We recently connected with Amber Mikesell and have shared our conversation below.
Amber, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Do you think your parents have had a meaningful impact on you and your journey?
I love everything about this question. I always say that my parents are my foundation. Growing up I had the honor of observing two amazing individuals doing their best to be examples to three young children, even though they were young parents themselves. My father taught me the value of a hard day’s work while my mother taught me the importance of family. And as important as those lessons have been in my life, the greater lesson I took from both of them was that deep, connected love isn’t perfect.
My parents didn’t always agree and there were many times that they fought, but they made certain I understood that disagreeing didn’t mean that love went away. It is possible to love someone and not like the choices they are making or their behaviors at the time. If you’re open to it, love provides you the opening to learn about yourself and the person you love through the experience. To deepen the connection and to stand by one another, honoring other points of view even when you don’t agree with them.
I remember as a child we would have individuals stay with us who were between homes or simply desired a place to feel like they had a safe space. My parents didn’t have much to offer at the time, but what they had was made available for everyone to share in. From my father’s wisdom to my mother’s amazing cooking, ours was a respite for those who needed and desired to feel love.
With this as my childhood, it was easy to grow up desiring to share the same. If the world could feel what my parents gifted me as a child, I would feel like I’d accomplished my life’s mission.
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?
The organization I founded with my partner, Austin Uhl, is called Suivera. As crazy as it might sound, it started as daily texts going between friends. I have a private wellness practice and, as part of my routine, would send daily messages to individuals to help keep focus for the day. These texts became highly popular in our local area, so Austin and other members of our team joined in to support the effort and before we knew it – our little list had grown to include thousands of people from all over the world, all joining together out of a desire to be inspired and support one another.
People everywhere appeared to be longing for community, connection and tools for personal growth. The more this continued to occur, the more Austin and I knew there was a need, so we decided to do two things:
First – create a book from these daily text messages that seemed to be meaningful to so many and make it readily available (Book Title: Opportunities For Expansion);
Second – establish Suivera, a non-profit, all-faiths, grassroots effort to reawaken the heart of humanity through a global movement of love.
As fate would have it, we launched our global movement at the start of 2020, just before the lockdown. Although the pandemic presented its challenges for a new organization, Suivera found its footing and quickly grew to just over 1.1 million members from 87 countries, all dedicated to leading a life of love, compassion, inclusion, and global improvement — and we’re continuing to grow at a steady pace.
Suivera focuses on love as the common language and connection point and then utilizes that connection to show our members how to reignite and reawaken their hearts, aligning it with their minds to engage fully in life.
We do this in multiple ways:
1. free live stream courses and services available through Facebook
2. free courses, workshops, and resources available through our website
3. free weekly podcast
4. variable rate coaching programs, courses, and services
5. membership programs and so much more
Our goal is to offer tools and resources that support, inform and excite our members as they build a love-filled life. With over one million members joined together in success to date, we’re beyond excited to see where the next several years will take us!
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
Kicking off a grassroots global movement focused on love, compassion, and inclusion in a time when the world was in panic, confusion, and fear certainly presented our team with a need to step out of our way of looking at things and take on a new perspective. We couldn’t ignore what was happening. The pandemic was and still is terrifying for many.
The questions then became: how do we recognize, acknowledge and embrace the fear, but not become consumed by it? What are ways that we can move through the fear in a mentally, physically, and spiritually healthy way?
Our goal is empowerment – creating programs that place our members in a position that gives them knowledge and resources to actively move through fear and return to a place of inward connection with some semblance of peace. Once connected within, feeling less fear, they can align their heart and mind to make choices in their lives from this empowered state of being.
In times when our members need support, they have the community to turn to – leaning on one another to share their fears and talk things through. There is power in numbers. There is comfort in knowing you’re not alone. And although we were struggling during the pandemic and may continue to struggle today, we’re also lifting one another and showing each other love, support, compassion, and understanding. Through the challenges, we’re finding that our very purpose for creating the movement not only has merit but is vital.
If you could go back in time, do you think you would have chosen a different profession or specialty?
It’s been a very interesting journey to get to where I am now and I’m so grateful for every step of it. I would absolutely choose the same profession – but I can only say this with confidence because I’ve had the joy of exploring so many diverse professional paths in my life.
At the time, I didn’t quite understand how each one was weaving together to help me build to the amazing career I now enjoy. I simply followed my heart and allowed the current of my life to carry me where I felt I could be of the most service. But reflecting back, every skill built upon the next to give me exactly what I needed to establish Suivera.
From my time in organizations such as Battelle Memorial Institute researching and developing new products, to coming up through the merger of CompuServe/AOL/TimeWarner and learning technology and business acumen, to entering the world of insurance with Nationwide Insurance as I managed across large scale teams, to finally transition into founding my own organizations as I started businesses in film/television and multiple other entrepreneurial endeavors – I learned about myself as I learned about each line of work. I not only saw the strengths, gaps and areas where I could improve, but also those where the companies could improve as well.
I took notes constantly – always seeking to understand what my career was doing to my personal health, my family life, and my overall quality of life. I sought to know how work/life balance impacted those around me, especially those I worked with, and if there was anything I could do within the role that I held at any organization to create positive improvements. This was incredibly important to me for a few reasons. First, I had been diagnosed with cancer early on in my life and one of my saving graces was blending Eastern and Western approaches to healing. I knew that high stress and lack of proper rest created high levels of unhealthy hormones floating around in my body and would only serve to make me sick again. If I didn’t want to be sick, I needed to find balance.
Next, the knowledge I had gained from studying Eastern approaches to healing had shown me that when those around me are happy, healthy and balanced, it creates an easier space for me to be the same. We all share energy, and even more so when we are joining together toward a common purpose. This meant if those I worked with were consistently sick, angry, unsettled, stressed and overall unhappy – that was the state I would find myself in the longer we worked together. I knew I needed to be the change when I walked into a team that tilted in this direction, for their sake and mine. Many of the practices used in Suivera today were created to support the teams I led throughout my career.
Jump to today, I am incredibly grateful to utilize the technology skills, business acumen, knowledge and resources that I gained from each step in my career to be in service to our global community.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.suivera.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/suiveraofficial/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/suivera.org
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/suivera
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheHeartLeaderPodcast
- Other: https://www.youtube.com/@suivera https://ambermikesell.com
Image Credits
Byron Medina