Rising Through Resilience: Sevetri Wilson of Resilia On The Five Things You Can Do To Become More Resilient
How you deal with disappointment will be the key to strengthening your resiliency. Knowing that disappointments are constant, disappointments are certain but that disappointments can be conquered is key. When I say “Overcome Anything” what I mean by that is that most of the time it’s mind over matter. You have to strengthen your mindset and what you tell yourself. Reaffirming that you can come back from anything is the key. 5 steps: 1) Know you are worthy 2) Don’t remain idle 3) Create daily affirmations of strength, courage and prosperity 3)
In this interview series, we are exploring the subject of resilience among successful business leaders. Resilience is one characteristic that many successful leaders share in common, and in many cases it is the most important trait necessary to survive and thrive in today’s complex market.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Sevetri Wilson.
Sevetri Wilson is the Founder and CEO of technology startup Resilia, founded in 2016. Headquartered in New Orleans with a second office in New York, Resilia is revolutionizing how nonprofits are created and maintained, and how enterprises (cities, private foundations, and corporations) scale impact. The company has raised over $10M in venture capital to date. In September 2020, Sevetri was named a Rising Star on the Forbes Cloud 100 List. Resilia was named to Venture Beat’s top startups to watch out for in 2019; also in 2019, Sevetri was named to Inc. Magazine’s 100 Female Founders building world-changing companies and to PitchBook’s 27 leading black founders and investor list. Prior to Resilia, she founded Solid Ground Innovations, LLC., a strategic communications agency which was named to the LSU 100 list of fastest growing Tiger- led businesses in the world for two consecutive years. In 2018, she authored Solid Ground: How I Built a 7 Figure Company at 22 with Zero Capital which spent 6 weeks at #1 on Amazon in the startup category. Her new book titled Resilient was released on April 6, 2021 via Wiley and was an instant WSJ Best Seller.
Sevetri is a 2010 recipient of the Nobel Prize for Public Service, the Jefferson Award; and her work was featured in the U.S. Senate report to the White House on Volunteerism in the U.S. Sevetri’s work and that of her clients has been featured in national publications such as USA Today, Time Magazine, and CNN. She serves as a voice for communities as a Forbes contributor and has amassed over 200,000 followers across social media.
Thank you so much for joining us! Our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your backstory?
Where do we start? I was born and raised in a small town called Hammond, Louisiana about 45 minutes outside of New Orleans where my mother was born and where I now call home. I’m the youngest of 12 kids (my father and mother were married previously). I’m a first-generation college student that went to LSU on a full ride via the Bill and Melinda Gates Scholarship, TOPS, Pell Grant and a bunch of other scholarships I was awarded. Around 14 I realized that my mother wouldn’t be able to send me to college. In college I majored in Mass Comm and History for the longest I thought I would be a historical film maker and make documentaries, but life had other plans. My first year in grad school my mother was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and would pass away less than 3 months of being diagnosed. A few months later I would start my first company, Solid Ground Innovations which I would grow into a 7-figure company before spinning off a new company in the tech space called Resilia which I’ve now raised $11M for.
Can you share with us the most interesting story from your career? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?
I would say the most interesting story from my career didn’t come from tech but from working in politics. I led communications for who would become the first African American Woman Mayor of the City of Baton Rouge/East Baton Rouge Parish in Louisiana. There on the political battlefield I would learn so much about what it takes to win, but also even to victory how many failures and losses you take along the way. It was during that time I really felt deeply more than I had ever felt before that I was a solution maker.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
Today, Resilia stands out in a number of ways, but one way is that we center nonprofits in tech in away it hasn’t been done before. Historically, tech has focused in on pleasing the grant maker. It’s always been about what the funder wanted and needed of the organizations it was funding. That’s what I love most about our product, is that we are democratizing philanthropy and recentering the nonprofit at its core. The way it should be.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
Even in my book Resilient I talk about Dr. Leonard Moore who is at UT of Austin. I met Dr. Moore at LSU and through sitting in his class I feel I really discovered the things I was most passionate about. He would say, “if you love what you do you don’t have to watch the clock.” I remember this because he was referencing how a lot of people are in careers that they can’t wait until it’s time to go home. This notion would be the framework in which I built my entire career on.
Ok thank you for all that. Now let’s shift to the main focus of this interview. We would like to explore and flesh out the trait of resilience. How would you define resilience? What do you believe are the characteristics or traits of resilient people?
I remember one day I just googled the word resilience and one definition that returned was, “ capable of withstanding shock without permanent deformation or rupture.” That definition literally described my entrepreneurial and founder journey. As an entrepreneur, I look back on my journey and I’m so glad I didn’t let the process jade or change me. Building a business can be volatile. There are so many ups and downs, so many “no’s”, so many “maybe next time” and doors that close on us that it can harden you if you let it. Being able to have the resilience to withstand what’s thrown at you and to still come out of it better and on top is what Resilient means to me.
When you think of resilience, which person comes to mind? Can you explain why you chose that person?
My mother and grandmother without a doubt. My mother managed to raise 9 children alongside my grandfather up until his death. She had no formal education pass the 6th grade, but in rural Louisiana she managed to do it. The second person would be my mother. My mother dropped out of college when she was married, and she too raised 4 children including my brother and I when my father passed away. She did it with so little but we wanted for nothing. I grew up having enough and feeling like I had enough. She also believed I could do anything, and that was the most powerful lesson I would take with me.
Has there ever been a time that someone told you something was impossible, but you did it anyway? Can you share the story with us?
I’m a Black woman from the rural south who started a tech company and successfully raised over $10M for it. I think my entire life is an act of rebellion against what would seem possible. When it came to raising capital especially when I needed to keep the company a float and begin to scale, I received a ton of no’s. People didn’t think what I was building could turn into a scalable company, but I would prove to them it was in deed possible.
Did you have a time in your life where you had one of your greatest setbacks, but you bounced back from it stronger than ever? Can you share that story with us?
Losing my mother in college was a huge set back for me. I felt that the person who I was working tirelessly for was taken from me almost without warning. Yet, my mother’s death was the fuel I needed to make it through my most challenging days. Anytime I’m facing a challenge I think I’ve already survived losing my mother so I don’t think there can be a challenge greater than this is or at least to date there hasn’t been.
Did you have any experiences growing up that have contributed to building your resiliency? Can you share a story? Resilience is like a muscle that can be strengthened. In your opinion, what are 5 steps that someone can take to become more resilient? Please share a story or an example for each.
How you deal with disappointment will be the key to strengthening your resiliency. Knowing that disappointments are constant, disappointments are certain but that disappointments can be conquered is key. When I say “Overcome Anything” what I mean by that is that most of the time it’s mind over matter. You have to strengthen your mindset and what you tell yourself. Reaffirming that you can come back from anything is the key. 5 steps: 1) Know you are worthy 2) Don’t remain idle 3) Create daily affirmations of strength, courage and prosperity 3)
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-).
I think I’m already apart of a movement. A movement of minority founders who are not accepting anything less than what we deserve particularly when it comes to access. We are breaking glass ceilings and yes, we have a long way to but we won’t be denied.
We are blessed that some very prominent leaders read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them 🙂
Melinda French Gates. I was a Gates Foundation Scholar and I would let her know the profound impact that her work has had on me and my trajectory. Now as a Woman tech founder, though very different, in many ways I feel that our journeys have paralleled each other’s. I would tell her thank you but also would love to chat about our plans to change the future and make a better world especially for women.
How can our readers follow you on social media?
@sevetriwilson on all channels
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
Rising Through Resilience: Sevetri Wilson of Resilia On The Five Things You Can Do To Become More… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
