Today we’d like to introduce you to Whitney Nelson.
Whitney, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
Ever since I was a child, I knew I wanted to have my own business. Both my Grandma and my Dad had their own businesses so I quickly became familiar with the idea of being my own boss. I also always knew I wanted to help people. Once I reached high school, I began to learn about activism and the hardships of marginalized groups. However, when I went to college, I pursued a degree in Computer Science. I didn’t quite know what I wanted to do with the degree at the time so I focused on making money for a while. After I graduated, I started to realize that I drifted away from my initial goals. I knew that eventually, I would create a tech company but I still didn’t know what area of tech that I would focus on. It wasn’t until my last year in graduate school when I realized that I had been learning and studying my focus since I was in high school. So, I merged entrepreneurship, technology, and activism to form Illum Visions, a company that challenges the existing structures within the tech industry.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
The biggest obstacle that I face is people not understanding the concept of Illum Visions in its entirety. I think a lot of times, people reduce Illum down to a company that can make websites and mobile apps. However, it’s so much bigger than that. At Illum, we want to transform the way that technology exists. There are a lot of people who do not have access to technology based on their identity. We take websites and applications to the next level by ensuring that all of our products are accessible and inclusive to everyone, no matter who they are.
Please tell us about Illum Visions.
Illum Visions is a consulting company that uses principles of inclusion and accessibility to create websites, mobile applications, and several other forms of software. Our services include user experience strategy, research, design, and branding. We center intersectionality, inclusion, gender-based, accessibility, and intentional design throughout all of our work recognizing that the layered identities of a person’s age, gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, class, religion, etc., contribute towards their needs for a product. This approach helps companies identify gaps within their customer base and save money by avoiding recursive processes of inclusion after production. It also helps to increase the number of people using their products by providing a safe and inclusive environment.
Illum Visions is unique because we do not exclude this process to customers and users; we also understand the diverse needs of stakeholders and business owners who are marginalized due to the lack of technological resources. We help small emerging companies with limited resources scale their business by tailoring their technology needs to their available resources. Illum Visions prides itself on ensuring that we also have a diverse team of visionaries. We are currently a team of black women who relate to the experience of being left out on the basis of our race, gender, or sexuality. We also seek to provide a safe space internally for people who are often glanced over or ignored.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
The team that I have now is amazing, but we only have so many hands. We are constantly coming up with great ideas that have to wait because we are already swamped with work. So if I had to start over, I would focus on growing a solid team of leaders sooner so that we can execute more visions for the company.
Pricing:
- Websites: starting at $300
- Social Media Branding: starting at $50
Contact Info:
- Website: www.illumvisions.com
- Email: illumvisions@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/illumvisions/?igshid=14rnkzxxekv5k
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/illumvisions
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/illumvisions
- Other: https://www.linkedin.com/company/illumvisions
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