ABOUT RICH LESSONS
Meet the co-hosts and discover the journey behind Rich Lessons.
THE ORIGIN
How it started.
Sevetri Wilson Taylor and Sheena Allen share more than a passion for entrepreneurship. They have lived parallel journeys that connect them across nearly every chapter. Both are among the rare group of Black women to raise millions in venture capital for their startups. Both have successfully bootstrapped companies. Both are Southern — Sevetri from Hammond, Louisiana, Sheena from Terry, Mississippi — and both are proud Pisces. When they met in 2016, the overlap was undeniable.
In 2023, as Sevetri stepped away from Resilia and Sheena stepped away from CapWay after years of building, raising, and leading, they recognized something: the most valuable part of what they had been through was not the funding announcements or the press coverage. It was the unfiltered truth about what those journeys actually cost — and what they taught. They wanted to put that in a room and open the door. Rich Lessons was the result.
The podcast launched in 2025 because those conversations deserved a bigger room. Not a highlight reel. Not a polished success story with the messy middle edited out. The actual journey — what it cost, what it taught, what they would do differently, and what they would do exactly the same. For the full story of how both companies ended and what came next, listen to Episode 1 and Episode 2.
The name is intentional. Rich is not just about money. It is about building a life and a business that is full of knowledge, of community, of the kind of wealth that compounds long after the check clears. The lessons are the currency. Everything else follows.
Sevetri Wilson Taylor
CO-HOST
FOUNDER, CEO & ENTREPRENEUR
“Don't let your highs get so high you can’t touch the ground, or your lows so low you can’t see the heavens.”
Sevetri Wilson Taylor is a trailblazing entrepreneur and leader in technology currently focused on creating innovative solutions that address some of the most pressing challenges facing U.S. cities. Her work leverages artificial intelligence and big data to drive smarter decision-making, streamline service delivery, and centralize operations for greater efficiency and impact.
With over a decade of experience at the intersection of technology, business, and societal transformation, Sevetri has consistently worked to create solutions that drive meaningful change and foster innovation.
Previously, Sevetri founded Resilia, a technology company where she made history by raising $50 million in venture capital in 2022—the largest funding round ever secured by a solo Black woman founder and the largest by a woman founder in the South before exiting that company in 2023.
In 2021 her book, Resilient, became an instant Wall Street Journal bestseller, offering valuable insights into her journey as a founder. Sevetri’s achievements have earned her numerous accolades. She has been recognized as one of Inc. Magazine’s 100 Female Founders building transformative companies and was featured in PitchBook’s list of 27 leading Black founders and investors. In 2022, Entrepreneur magazine named her one of the 100 Most Influential Women, and Black Enterprise Magazine included her in their 40 Under 40 list.
A dual-degree graduate of LSU, Sevetri is also an Aspen Institute Henry Crown Fellow and serves on several prestigious boards, including the National Urban League Board of Trustees, the NOCCA Foundation, and the LSU Foundation National Board. She is also an active angel investor, supporting innovation and entrepreneurship in over two dozen companies.
More from Sevetri
Sheena Allen
CO-HOST
FINTECH FOUNDER, ENTREPRENEUR & SPEAKER
My focus is proving myself right, not anyone else wrong.
A creative architect of products, companies, and systems, Sheena launched her first tech company during her senior year of college with no technical background and no outside capital. She bootstrapped Sheena Allen Apps into a mobile studio that produced five top-ranking applications and generated tens of millions of downloads. She then founded CapWay, a digital bank, making her the youngest female in America to own and operate one, and built it not on off-the-shelf APIs, but from the infrastructure up: processors, payment rails, ledger architecture, all in-house, because she understood that ownership of the system matters more than speed to market.
CapWay ultimately shut down due to forces within a complex regulatory landscape, an experience that deepened Sheena’s already rare understanding of what it truly takes to build in regulated industries. That scar tissue, combined with over a decade of building across fintech, mobile, AI, commerce, and media, makes her one of the most battle-tested founder-operators in the space.
A Y Combinator alum, Forbes 30 Under 30, Entrepreneur Magazine’s 100 Most Influential, and one of a limited number of Black women to raise millions in venture capital, Sheena brings a design-obsessed, Steve Jobs-level focus on product and experience to everything she touches. She specializes in what she calls “going from -1 to 1,” the full arc from validating whether an idea deserves to exist, to building the foundation, to scaling the machine. In an era where anyone can ship a product overnight, Sheena is the voice insisting that building a product and building a business are not the same thing.
Sheena currently architects new ventures across technology, media, and financial systems — building at the frontier of financial inclusion, emerging technology, and the infrastructure that connects them. She co-hosts Rich Lessons, a top-ranking podcast for entrepreneurs, and works with a select number of founders and organizations through consulting and executive advising. A visual artist and trained filmmaker, Sheena has appeared in two documentaries, authored The Starting Guide, and has been featured in Forbes, Inc. Magazine, Business Insider, and Bloomberg.
She builds with the precision of an architect, the eye of a designer, and the hard-won clarity of someone who has constructed, lost, and rebuilt—and come back sharper every time.
More from Sheena
PRESS, SPEAKING & GENERAL INQUIRIES