We were lucky to catch up with Rebecca Bender recently and have shared our conversation below.

Rebecca, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea

I’ve started several companies thus far. It always starts by seeing a gap, a need that isn’t being met. I know that can be antiquated advice and now it’s about “finding your micro niche”, but the same concept applies.

My first company was an Elective Ultrasound Center – we provided 3D images and gender reveals for pregnant moms. I had seen these everywhere when traveling, but not in MY community. So I put pen to paper – how do you rent, lease or buy an ultrasound machine, what are my state laws for non-medical use of equipment, how much to lease an office space and how much did I need to bring home a month to pay my own bills? Once I had the hard figures, I created a plan to accomplish them.

But I also had this crazy life experience I had lived through and even though my business was steady growing over the years, I knew I couldn’t stay quiet forever about surviving human trafficking. It ate at me. Starting my life over before the ultrasound center was really hard, especially in a community where no specialized services to help survivors find healing existed. So even though the business was going well, I couldn’t shake the longing to help other women like me figure it out too.

I sold my company and started telling my story publicly, living off whatever got donated those first few times and a lot of family support. I realized that it wasn’t enough to just tell my story – there needed to be a call to action. I took a bird’s eye view of all the places I had interacted with and realized I had interacted with law enforcement a lot during my time being trafficked but they never knew, never asked the right questions, never showed the trauma informed empathy and options I knew would have been more productive in my escape. Again – found a missing piece. I put together bullet points of what I wish they would have done different and used that to create a slide deck and started offering trainings. A little while after that, I started having other survivors reach out and ask if I would mentor them. At the time I was going to college online and had this moment when I thought, “if I can get a masters degree online, I can mentor online.” I put pen to paper and wrote out the logistics: 1) what technology was my college using and how much does it cost? 2) how long is a semester.

My school used a technology back then called Moodle and it was FREE. Semesters were 16 weeks so I did a similar thing with my other trainings and made a bullet point list of 16 things to help survivors find their own specialty, book contracts, learn to speak and turn it into an LLC or 501c3. I knew the classes had to be free as many survivors escape and are starting over with nothing, let alone extra income to buy an online course. Over the last ten years, I’ve trained over 143,000 community professionals including FBI, Homeland Security, Undercover officers and more and our online school Elevate Academy, has assisted over 1600 survivors at getting job ready.

I’ve continued to expand and scale over that time – adding all different types of classes focused on career exploration and economic empowerment and adding to my own knowledge and insight to help criminal justice systems better tackle the issue of human trafficking.

But those are the basic answers – find what is missing, put pen to paper on logistics, make a plan around those and include what you need to keep your own lights on. The beginning is always like a side hustle that takes way more work, but as it grows, it allows you to transition to your idea as your full time career.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I am the CEO & Founder of Elevate Academy – an online school to help survivors of human trafficking get job ready after escape. We are an economic empowerment organization that teaches career exploration, finding your specialty, life planning, financial literacy and more. We also train law enforcement on investigations and prosecutions, helping to decrease arrest of survivors and decrease barriers to re-entry.

Getting involved in launching a nonprofit was really about taking my own story of being trafficked for nearly six years and going back to help others. I had to learn new skills and a new industry. I’m most proud of breaking into fields that I would not have ever expected to get into – Ted talks, author, and even producing a television series.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

For me, building my reputation as a subject matter expert was all about DOING the work. I think most people may look at me and think I just share my story. That is not the case. I put in lots of hours immersing myself in this work. I would show up to a crisis call at a hotel room at odd hours to help law enforcement talk to victims, I attended undercover operations with contacts, I became emergency certified as a foster parent to take in a trafficked youth – all unpaid! I took classes and workshops on trauma informed interviewing and open source investigation. I also leaned on mentors and coaches to help teach me both leadership and nonprofit management. Instead of bing watching a tv show on the weekends, I’d binge write my next book or read up on upcoming laws being passed. I put in the work that gave me SO much more insight that I was able to bring into my trainings than just my one lived experience.

A lot of people want to build their company, their brand, their reputation as a thought leader in their space, but they forget that you have to deeply know and understand your field, what questions people are asking and YOU have to come up with answers to those questions if you want to be the go to to find answers. Invest in yourself, your own growth and dive in to do the work.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

The obvious story that illustrates my resilience is overcoming human trafficking. But that is catchy phrase that doesn’t dive into the depth of what that looks like. Imagine fleeing for your life with nothing but a small suitcase and a seven year old little girl in tow. I started over with nothing. I slept on couches and eventually got on government housing. My first apartment was a mattress on the floor from craigslist I shared with my daughter and a pot and pan from goodwill. It was humbling and quite scary. It made me realize that poverty isn’t freedom and while I worked a full time job and took night classes at the local community college I just poured myself into figuring out what would be next for me – why others didn’t make it out and I did.

So many other times I’ve had to find the mental fortitude to push forward. I went through an ugly divorce ten years later, faced a million dollar lawsuit, had a tv show I had been working on for eight years get cut. So many times it’s felt like the effort and time put into things did not pan out the way I anticipated. But each time I just had to keep telling myself, (to the point of writing it on a post it on my laptop), “by this time next year things will be different.” You have to trust and believe that doors shut for a reason, people get cut out of your life for a reason, and take each lesson as just that – a lesson. What can you learn from it, what character needs to be developed from it, what can I do different next time and use that to keep moving forward.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://rebeccabenderinitiative.org/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/imrebeccabender/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/imrebeccabender/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@RebeccaBenderInitiative

Image Credits

Bethany Sellers