Image Description: Four people are seated in a bright, modern space with large windows and natural light. Two Black women are in focus, smiling and engaged in conversation. One holds a glass and gestures while speaking; the other holds a notebook. The group appears to be in a casual but intentional discussion, possibly in a coworking or creative community space. In the foreground, the words “What the Pandemic Taught Us” are written in bold white text. In the lower right corner, there is a circular pink and red logo for Collective Agency.
Getting to Know Us | Edition Three: What the Pandemic Revealed - And Reinforced
Welcome to the third edition of our Getting to Know Us series. In our last two posts, we shared the story of how Collective Agency came to be and how our shared time at the Women’s Business Center shaped our vision. Today, we want to reflect on a moment that shaped not only our personal lives, but also our shared lens on this work: the COVID-19 pandemic.
When the world shut down, it didn’t create new problems - it exposed and intensified the ones that had been there all along. The spotlight simply turned on for more people.
The pandemic highlighted just how fragile - and biased - our systems are. But for many of us, especially those already navigating the margins, it didn’t feel like a revelation. It felt like affirmation. We were watching what we already knew finally become undeniable.
A crowded urban plaza at sunset is overlaid with the quote: "Community business collaboration leads to stronger networks, shared resources, and solutions that reflect the needs of the people they serve." The lower right corner features a colorful geometric design of semi-circles and dots in red, blue, yellow, and white.
Reinforced, Not Revealed
We had long seen how so many had to face barriers that others did not. But COVID made those impacts unavoidable. It laid bare a set of norms and assumptions that were never built for us in the first place:
Parents - especially women - were forced to juggle caregiving, remote schooling, essential work, and business management with little to no societal support.
Health disparities were glaring - treatments were designed based on research that didn’t reflect the full diversity of our communities. Access was uneven, especially for those needing language interpretation or support navigating bureaucracy.
Many business owners - particularly solopreneurs and microbusinesses - were shut out of financial relief programs because the criteria didn’t account for how real-world small and micro businesses actually function.
And traditional outreach strategies couldn’t bridge the trust gap for many communities, and continued to leave out those who could benefit the most.
We saw some of the most creative, community-minded business owners struggling to access relief - sometimes because they didn’t fit the mold and sometimes because they were just too overwhelmed to untangle the red tape in time. As support providers, we carried that weight too. It wasn’t just about getting resources to people, it was also about witnessing how hard it was for people to ask for help in a culture that tells them they should already have it figured out, and keep the momentum going together.
Pressure Meets Purpose
For both of us, that time brought deep personal and professional reckoning.
We were service providers, community builders, caregivers, and friends navigating all the same uncertainty as our clients while trying to hold space for others. We felt the burnout, the grief, the mental load. And we also found clarity.
It became obvious that mental health couldn’t be a “nice-to-have.” It had to be built into the very structure of how support is delivered. Self-care had to mean more than bubble baths and yoga - it had to include the right to rest, to slow down, to say no, to access health care, to grieve, and to ask for help without shame.
We learned that leadership meant telling the truth, even when it was uncomfortable. It meant refusing to replicate the very systems we were trying to shift. And it meant building something that honors real people living real lives (not idealized personas in a pitch deck.)
Cracks in the System
The pandemic showed us how existing systems - business, funding, education, and healthcare fall short when people don’t fit the expected mold. We saw business owners penalized for not having the ‘right’ structure to receive unemployment. We saw advisors struggle to serve clients whose businesses didn’t align with "traditional" models. And we saw stakeholders, even well-meaning ones, often reacting rather than listening as they designed programs.
The result? People slipped through the cracks - not because they weren’t deserving, but because the system was never built with their realities in mind.
That realization reaffirmed our commitment to co-creating something different.
What Shifted for Us
The pandemic deepened our purpose, though we couldn’t fully realize that purpose until launching Collective Agency. But we knew we would not try fit ourselves into existing structures. We would create our own, based not only on our own experiences, but also informed by the many conversations we had with an incredible variety of small business owners. We knew we wanted to create spaces where healing, creativity, truth-telling, and business strategy could exist woven into the same whole.
We are intentional about who we partner with - organizations willing to do both the personal, organizational, and policy level work to bring about real evolution and change.
We prioritize accessibility and relational trust over corporate professionalism.
We choose transparency, community care, and systems design that’s flexible, responsive, and rooted in shared values - not just metrics.
We turned what we learned toward our calling to keep doing this work, but to do it our way. Intentional, connected, and with the understanding that wellbeing and success are not separate - they are interdependent.
Moving Forward with Eyes Wide Open
As we build Collective Agency, we commit to not just naming the problems, but designing to alleviate them. We refuse to normalize burnout. We refuse to ignore the human cost of “resilience” models that place revenue above health and community. And we decided to center care - real, actionable care - as a business strategy, not an afterthought.
We’re not interested in hollow mission statements. We’re interested in connection. In systems that are built by and for those they claim to serve. In real, messy, beautiful, human-scale change.
We’re building with eyes and arms open. Thank you for walking with us.
What did the pandemic confirm or clarify for you? We’d love to hear what you learned! Feel free to join the conversation on LinkedIn!