Tennessee Voices, Episode 292: Sunny Bray, founder and CEO, Catalyst Collective
A leadership field study trip to witness the poverty of Indianapolis opened Sunny Bray’s eyes to the needs of hungry and homeless people in her community.
The experience also became the spark that led Bray, now a Nashville area resident, to found and become CEO of Catalyst Collective, an organization that consults and provides marketing services to nonprofits.
Bray used to think of herself as an “intrapreneur,” helping organizations grow and thrive from within.
Today, she is an entrepreneur, helping outside organizations thrive.
On this episode of the Tennessee Voices podcast, Bray spoke about her journey, navigating imposter syndrome and paralysis analysis, and finding her purpose.
She is also an advocate for creating deep community connections.
Bray is a member of the Asian American and Pacific Islander community, and we talked about lack of representation in leadership roles, “other”-ization and ways to amplify marginalized voices.
She recalled the time of the COVID shutdown. She was pregnant then, but there was a lot of uncertainty about the future of the nonprofits she served.
She shared her wisdom and resilience and offered this nugget: "Do what you can and leave the world a better place."
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About Tennessee Voices
The Tennessee Voices videocast is a 20-minute program, which started in March 2020 and invites leaders, thinkers and innovators who have written guest columns for a USA TODAY Network Tennessee publication to share their insights and wisdom with me and our viewers.
Please email your ideas for future guests to me at dplazas@tennessean.com. Thank you for watching.
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David Plazas is the director of opinion and engagement for the USA TODAY Network Tennessee and an editorial board member of The Tennessean. Tweet to him at @davidplazas.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Tennessee Voices: Creating deep community connections with Sunny Bray
