Lara Holliday, Founder of Tide Risers, was recently featured at the She Thinks Purple Female Founders event at the Yale Club in New York City. She spoke of the critical role of community in the entrepreneurial journey, and shared some of the events that helped shape the mission and values of Tide Risers. The transcript of her remarks follow. We hope you will enjoy learning more about her journey and the founding of Tide Risers.

My name is Lara Holliday, and this is my founder’s story.

Back in the fall of 2015, I was intently looking forward to the possibility of electing our nation’s first female President. The opportunity to help break that final glass ceiling was hugely enticing, and I felt compelled to do whatever I could to help with the campaign. But I didn’t know where to start. So I did what I do: I started talking to people, who connected me with others. I decided that one of the best uses of my time and energy would be to go to another state and help with the get out the vote effort.

Now, I’m a planner. It’s the only way to make my very full life as a working mama work. With some exceptions, the juggling act works thanks to the well-oiled machinery of my calendaring and project management systems, which I swear rival those of NASA’s. There is little room, however, for any kind of risk-taking.

The opportunity to be involved in a historic election was just the motivation I needed to kick me out of my routine and go spend several days traveling through South Carolina helping to get out the vote. The logistics were daunting. After agonizing over the time out of my schedule and away from my family and work, Josephine, my then seven year-old daughter, said to me: “Go, mama. You have to go to South Carolina and do this.”

And so I did. So that’s how I came to be driving a rental car around dirt roads in rural neighborhoods in South Carolina with a woman I barely knew, living off of Waffle House (not that I’m complaining about that) so I could pursue something I believed in. This was not part of the plan.

I was going door to door in a neighborhood referred to as the “heir lands” on the outskirts of Charleston. This area is populated by folks who are direct descendants of the enslaved people who were forced to work the land for no compensation. After emancipation, as a form of reparation, some of those families were given parcels of land, with the promise that their families could keep the land for as long as they produced heirs. My job as a volunteer for the campaign was to go door to door to make sure residents of these neighborhoods were registered to vote, and to be sure they were making plans to get to their polling sites on election day.

This was not easy work, and it was even a bit scary at times. Most people we met were warm, welcoming, and more than ready to talk. There were some less-than-welcoming people, and one or two less-than-welcoming dogs, whose bark turned out to be much greater than their bite.

The amazing thing about this experience was that I got to talk to all of these people who I otherwise never would have met about their values, their frustrations, and their concerns about their family’s well-being.

I met a woman named Ms. Andrea who owned her own catering business, and couldn’t afford to donate to the campaign. Instead, she generously gave of her time and delicious food, waking up at 4 AM to cook on primary day so she could serve chicken and waffles to all of us volunteers.

I met a young man who was disenfranchised and profoundly disillusioned, but who took the time to have a long and insightful conversation with me about why he didn’t believe in voting, and also listened to me as I talked about why I thought voting was still important.

I also had the great fortune of spending time with my trusty and devoted road trip partner who spent many hours in the car with me listening, sharing, and helping me refine my vision for a startup that was at that point only a twinkle in my eye.

So down in South Carolina, in a place where I wasn’t expecting to find much in common with other people, I found there was more that united us than I ever would have expected. I learned and grew as a result of these genuine conversations I was able to have with people.

And back in Brooklyn, I once again learned and grew through the conversations I had with friends and family, when we were faced with the ultimate reality that in a democracy, sometimes the other side wins.

I found that when we uncover what unites us, we can form community that gives us strength and resource that would otherwise be beyond our own grasp.

As founders, we all know that there is no success without hard work. But drawing upon the resources of a broad-based community gives you more insight and perspective that you would ever have alone. We are stronger, braver, and more fulfilled within community when that community helps to push us past our comfort zones to tackle the challenges that might seem otherwise insurmountable.

This experience convinced me of the need for an intentionally diverse community for women leaders who wanted to shape the future of our world for the better. I wanted this community to serve as a model for the concept that when we support one another rather than compete, we all rise. So on the heels of the inauguration and the historic Women's March in Washington, DC. I launched Tide Risers, a year-long cohort experience for women leaders working toward the greater good.

Since the founding of Tide Risers, I have observed the power of women coming together from various industries, backgrounds, creeds, and political leanings to form a community built upon respect, mutual support, and open-minded dialog. I have borne witness to the strength that comes from making the choice to place great value on our most fundamental commonality, which is our shared humanity.

My advice to female founders is to nourish and lean on the community around you, and to grow it and evolve it to include more people with varied backgrounds. This is the secret sauce of Tide Risers: it delivers a diverse community to help women rise and soar.

Lara Holliday delivering this speech at the Yale Club in New York City

My daughter Josephine was so right when she said I had to go to South Carolina. The destination, however, wasn’t nearly as important as the journey.

Lara Holliday is the Founder of Tide Risers, a year-long cohort program for women leaders committed to the greater good.

The Journey of Community