We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Shraavya Pydisetti a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Shraavya , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? The world needs to hear more realistic, actionable stories about this critical part of the business building journey. Tell us your scaling up story – bring us along so we can understand what it was like making the decisions you had, implementing the strategies/tactics etc.
The story of the beginning of our organization stems from the circumstances we were in at the beginning of the pandemic. During COVID, all of the opportunities to help people in a conventional way vanished. Along with the chances to live a normal life, people were left permanently changed and even died because of the virus. As more and more people suffered, I began to feel more and more helpless. The fact that I couldn’t do anything was the cause of my failure to keep myself together. I knew that I had to do something, no matter how small, to help people in need — to give myself a purpose. I began by gathering a few neighborhood students who were looking for volunteer opportunities and ways to pass the time. Together, we developed a number of minor neighborhood initiatives, including communal cross guards, awareness videos, upcycling workshops, and park cleanups. The idea that we immediately helped the earth become a little cleaner — a little better fueled a fire within me to do even more. My heart felt a pull towards service like it was exactly what I was meant to do. After a while, I looked into what more I could do to give us more of a foundation. After hours of research, I looked into all of what’s needed to start a non-profit and realized that I could create a service-based platform. However, being new to both the business and nonprofit sectors, I struggled a lot trying to find the right resources and guidance to fill out the necessary information for registration. Not only that, many believed that I was too young and inexperienced to launch my own organization and that I wouldn’t possess the skill set needed to succeed. Thankfully, I had an excellent community that believed in me to fall back on and they provided me with a myriad of resources to navigate the process. Despite all of the challenges and speculation, we achieved our goal and became an official volunteer organization.
Though we’ve been successful for quite some time, we didn’t always have the foundation that we have today. Our first meeting consisted of arguments and end-on-end discussions as we tried to settle on even a temporary name for ourselves. After scouring through hundreds of possible names, I settled on “Project Querencia”, the term “Querencia” meaning a place where one feels at home. Looking at how far we’ve come, I can proudly say that we chose the right name. We’re not just a group of friends and acquaintances; we’ve become a family.
Fast forward to our second year, we had found our footing in executing projects and finding goals that fit our team, we began navigating the seas of expansion. Knowing that we wanted to expand past just the City of Coppell, we started the search for individuals that would be willing to start the organization in other cities in Dallas as well as out of the state. Halfway through our second year, we established the first two chapters of Project Querencia outside of Coppell — Frisco, Texas, and Edison, New Jersey. Expansion sounds exciting, right? Actually, it ended up being quite difficult. Although my chapter heads were incredible, communication was difficult, and understanding different areas and figuring out different leadership styles was challenging. We definitely struggled and didn’t plan for the overwhelming amount of work that would come with the growth. The pressure on us grew but by staying strong to our core values, we were able to persevere. Slowly, we developed a balance in expansion and I allowed myself to rely on my team more rather than simply carrying all the weight on my own. Most of all, especially when it comes to growth, it’s extremely important to stay true to your mission but also embrace the changes and the differences that will come along. Your community becomes bigger and it truly is incredible. I’m proud to say that Project Querencia has now expanded to 10 chapters across the United States and out of the country in India and our team has grown to over 200 members!
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?
Project Querencia is a nonprofit organization with the mission to empower the changemakers of tomorrow. Our philosophy in the sector is based on the saying “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime” – Lao Tzu. Just like that, we believe that simply providing the youth or those in need with resources, money or essentials will only sustain them for a finite time but if we work towards these people and towards educating them on how to self-sustain themselves and help their communities from within, we will be able to teach them how to survive and succeed on their own leading to a self-sustaining world. If we all actively make a change every day, we get closer to achieving a real and authentic world. Our team all together has helped over 23,000 people over 140 initiatives and I’m so proud of the impact that we have made. More than that, I’m most proud of the growth of each of our members as they traverse new opportunities and forge a path connecting service and their passions.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
A part of my journey that really required resilience from me was realizing that not everyone is meant to see the journey out with you and that not everyone will stand by you. There have been countless times when people haven’t believed in me or in Project Querencia. I think one of my tipping point instances was when my vice president said that I was incapable of managing a team and that I don’t hold leadership potential. However, I didn’t allow it to bring me down, I rather found strength in those who DID believe in me. With these challenges, I’ve come to a couple of realizations – Leading at the most important times can feel extremely lonely. I’ve always admired people who are in positions of power and I always thought to myself “I bet they have it easy, they just get to tell people what to do” but it really isn’t like that and I’ve learned it the hard way the past few years. I always believe the best in people and I often let myself get hurt because of that, what people think of me matters to me so much, but when you’re in a position of leadership, that can tear you apart.
