fledgling nonprofits by leading with empathy from experience is what sets her apart,” her team said. “Having the ability to offer the road map to organizations and small businesses curated from her professional and personal journey is a unique and valuable offering.”
Broughton projects a 40% increase in revenue over the next five years, with increased stability to secure a stream of clients in the nonprofit and for-profit sectors. Setting that foundation will allow Broughton to expand her DEI/EDI work outside Arizona.
Broughton serves as chair-elect for Western States Arts Federation’s board of trustees, a regional arts organization. In 2021, she was awarded the Arizona State University MLK Servant Leader Leadership award and Phoenix Business Journal’s 2021 Most Admired Leader. In 2017, she was selected as the recipient of the AZCentral Who’s Next award, recognizing emerging leaders who are making a difference in the arts. Broughton is the recipient of the Arizona Champion Award for the Central Arizona region from the Flinn Foundation’s Arizona Center for Civic Leadership for her significant contributions to civic leadership.
“Teniqua has firmly established herself as a leader in the community,” said Robin Reed of the Arizona Black Chamber. “She embodies everything that makes Arizona’s future incredibly bright. She has built a diverse team that has clearly been chosen for their qualifications and contribution. She has built her organization on a foundation of inclusion, giving each person on her team the full power of their own voice; and most importantly, she has established strong collaborative partnerships with other community leaders that allows her to achieve the objectives of her organization while serving the community (and the state) as a whole.”
