“Awakened Leader”

Lisa Colella, Founder of Truist has been a maven in the employer branding industry since it’s early days. Her diversity of experiences in different organizational settings combined with her natural empathic qualities, have fueled her ability to create a company that serve the needs of all key stakeholders in meaningful, unique ways. She is inventive, resilient and believes that there is always a way – “if you can’t find it, create it” is her mantra. This has led to many happy clients, successful talent brand professionals, inspired employees, and the survival of a new small business during the COVID-19 market turbulence.

“To win in these challenging times I believe we need to help humans be in their authentic power more, and help those in power be more human.”

Having worked in both consumer and recruitment consulting agencies, as well as in-house corporate roles prior to starting Truist, Lisa experienced a few gaps in the industry that were just begging to be solved for. Truist was founded on the belief that both sides of the talent-employer relationship will benefit exponentially when the truths of both sides are discovered, aligned and intentionally put into action. In essence, happy employees produce successful companies and when that happens, both sides win financially and emotionally. Putting this belief in practice has led to the company offering support options for both sides of the talent-employer equation.

Truist consults with companies to help them solve complex talent challenges – attraction, retention, engagement, etc. by getting to the root cause of their “people issues” and developing realistic, creative, insight-driven solutions to solve for them. “We also work with talent in a few different ways. We offer a Talent Brand Coaching program for industry practitioners who want to further excel in their career or for those looking to break into the profession, and we plan to offer more career support services to the general labor market with a special focus on mothers undergoing career transitions, re-employment for those impacted by the 2020 crises and new graduates entering the workforce,” adds Lisa.

Lisa is a diehard truth-seeker, unafraid to verbalize “elephants in the room” as the basis for influencing change and creating solutions that are based on truth, and are therefore effective in the workplace (and the world). She believes that people are inherently good and have a genuine desire to do well. She also believes that leaders have good intentions, but often need a “mirror moment” to take the meaningful, often hard, actions that will best serve the people on whom their business relies.

One of the best projects Lisa and her team did was for AllWays Health Partners. The scope went beyond the typical Talent Branding projects and involved redeveloping the company’s Mission, Vision and Values as a starting point to bring their new corporate brand platform and transformation strategy to life. The new Mission/Vision/Values developed were positioned to the company’s employees as a collaborative rally cry, Believe/Do/Be. “Due to Truist’s proprietary process, which is grounded in truth and favors co-creation between the client and our experts, we were able to get our proposal signed off by the Board in the first round of presentations,” says Lisa.

Operating from a balanced place of values, logic and possibility, she coaches and inspires people and executive teams to be their authentic selves, do their best work, and continuously grow beyond expectation, often in ways that they don’t even see or know themselves. She has a particular passion for helping women (especially working mothers) design and live balanced lives they truly love. Core to her approach is helping them overcome limiting beliefs, break free from outdated social programming, manage their time intentionally, and connecting them to resources that support their holistic ability to thrive. Lisa is living this difficult journey firsthand as a working entrepreneur simultaneously raising two young daughters with whom she values ample time and strong connection with.

In turn, she is in the process of doubling down her focus on supporting working mothers. “I plan to launch a new lifestyle business in 2021 that would more easily connect new mothers to a holistic community of support they often don’t know exists or are not in the optimal frame of mind to research and access. It’s time we stop hiding the fact that working mothers are often also overwhelmed CEOs of their households and need more help so they can actually enjoy the lives they work so hard to sustain,” she explains. “While Truist’s services and products skew more towards companies and corporate leaders, this new business’s services and products will skew more towards mothers. My dream is that at some point the two entities meet in the middle and create lasting change for both sides that is desperately needed.”

For the days to come, Truist is placing heavy emphasis on helping company leaders navigate changes to their employee experience and ultimately what they are calling their holistic “People Deal” as they emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic. For smaller Employer Branding teams, they are shifting their business model during the pandemic to offer more DIY+ product offerings so that they can access expert employer branding support at prices they can afford. IE