When you make decisions, there are people who will agree with you and those who won’t. There are people who will resonate with your leadership style and those that don’t and that’s OKAY. There are individuals I’ve crossed paths with in my journey who have said that I’m unfit to lead because of my age, people who have told me straight to my face that they don’t respect me because of my leadership decisions, and people who have simply used me and this organization’s platform for their own personal gain and left. I wish I could say that I didn’t let it get to me but I did. I hurt a lot and I self-doubted a lot. I had this constant thought in my head, “What if I’m the problem?”. But I’m not. And you’re not. People envy your success and recognition and try to tear you down. And that’s the real truth, whether it’s a school club, a nonprofit organization, or a full-fledged business, no matter how hard you try to be liked by everyone or please everyone, you’re not going to.
What does it mean to be a leader? It means making decisions with a pure heart, following your heart, and just doing what you think is best with the RIGHT intentions. It means that even when everyone leaves, you hold to your values and your beliefs and you simply don’t let go even when the world is crumbling. I’ve had a lot of people leave my life in the last year, people I called my best friends, and I almost succumbed to changing myself but I didn’t. I went with my gut on this one. I was left alone for quite a while and leading became difficult, being a leader at that moment didn’t feel as rewarding. But I fell back on the service, I fell back on helping people, and on the core values that my leadership and Project Querencia were built on. I put faith in myself for once and I grew. I grew and I became stronger. I knew I was doing what was right for me and so I found a new team and a new set of people who were right for me. That’s another thing I’ve learned — in leadership, if you’re doing what you’re supposed to, the right people will ALWAYS find you even if it takes a bit of time.
When you’re a leader, you’re the voice for your community or your group of people. Your job is to represent them and evolve and grow with them BUT being the voice for others isn’t enough, advocating for others isn’t enough. Make sure that you value your own voice just as much as those around you. You have to advocate for yourself too. You will come to learn that you will always be yourself’s biggest advocate.
What I’ve learned is that leadership is not a straight-cut road, it’s not easy and it’s definitely not for the weak. It will tear you down, bring out your worst vulnerabilities, and test you. It will teach you resilience and force you to be honest with yourself. Celebrate your wins but also your losses, put your health first, take breaks, grow, and remember that the journey will teach you so much more than your end goal.
How do you keep your team’s morale high?
I think the biggest advice I can give for managing a team and maintaining high morale is to listen. When you’re in charge, the best thing you can do for your team – for them to grow and become better – is to listen. Being open to other people and their leadership ideas and styles can make a big difference in the impact you want to make as a team. If you help people feel heard, they will become more open to stepping out of their boundaries and taking the next step to becoming the best versions of themselves. More than that, the best thing you can do is build friendships. The best teams are those that are comprised of strong relationships – they’re teams that work hard but also have fun. It builds reliability and commitment. Make sure you’re having fun and that you create a team that is bonded through love and trust — an organization is like a pyramid, you have to create change in the leadership for the success of your members.
Contact Info:
- Website: projectquerencia.org | shraavyapydisetti.com
- Instagram: project.querencia
- Facebook: project.querencia
- Linkedin: projectquerencia | Shraavya.pydisetti
- Twitter: projectquerenc1
Image Credits
KCBY Coppell, Project Querencia