Tamara Gipson
Owner of TT Innovative Solutions in Houston, Texas
Tamara Gipson has always had a passion for helping people and a talent for solving problems. Now through her multifaceted consulting agency, TT Innovative Solutions, she's a transformational force for good in Houston.
Like so many other entrepreneurs, Tamara’s path to business ownership started as a side hustle. A highly skilled educator with more than 20 years in the classroom, she found a niche tutoring aspiring teachers in her spare time. Friends sent her a steady stream of clients struggling with their professional teaching exams. Tamara noticed a troubling pattern.
“A lot of potential educators pay these programs to essentially give them the keys to be able to get in. And they give them just enough to take their money, but they don't give them enough to pass the assessment test,” she says. Tamara realized her training was far more effective than the costly test prep programs. She couldn't ignore that.
“I found that being an entrepreneur, as I look back, was always something I wanted to do,” she says. The pandemic was the final push in her choice to take the entrepreneurial leap. “I had reached the pinnacle of my career, and so I made the decision to step out on faith.”
She opened TT Innovative Solutions in 2020. The acronym TTIS encapsulates Tamara’s aspirations as a business owner: to teach, train, innovate, and solve. The teaching aspect still includes supporting educators with their state assessments, filling a gap in the system for qualified teachers who are looking for fulfilling careers.
Her business extends beyond teaching, however, to help other professionals and small business owners reach their goals with a variety of tailored solutions. That could mean building their website, facilitating virtual conferences, or fine-tuning their business strategy. "If we have the talent and the skill to get them there, we will do so,” Tamara says.
TTIS is solving academic problems as well. Tamara explains that when neurodivergent kids graduate from high school, they age out of needed intervention programs. “Once they leave the school, there are no more services for them unless they go to college, and many of them are not going to college for several reasons,” she says. “One, they can't afford it. Two, they don't feel successful in the first place, so they're not going to go.”
As a result, generations of competent, honest, and hard-working people get trapped in dead-end jobs. And there are studies that correlate incarceration with a lack of access to special education. It’s another troubling pattern Tamara couldn’t ignore. So she assembled a “rockstar” team — four subject matter experts who’ve spent decades teaching in the dyslexia and educational intervention fields — to develop a curriculum to help bridge the gap.
“The far-fetched idea, the dream, is to be the trainer of trainers for the curriculum, and it goes forward and continues on.” But Tamara needed working capital to develop her vision, and she knew her options were limited. “I wasn't going to be able to qualify for anything at a bank,” she says. “I was just not bringing in enough revenue for them to trust me.”
DreamSpring stepped in with a $5,450 loan. Tamara used the funds to buy printing equipment, support her curriculum team, and launch a physical location in the summer of 2023. Located just outside of Downtown Houston, the 700-square-foot space houses TTIS’ affordable professional and educational development services for up to 25 people at a time.
Tamara credits DreamSpring with being there “to take some of that weight off my shoulder as a business owner" when she needed it most. With foundational resources in place, TTIS is changing more lives day by day. “DreamSpring was very helpful in getting me to my next stepping stone and goal,” she says.