Leisa:  Hello, I’m Leisa Holland Nelson and welcome to another edition of Women Mean Business where we’re going to take you up close and personal with extraordinary women doing extraordinary things.  My guest today is Raissa Evans, the Founder of Running Reload, a marketing, project management, Jack of all trades kind of business.  Raissa tell us how you got to founding Running Reload.

Raissa:  Thank you Leisa, thanks for having me back.  So I like to say I grew up in technology.  I grew up in Southern California, my father was a machine language interface engineer, he worked for Western Digital amongst other Irvine-type digital jobs and so I grew up at 8 years old soldering mother boards for my allowance.  So I had the internet before a lot of people had it and I had a home PC before a lot of households had that and so I’ve always understood technology from a very early age, but when I was on the high school to college path I was going to be a lawyer.

And so I went to college on a debate scholarship, I studied Pre-law and Communications as a double major – partially because of the debate background – and right before I graduated college and had to decide to go to law school I decided it wasn’t law that I loved, it was persuasion and influence and decided I could do that better in marketing.  And what I had studied under Pre-law were things way ahead of their time like Game Theory and other types of power structure political science and that worked really well in the new theories of marketing strategy.

So with the background in technology I went and got a job with telephony company in Houston – my father had moved us to Houston being recruited by Compaq – and went from a telephony company to eventually the accounting firm PKF Texas; very progressive accounting firm, one of the best in the country and eventually left there in July 2015 to found Running Reload.

Leisa:  So what pushed you out the door?

Raissa:  It was a really tough call.  I’d been at PKF Texas for 12 ½ years, they’re a Best Company to Work For for 14 years in a row with a flexible workplace environment and I had many very good mentors there.  What finally pushed me out the door is my vision to help companies achieve more toward their growth goals and so I really wanted to do more of what I’m good at more of the day.  And I had done a lot in the accounting industry and I wanted to help a wider variety of industries.

Leisa:  Thank you very much.

Raissa:  Thank you.

Leisa:  There you have it, another extraordinary woman doing extraordinary things.  I’m Leisa Holland Nelson, author and voice of Women Mean Business.  You can find me on Facebook at Women Mean Business, follow me on Twitter @lhnelson and see us again next week with another edition.