Lauren Wesley Wilson worked for politicians and crisis comms firms for years before she decided to start her own organization, ColorComm. ColorComm started as a luncheon series over ten years ago, and now has grown to become the nation’s leading women’s platform addressing diversity & inclusion across the communications, marketing, advertising, and media industries. This week, Lauren told us how she sought out to make the notoriously competitive communications industry more inclusive.
In this episode, Lauren shares:
How she navigated a cutthroat industry when she was starting out
Why she knew she needed to start ColorComm
What she gave up to found ColorComm
How she made the time and space for her personal life
On Creating Goals for Your Personal Life
Carly: You have spoken in the past about how ambitious women need to make time or space for their romantic lives, or starting a family, if that is of interest to them. What did making time and space look like for you?
Lauren: For me what it looked like was to limit travel. I’ve been really busy in terms of building this business, but then also traveling a lot, whether it's for new business development, whether it's for speaking engagements, a variety of things. And then you have your work travel, then you have your personal travel, whether it's friends' weddings or showers or just catching up with your parents. So you find yourself traveling almost every week. And that could be making dating very hard. And so I think what I really focused on was, okay, let me…prioritize my personal life…. You have to figure out what your priorities are because you can't do it all at once. And if you don't, if you're not working towards some of your goals, then you're just not going to get there. So just, you know, create goals in your personal life the way you would in your work life, and work towards those.
On Why She Started ColorComm
Lauren: I was working in those environments where I didn't see any people of color at the time who looked like me who were in leadership…. So I was really wanting to find mentors, really, it was not just mentors who looked like me, because I think you can have mentors who don't look like you. I mean, it's really important to have a variety of mentors in your sphere, but it was more about if you don't see those examples, are you going to be able to rise yourself in those environments? And I think that's what made me so fearful was, was I personally going to be able to advance or get ahead if I didn't see people who look like me?
Listen and subscribe to our podcast from your mobile device: Apple podcasts | Google Play | Spotify | Stitcher
Live Smarter
Sign up for the Daily Skimm email newsletter. Delivered to your inbox every morning and prepares you for your day in minutes.