We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Sarah Webb. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Sarah below.

Sarah, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Risk taking is something we’re really interested in and we’d love to hear the story of a risk you’ve taken.

My biggest risk was leaping off the tenure track in order to blaze new trails. I had gotten one of those infamously “rare” tenure track jobs at a university as an English professor. I love teaching and education, but I was unconsciously relying on this job as a safety net, a “more practical” career option that would allow me the flexibility and resources to feed my passion for Colorism Healing on the side or as a branch of the work I did for the job. Getting this job was always meant to be a stepping stone to bigger career aspirations, but I was tempted by the siren call of predictability and consistency, something entrepreneurship rarely affords.

I believe the universe orchestrated a series of circumstances and events that would make me uncomfortable enough that I would decide to change. After the traumas of a toxic relationship and the chronic racism of the town and institution where I worked, I finally decided to leave. This was a major risk for me because I’m not naturally inclined to business. For me, this entrepreneurship journey is a means to an end as it enables to me to give myself completely to my love and passion for Colorism Healing. As of right now, this has been the best risk of my life.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am the founder and owner of Colorism Healing, a global leader in raising awareness, shifting attitudes, and taking action to address colorism with corporate, consumer, and community strategies. I wrote about colorism for the first time in 2011 on my first blog, and in 2013 I decide to launch a website solely dedicated to the issue. Since then, my myriad efforts to address colorism have included designing college courses, hosting an international writing contest, publishing books, teaching workshops, and mentoring students across the world from Sacramento, California to Sydney, Australia. I have also written and contributed to several academic and non-academic articles, presented at numerous conferences, and been featured on regional NPR stations, Fox Soul TV, the Illinois Times, Forbes.com, the TEDx stage, and many other platforms.

In this current iteration of my business, I serve companies and institutions through DEI speaking, training, and consulting. My unique approach provides education and strategies built on global, cross-cultural, and intersectional frameworks.

I am originally from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and currently taking a slow journey around the world as a digital nomad. I have been blessed with an amazing nephew and niece who always remind me of what’s most important in life.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

The most important aspect of my online reach over the past 12 years has been my values of courage and authenticity: Be Brave and Be Sarah. I realized early on that Being Sarah required Being Brave. And implicitly baked into that recipe is the practice of integrity–actually being the person you portray yourself to be, actually believing and living what you preach.

The commitment to being Sarah is what has sustained me all these years because it ensures that social media is a space I can actually enjoy and one that feels less like a grind and more like an opportunity for self-expression.

The second most important aspect of how I’ve approached social media is the decision to deeply appreciate and give my best to whoever shows up, no matter how few or how many. While I want the important message of Colorism Healing to reach the entire world, I know each individual person matters along the way. So I’ve not obsessed over numbers. I’ll have posts with over 5,000 likes and posts with barely 50 likes. I don’t delete the posts that only have 50 likes because my purpose for posting it wasn’t popularity. So my advice in this regard is to approach posting on social media with the question: Is this something I want to say, create, publish, or share because I want to or because I have a greater purpose for it, not because it’ll make me look popular?

And this is not counter to good social media strategy. The best social media strategy helps you deliver content you’re excited about rather than dictating what that content should be.

Have you ever had to pivot?

The first major pivot in my life, and probably the most important one, came as a painful existential crisis halfway through college. At the time, my entire identity and self-concept was me as current architecture student and future architect. My life was trying to show me something different, but I didn’t recognize the early signals. It was after Fall semester of my junior year that I made a D in my studio course, which essentially counted as two D’s. I was in danger of not only getting expelled from the architecture program, but also losing all my scholarships and financial aid if my GPA suffered anymore.

So I made the hard decision to let go of that dream, let go of who I thought of was and actually become more of who I actually am. The pivot from architecture major to English major turned out to be a quantum leap both personally and professionally.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://colorismhealing.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/colorismhealing/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colorism/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ColorismHealing

Image Credits
1- Sarah L. Webb 2- Hispanic National Bar Association 3- Vertrell Yates