How Lis Best Is Empowering Sustainability Innovators

Meet Lis Best, the Executive Coach and Founder behind Girls Club Collective, a community dedicated to empowering change agents in the sustainability and corporate responsibility space.

Lis’s journey began in her early 20s when she noticed a disheartening pattern among women in inspiring roles—many of them would eventually burn out and leave their dream jobs. This realization hit home for Lis, as she herself experienced burnout after working six years in international government affairs and corporate sustainability. Her own recovery journey sparked a deep desire to help others navigate their careers more sustainably. This mission ultimately led to the creation of Girls Club Collective, a space where growth, connection, and impact intersect. Lis’s commitment to sustainability and empowering change agents is not only transforming careers, but it’s also fostering a network of changemakers poised to shape a brighter future for us all.

We asked Lis about the founding story behind Girls Club Collective, the biggest misconceptions others have around entrepreneurship, and what’s next for her and her company.
 

Q: Tell us the story behind your company’s founding. How and why did you start working on Girls Club Collective?

A: I first had the idea for my business in my early 20s. I started to observe that so many of the women around me who had amazing roles doing super inspiring work would land their dream jobs, work there for five to seven years, and then quit because they had completely burned themselves out. It happened to me, too. After six years of working in the dreamiest role in international government affairs and corporate sustainability, I quit without the next thing lined up. I bought a one-way ticket to Italy so that I could travel and recover from burnout.

I had the benefit of participating in a number of personal and professional development programs relatively early in my career, from yoga teacher training to executive coaching,  masterminds to networking groups. They completely changed the trajectory of my life—giving me the confidence and self-trust to take a big step into the unknown.

When I had the opportunity to facilitate one for the first time about five years ago, it felt like the work I was supposed to be doing. Yet I also found myself wondering—what if instead of having an agenda totally focused on “the work,” we had a group like this that was focused on leadership, growth, and connection for women in this space?

That’s really where the seed for my business was planted. I wanted to help change agents be more effective and make their work more personally sustainable. Over the past four years, I’ve gotten to do that through coaching, community, and the Girls Club mastermind.

Q: What problem does Girls Club Collective solve? 

A: I believe that the reason businesses aren’t doing the right thing often comes down to how effective a change agent the leader at the helm of their sustainability or corporate responsibility work is. I also believe that the inner transformation of figuring out how to do this work in a personally sustainable way that doesn’t cost us everything is part of how we get the outer transformation of a future that works for all of us.

All too often, working in the sustainability or social impact space can be incredibly lonely. You’re usually under-resourced, and the people around you don’t always feel like your “team,” especially when you’re working to convince them to do business differently. The Girls Club Collective brings together the leaders and founders who are working to build a better future to make us feel less alone in doing this work. It allows us to tap into shared wisdom, intelligence, and resources found in community, play with power and adopt new tools that help us model a different type of leadership than the kind that got us into this mess.

Q: What are some of the most meaningful impacts Girls Club Collective has had so far? 

A: The different ways that our members and alumni have taken our model and tools and applied them in their day-to-day lives and careers. For example, one of our mastermind alumni took our model and applied it to how her impact lab supports their founders. Another alum told me our format inspired her academic institution’s sustainability accelerator program. 

It doesn’t stop there. Several people have taken the tools we use to open events in the Girls Club Collective and mastermind and applied them to their team meetings, with amazing results. Another one of our graduates who left corporate to become a coach has brought those resources to her women’s circles to create deeper connections within her cohort.

The other category of meaningful impacts definitely comes from the connections we’ve created that have turned into life-changing friendships and collaborations. Our members have hired each other for consulting projects, speaking gigs, and new roles. More importantly, many of them have become true friends. It makes my heart explode to see them celebrating each others’ launches on Linkedin, joining wineries and planning getaways together, and taking their friendships offline in fun and exciting ways.

Q: What’s the biggest misconception that others have around entrepreneurship?

A: I really think we need to talk more about the privilege required to make entrepreneurship even possible in the United States. For a country that prides itself on innovation, we have so little infrastructure to support entrepreneurs. The fact that healthcare has been tied to our jobs is ludicrous to me, as is the state of paid family leave and childcare. I don’t currently have children, and it is mind-boggling to me that we haven’t figured this out.

To become a founder in this country, you need so much by way of both resources and support. If I hadn’t had savings and equity from my corporate jobs, I don’t know how or if I would have been able to start and sustain my business as a single woman solo founder in a pandemic. And if I hadn’t met a partner relatively early into my entrepreneurial journey who provided health insurance and stability through a big portion of the early years, I don’t know if or how I would have kept going.

The reality is, almost everyone I know who has been able to start and sustain entrepreneurship has had some sort of privilege and support, whether it’s a partner with a lucrative job, family wealth, investors, or significant resources from earlier in their career, and these are often combined with other unearned advantages like being White, cisgendered, neurotypical, straight-sized, etc. There really is no such thing as “self made.” I wish we acknowledged that reality a whole lot more and did more to change it. There are a lot of brilliant people out there with a lot of brilliant ideas who deserve a whole lot more resources to be able to bring them to life in a meaningful and personally sustainable way.

Q: Have you felt like giving up? What made you persist?

