Remarkable Woman: Kelsie Burza, conquering the impossible

Hazelton, ND ( KXNET ) — “Anytime I was told that I can’t do something I’d think, well, let’s try it, then I’ll see if I can’t do it,” Kelsie Burza, marketing manager, Activities for Learning, and entrepreneur said.

Kelsie Burza was born with a number of challenges, including severe asthma and juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, but she was also born determined.

“I did not want to be the kid that everybody’s waiting for,” Kelsie stated. “Because, you know, ‘she can’t do that,’ or ‘oh, it’s hard for her.’ I didn’t want to be that person.”

And she wasn’t.
While Kelsie didn’t want to stand out from the rest for the wrong reasons, finding solutions that worked for her, set her up for success.
It also helped her realize, it’s okay to be different and there’s always a solution.

“Oh, there’s a problem? Well, let’s solve it,” Kelsie said. “Let’s try to figure out a way that we can make it happen.”

And Kelsie has made a lot happen with that mindset.
She and her husband Corey decided to move from Michigan, then Colorado and eventually to Maddock, North Dakota in 2011 to fulfill his dream of being a farmer.
They also wanted to start a family.
But not able to have biological children, they found another solution.

“My husband and I were like, ‘Well, there’s kids out there. Somebody needs us. So we became foster parents,” Kelsie said.

They started by fostering and later adopting two siblings, and then adopted their youngest sibling child in 2022.
And they don’t plan to stop there.

“We are going to continue to foster and do as much as we possibly can,” Kelsie said. “My husband, he’s like, ‘We need to buy like old nursing homes so that we can have a really, really big family.’ So with all the bedrooms, I’m like, ‘Yeah, and then we’re gonna need like a custom bus.’ But hey, I would do it if it would be feasible.”

While loving the small-town life, Kelsie did experience some challenges.

“I noticed there were a lot of different things within these small communities that aren’t available,” Kelsie said, “or they’re available, but to get to them, like, you’d have to go all the way to Bismarck. Well it takes us an hour.”

But true to form, Kelsie saw a problem and quickly found a way to solve it.
The first challenge?
A lack of licensed daycares in the community.
So she opened her own, Tiger Pup Daycare, which she says is the largest licensed group daycare in the Hazelton community.

“I found a house,” Kelsie stated. “My goal was to get one right across from school. So that way we could, you know, make it most convenient for parents, especially for preschoolers to come to and from and even school aged kids to go to and from school.”

The next challenge?
A lack of resources for youth in a small, rural community.
With a desire to help more kids, Kelsie’s family created a non-profit called the Grayla Foundation.

“The Grayla Foundation actually started when we decided to foster,” Kelsie explained. “We’ve seen how much of a need there was for other things amongst the foster community. And then also youth in need, you know, not necessarily that they’re foster kids, but they’re just youth that need things like medical or things like that.

The foundation hosts a number of free events and raffles all to provide help to youth in need, from medical expenses to scholarships for graduating seniors.
Kelsie also recognized her daughters’ love of dance and decided the community needed a dance team, and Zo Dance was born.

“I was like, ‘Hey, I can teach it though. And you know, we can go from there.’ So I started teaching dance back in 2023 and I now have two dance teams that I teach now,” Kelsie said.

And when not working at her fulltime marketing job, daycare, substitute teaching, coaching a dance team or planning and hosting events through her foundation, Kelsie is spending quality time with her family.
You will often find them tending to the horses, chickens, ducks, goats and cows on their little farmstead in Braddock.

“Kids are so amazing to watch and watch them grow and the things they do,” Kelsie said. “And it’s amazing to see it. And I’m also getting to see the community grow. I’m like, this is awesome. I love it.”

Kelsie’s determination to help kids and her community grow is what makes her a remarkable woman.

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