Reese Wilson

Senior Consultant

TRADITIONAL BIO

Reese graduated from Vanderbilt University with degrees in Math and Human & Organizational Development where he also played football. He is currently pursuing an MBA from The University of Chicago Booth School of Business on the weekends. 

At the start of his career, Reese launched a social enterprise athletic shoe brand — 20% of every purchase went to nonprofit afterschool programs for low-income students in Nashville. While working on his startup, Reese gained experience in product development, manufacturing, supply chain, marketing, sales, and more. Working with emerging companies continues to be one of Reese’s passions.

As a consultant, Reese has worked across several industries including energy, healthcare, and construction services. He has been involved in Agile IT implementation projects with roles in development, testing, training, cutover, post-go-live support, and organizational change management.

Reese is a husband and a father. He loves sports – the Dallas Mavericks, the Dallas Cowboys, fantasy football, golf, pickup basketball, and pretty much anything else with a ball. He also enjoys watching movies and has a dream to own a movie theater one day.

Extraversion, Intuition, Thinking, Perceiving (ENTP)

THOUGHTFUL BIO

My parents love to remind me of the story of my infamous, YMCA, youth-soccer game. Scores were not officially kept in the five-and-under league, but of course, I always knew the score. So, one Saturday morning, as we approached the end of our game, I knew the score was tied. With seconds to spare, I somehow broke free with the ball from the massive jumble of chaotic five-year-old children, ran forward, and kicked the ball with all my might toward the goal. It sailed wide right. The game ended in a tie. All the kids ran blissfully to the sidelines for their postgame snack. Except for me. I dropped to my knees in tears. I had failed.

Years later, in a football game against our cross-town rival, I had the chance to intercept a pass in the endzone to seal our victory. The ball was soaring in the air. I had the receiver boxed out on my back. I jumped in the air and the ball glanced off my fingertips, right into the arms of the opposing team’s receiver. I had failed.

Right out of college, I started a shoe brand. Starting from scratch, I wrote a business plan, designed a product, worked with manufacturers on prototypes, developed marketing materials, and successfully ran a crowdfunding campaign to get the brand off its feet. But growth was hard to come by. There were lots of reasons for the challenges the company faced, both internal and external, but in the end, the best course of action was to shut the company down. Once again, I had failed.

Since that fateful Saturday morning soccer game, I have failed thousands of times. But these failures have taught me three things:

1. Failure is inevitable — so embrace every challenge, learn from your failures, and do whatever you can to avoid them the next time
2. Never settle — failures only occur when you are willing to take a risk, so don’t let fear of failure prevent you from ever taking action
3. Trust your team — each of us alone are limited, there is only so much you can do as an individual, but when your knowledge and abilities are combined with the knowledge and abilities of a team, the possibilities are endless

I chose to join Thought Ensemble because these personal values of mine align with the core values of the team: making a difference, always growing, and being better together. As a consultant at Thought Ensemble, I get to live out my personal values in my work. I get to take on challenging projects, consistently look for ways to improve a client or project, and work within a team of highly intelligent and skilled individuals to continuously learn, grow, and improve.