A: Oh, I have felt like giving up so many times. I honestly wouldn’t believe a founder who told me otherwise. Bootstrapping a business from the ground up has been the hardest and most interesting thing I have ever done. I still fantasize about paid sick leave and a consistent paycheck at least once a month.

Three things have made me persist: the feeling that this is really, truly, the work I am meant to be doing on this planet; my partner’s support for my work and this vision; and the community of women who have believed in me and what we’re creating. They have held up a mirror to reflect the magic of what we’re building back to me when I have needed it most. Their support has inspired me to keep going even when I’ve needed to lay on the floor to gather my own strength and rest to prepare for the next chapter.

Q: We dare you to brag: What achievements are you most proud of?

A: I am really proud that I’ve gotten to be the “secret weapon” for hundreds of women changing the world over the past four years. I’m proud that our Girls Club founding members and alumni are some of the most amazing change agents I know, working with organizations like Google, Grove Collaborative, PwC, qb. consulting, and Robert Half. I’m proud that I’ve been recognized as a founder in the Hall of Femme, featured in publications like Nasdaq, Brit + Co, and Create & Cultivate, and invited to share my story on podcasts like Brunch & Learn and Climify. 

I’m proud that we’ve released more than 60 episodes of the Women Changing the World podcast, featuring leaders like Maia Tekle, Founder of Dispatch Goods and Partner at Mister Sister Studio; Aditi Mohapatra, Vice President of Global Social Impact and Sustainability and Expedia Group; Alison Taylor, Professor at NYU Stern School of Business; Ladies Get Paid Founder, author, and entrepreneur Claire Wasserman; and best-selling author Jamie Varon.

On a personal level, I’m proud that all of the above happened while I was falling in love, living as a digital nomad for over a year in more than eight cities in the United States, becoming an aunt, prioritizing my health, and investing in deep healing and personal growth. That growth has allowed me to actually feel the fun, impact, and joy that has come with this chapter of life and entrepreneurship. I brag that I am living proof that magic is real, that our desires were put there for a reason, and that we are our own greatest investments.

Q: Has your definition of success evolved throughout your journey as a founder?

A: My definition of success has absolutely evolved throughout my journey as a founder. I feel like a lot of my earliest determinants of success were around revenue milestones—making enough money to theoretically sustain both me and my business.

To be totally transparent, I still haven’t gotten to a revenue point that can pay me on par with what my compensation would be in a corporate role, and that’s definitely still part of my definition of success. But what’s equally or arguably more important to me now is building out a team to support me that I actually enjoy working with, creating a business that is both sustainable as a business and personally sustainable for me as a leader, and living a life that delights me.

Q: How have you grown as a leader since starting Girls Club Collective? What experiences have contributed to this growth?

A: I feel like one of the biggest unlocks for me has been realizing that my role as the leader of my company is to model and embody the feminine leadership that I believe is so desperately needed. What that means in practice is asking for help, saying “I don’t know,” celebrating everything, being vulnerable, listening, inviting people in, and so much more.

It was such a relief to recognize that my role as the leader of this business is to be willing to do things differently than so much of what I see modeled as “leadership.” And it has been such a gift to notice how different leadership feels from this place than from a patriarchal, individual place of hustle.

Q: What have you learned about building a team and a support network around yourself?

A: First of all, I’ve learned to only hire people who I really enjoy spending a lot of time with as humans, which has been a game-changer for me. I am also a big fan of the Jenny Blake school of thought around hiring people who are great at what they do, which makes my life as a founder so much easier.

I’ve also learned that there are so many different ways that the people around me can and do support me and my business. I have friends who are there for mutual support, friends who randomly go on social media sprees and “like” all my content, friends who make referrals, friends who send me the nicest text messages, and friends who help spread the word.

Again, I am such a believer that we can’t do this alone. And there are so many more “roles” that people can help from, even, and especially, outside our formal “team.”

Q: What would you tell your younger self if you were to start your entrepreneurial journey all over again?

A: I would tell my younger self to remember that it’s a marathon, not a sprint, and there isn’t a prize for working the hardest or getting anywhere fastest. I would also really reiterate that you can ask for help along the way. I remind my clients all the time that people want to help them, and yet this is a lesson I am continually deepening into. I would also remind myself to trust my intuition. I have a lot to learn and my body also often knows more about the best next step than I realize.

Q: What’s next for you and Girls Club Collective?

A: We’re really excited to be offering the fourth cohort of the Girls Club mastermind this year. For the first time ever, I’m training a team of co-facilitators who bring so much magic, wisdom, and compassion to our shared space. We’re also continuing to onboard amazing new change agents who want to, in the words of adrienne maree brown, “shift our understanding of how power can be held,” as founding members of the Girls Club Collective. 

I’m really excited to be building more sustainability and resilience into Girls Club Collective as an organization and to play with new ways for our members to take on more leadership within our community. I’m also exploring a really exciting collaboration with a corporate foundation to see how we can apply our leadership development model to a specific sustainability challenge for their industry and can’t wait to see where those conversations go.

Last but not least, I’m calling in a book deal and potentially some investors to really help nourish and super-charge our next chapter. You read it here first!

Lis is a member of Dreamers & Doers, an award-winning community that amplifies extraordinary women entrepreneurs, investors, and leaders by securing PR, forging authentic connections, and curating high-impact resources. Learn more about Dreamers & Doers and get involved here.

The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.

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