Tauri Laws Phillips

I really look at my time working my way through college and paying for everything semester by semester - I learned how to hustle. I worked every internship you could think of to really figure out what I wanted to do. I interned for modeling agencies, at Honda, at MTV, and at the Weather Channel. I literally interned everywhere you could in Atlanta. I worked a full-time job while going to school, and I'm really thankful for how hard it was because it set me up to never be scared of hard work, and it really set me up for understanding that I just gotta have to get it done. I also think being an athlete set me up for that. It gave me the grit, definitely. As a suburban kid, I definitely needed grit, and it gave me grit. While working really hard gave me grit, improv changed my perspective and taught me how to be assertive without judgment. It taught me that my ideas mattered in corporate spaces, and taught me how to navigate a lot of those spaces in a really positive, authentic way.

My best advice is to really hold tight to who you are, to who you authentically are. I think that there are a lot of ideas of what women in business are, and I think oftentimes we're sort of attempting to live up to those ideas when we can be our true, authentic selves in spaces without adapting to ideals that are outside of our authentic self. I think that you can be strong and powerful without being harsh or aggressive, if that's not you. I also think that you can be aggressive and still be kind. I think that you can be assertive and still care for space and be empathetic. So I think that we get the opportunity to be our full selves. It's just a question of figuring out how to navigate all of those things. But I do think we get to be our authentic selves, and I think there's a real power in that.

There are lots of studies that show the differences in fundraising from venture and fundraising in general for Black and brown and female founders, for under-resourced people. And that includes people who are socioeconomically lower class or from disadvantaged backgrounds - anyone who doesn't have access to the network. For me, it is teaching them how to build businesses that don't just focus on getting investment. It's how to build those businesses, how to build strong family businesses. I think we've gotten away from the idea that we're going to pass things down. There's this idea that you're only successful if you are selling to a big company, and there's so many different metrics of success that we can use. The gap in knowledge is one of the huge things in the industry. We're working to close that gap by just giving people the access to the understanding of what we can do. Because really, there's the opportunity for everyone to do exactly what their dreams are. It's just trying to figure out how to access funds, how to access the creativity, and how to sort of unlock the confidence to be able to do it.

I love empowering people to own their own lives. It's really fun being able to walk into a store and know that you worked on a product, but it's really, really rewarding to see founders that have become friends be successful, and watch them grow and get to own their own lives, get to be the kings of their domains, the queens of their domain. That is really, really exciting. I want founders to win. I'm really good at communicating with them from a loving place. I think they know that I want them to win. So I'm really good at telling them, you can win if you do these things, and giving tough love, but in a space that is really genuinely safe.