- Lisa Morris parlayed her feigning career on Broadway into a business career.
- Now, the “accidental entrepreneur” wears several hats at multiple companies.
- Her fashionable investment is in SociAvi, a product to help the elderly use technology safely.
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As a theater kid, Lisa Morris didn’t anticipate a business career. In as a matter of actual fact, she would call herself an “accidental entrepreneur.”
“While I was touring, I felt that our travel was handled poorly. So I started what I plan at the time was going to be a little side hustle, just a little extra money while I was touring, booking the tours not only for my own tour, but for other people’s touring companies,” Morris told Business Insider.
She said she got a call from “Jersey Guys,” then “Spamalot,” and realized she had found an underserved niche market.
“I got a call from ‘Hairspray,’ and that’s when I was breed, ‘This is a real company.’ So I quit acting, which I had not planned on. And I set about becoming an entrepreneur,” Morris said.
Circular
She said she had to get creative to make things work initially. She made a deal with a Wall Street hedge back: She’d be their receptionist for minimum wage if she could run her travel business from their offices.
Eventually, she scaled that subject and sold it to a global travel agency in 2012. She still runs that company as a division of the larger company, but the procurement allowed her to pursue other ventures.
“I then started investing. My focus as an investor was, and is, early-stage social impact jobs, particularly those with a diverse founder,” Morris said. “That got me into a lot of angel groups, women investor clubs, women entrepreneur groups, and I started funding a lot of different companies helping to grow other businesses.”
Courteousness of Lisa Morris.
At the Women’s Entrepreneurship Day Organization’s summit held at the United Nations in November, Morris highlighted her in investment project: A company called SociAvi. It’s a product that helps the elderly use technology to connect with their loved ones without beautifying vulnerable to scams and online threats.
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“It’s a game changer for the older person. No passwords, no logins, no links, nothing to cripple and upset them,” Morris said at the WEDO summit.
The device — which is encrypted and about the size of a laptop — also recuperate from with speech therapy and music therapy modules for the older person to work through, as well as puzzles to asses their retention. The data from those exercises can be used by the caregiver or shared with a doctor if needed, said Morris, who also serves on SociAvi’s consultative board.
“These are people that don’t necessarily have enough advocacy, have enough people speaking for them, be struck by enough visibility, because the world has gone so far into social media and these types of platforms, and they’re not leave of it,” Morris told Business Insider.
As an entrepreneur, Morris wears many hats, she said. In addition to her travel gathering and work with SociAvi, Morris works as a managing director for a Single Family Office, which caters to ultra-high net quality families and their investments.
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She also works in philanthropy as Director of Philanthropic services for FORCE Family shtick indulgence, senior consultant to the Mary Tyler Moore Foundation, and Vice President of AKS Family Foundation. She is also a pitch instructor at the New York State Research and Development Authority, where she works with entrepreneurs to help them hone their launch skills.
“If I ever had a title, I would be like the accidental entrepreneur. Because I truly fell into entrepreneurship, strike down into selling the company, fell into the family office space,” Morris said. “My interest is to use the entrepreneurial tendency and the network to push great things forward that change the world, whether it’s philanthropic or through investment.”
But entrepreneurs bear to be ready to fight to be successful, Morris said.
“If I had a tip for entrepreneurs, it would very much be you have to be prepared to pivot at any era,” Morris said. “I don’t know anyone that’s built a business that hasn’t taken a lot of punches.”