Selena A. Rodgers Dickerson

I founded SarCor LLC, which stands for Selena A. Rogers Corporation, and have built it from an army of one into a fully staffed civil engineering firm with a leadership team in place. We do work across multiple states in the Southeast and are licensed to provide engineering services throughout the country. My journey started when I was laid off on November 17th, 2010 - what I call my 'water walker moment,' referencing when Peter got off the boat to walk on water toward Jesus. It was a big faith moment because I chose to take a chance on myself instead of just finding another job. I had founded SarCor two years before being laid off, but it was just an EIN number with nothing in it. During those two years, I got my MBA with a focus on project management and went to every free SBA workshop I could find between Birmingham, Atlanta, and Nashville to learn the business side of things. I realized early on that I had to choose whether I wanted to be a master widget maker or be on the business side of things and grow a business. When I got laid off, I had a contract the next day because I had spent over a year building relationships. My greatest accomplishment has been building a team that gets it, wants it, and has the capacity to do it. I practice a four-quadrant system where people must have both vision and value. We can coach someone with vision but no value to build their skills, but those with no vision are not a good fit, even if they have value, because they can be like poison in an organization. Now I can focus on growing and building the business and trust how the widgets are made without having to oversee the making of them. We recently worked on a project called Home for All, a City of Birmingham initiative to build small homes for the unhoused.