Four studios in Brooklyn and Miami, financed from a bartending paycheck and family loans rather than a term sheet — founder Kate Durand still teaches and runs teacher training a decade in, with no PE firm or franchisor anywhere in the picture. As a small, independently run studio chain, it has little public labor or environmental track record to date, but nothing negative surfaced anywhere it was checked. Durand answers to her own studios and her own instructors, not to outside investors.