Community Voices: Working Women Stories with Effie Santos

Welcome to the Catalyst’s Community Voices platform. We’ve curated community leaders and thinkers from all parts of our great city to speak on issues that affect us all. Visit our Community Voices page for more details.

Click the arrow above to listen to the full long-form interview.

Say hello to Working Women Stories. In this second episode in our series, your host Jessica Rivelli, the founder of Working Women of Tampa Bay, brings Effie Santos, founder and chief strategist of Red Root Strategies to the studio.

Effie Santos

After working in the financial industry for 25 years, with both for-profit companies and nonprofits, Santos identified serious gaps between purposeful companies and the nonprofits they sought to align with. Companies and nonprofits were constantly struggling to create sustainable relationships.

Creating a cause culture within for-profit business has become an important factor in recruiting and retaining employees, clients, and the bottom line; especially as the workforce increasingly trends millennial.

In its capacity, Red Root Strategies does a deep dive on companies to understand their mission, vision and values. They then identify key nonprofit partners to align with those same three elements.

Santos’ biggest piece of advice for entrepreneurs is to take time to be still and disengage from the day-to-day business. One year ago, Santos took time for a self-evaluation and polled 30 people in her life to choose two to three traits to describe her. That process brought immense clarity, says Santos, and she wishes she had done it much sooner.

Santos and Rivelli talk entrepreneurship, women supporting women, the Working Women Foundation and the power of “seed money” grants.

To listen to the full long-form conversation, click the arrow above.