Fitness and wellness entrepreneur Nundiah-Danielle Edwards, 40, is queen of the “pandemic pivot.” Since 2020, she has uniquely expanded her fitness brand and business to create a safe gathering space for women and families of all backgrounds, occupations, and lifestyles.
Edwards owns and operates the New Body Project, an all-women’s boot camp studio, and Atrium82, an intimate wedding venue and wellness space out of her premier location in Park Slope in Brooklyn. The studio specializes in weight training, strength training, cardio, soundbathing, pilates, yoga, nutrition guidance, and mindset coaching; while the venue side of the business offers a space (about 40-person occupancy) for micro-weddings, elopements, and affordable gatherings and celebrations. Edwards is an ordained minister and officiates weddings as well.
Born to West African-Liberian parents, Edwards remembers fondly travelling a lot as a child. She spent summers in Liberia or traveled extensively abroad. Her father was a pastor, and her mother, who had little education when she arrived in the U.S, became a nursing assistant. Edwards admired her mother for her hard work and diligent achievements while also raising four children.
As a child, she dreamed of being a lawyer and a diplomat. After getting an associates degree in paralegal studies at Berkeley College and working in the field a bit under a state senator in New Jersey, she ultimately decided that she wanted something different. She finished her undergraduate degree at Berkeley and moved onto banking at a major branch in Manhattan. “I was there for about two or three years. The market tanked, my dad became ill and I wasn’t allowed to take time off to care for him,” said Edwards.
Disappointed, Edwards decided to prioritize her family as a stay-at-home mother to her two children after that experience. She also furthered her education at this time, earning a master’s of business administration (MBA) at American Intercontinental University in Illinois. She then sought out a career that allowed her the flexibility to still be a present mom for her kids, making her first foray into fitness in 2015.
“I had a child, I had put on weight, I was depressed. It was just me and this two year old and this brand new baby in the house. Who do I talk to? How do I find myself?,” said Edwards. “I needed to figure out a way to get back to who Nundiah-Danielle was.”
Edwards worked for an all-women’s gym in Gowanus. When that company shut down in 2016, the community rallied and raised $3,000 for Edwards to start her own company. Lacking formal fitness training though, Edwards returned to school to get her certificate at Hofstra University. The New Body Project was born the next year. She struggled to find an official space for it until 2019. Her fitness business was thriving at its home on 6th Avenue, in an elegant stained glass building founded in 1861, when the pandemic temporarily shut down gyms in 2020. Edwards had to innovate.
“It came out of necessity for me,” said Edwards. “During the pandemic when I was forced to shut down my fitness studio, I still had this space and I needed to figure out how I could continue to utilize this space and generate some sort of income for my family.”
She continues to encourage a sense of community among all her clientele and is happy to open the space up to fellow Black and Brown entrepreneurs. She also promotes the Ghana Desk Project, a nonprofit that provides desks to underserved children and jobs for people in Africa and throughout the African Diaspora.