By Nina Huang
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY
Laura Clise
Laura Clise is all about that action.
With a passion for building connections, increasing inclusivity and a sense of belonging through sports and business, Clise, 46, has made her mark in the greater Seattle area and beyond.
Growing up and well into her career, Clise has been surrounded by strong women.
Her mother’s side of the family is Japanese American from the island of Kauai and her father is white and grew up in Seattle. Her maternal grandmother grew up on a sugarcane plantation in Kauai.
“As an adoptee, I was shaped so deeply by my parents’ side of the family. My grandma had grit but also creativity, she was an artist and danced hula. She was delightful, yet tough as nails. My dad’s mom introduced me to the symphony, we would read books together, and we always had a really close relationship,” Clise said.
Growing up in Seattle as a Korean adoptee in a biracial family, Clise was nerdy, dorky, awkward, and insecure. She wanted validation from her peers and wanted to feel a sense of belonging. She struggled to find that outside of her family as she was teased and bullied.
She came out her senior year of high school.
In her 30s, she did a fellowship through the Aspen Institute where she was invited to think about the question of ‘Why are you the way you are?’
For Clise, she often lacked the feeling of community and sense of belonging during her adolescent years. It wasn’t until college that she was able to cultivate deeper connections and more meaningful relationships. She really valued those connections and it has helped her gain a deeper understanding and appreciation of what it feels like to connect with others and find community.
Intentional spending
In a previous role where Clise led the creation of the supply diversity department, she thought about how the corporate supply chain could be more intentional and sourced from more women-, minority-, and veteran-owned small businesses.
“As I was working on that strategy, what dawned on me was that companies and local governments have had policies in place for decades, but what about me as a consumer? What if I wanted to support more women-owned small businesses, what resources are available to me? The answer was: there weren’t any,” Clise said.
She was convinced that someone would create that resource, and figured it was a matter of time, so she was happy in her chosen career path, but continued to follow up to see if a resource had been created throughout the years.
“I talked all the time about wishing it wasn’t so hard to find information, and eventually I ran out of excuses not to try to create it. The underleveraged opportunity grew too big to ignore. I like to think that I’m the kind of person who isn’t just going to talk about something, but at some point is willing to take action,” Clise said.
In 2012, Clise visited Thailand for her graduate school classmate’s wedding. In preparing for her visit, she started thinking about where she wanted to go and what she wanted to do.
After shopping at night markets in Asia, she realized that she was perfectly happy to pay more for something that had meaning.
“I wanted to see if my time in Southeast Asia could be more intentional. How might my decisions of where I stayed, what I buy, actually benefit real people and the local economy? It was really that trip and experience that planted the seed for being more intentional about my spending and I wanted to connect where I ate and shopped to tangible benefits to real people.”
Clise wears a blazer every day. She spent the majority of her career wearing suits so she has a lot of them. She has a pocket square and the one she wears most often is cut from a scarf from an artisanal cooperative in Siem Reap.
“It’s a reminder that the value of the things we buy isn’t always the thing, but the connection we have to the people, memories, and experiences that it represents.”
Launched in May of 2018, Intentionalist currently has more than 5,500 businesses listed on its platform. It is an online directory marketplace and activation platform with the objective of encouraging and incentivizing people to spend like it matters.
When Clise started Intentionalist, she thought about how to close the gap between our good intentions of spending money at diverse businesses and actions that make an impact. Her hypothesis was simple: you can achieve this by transforming spending from a mere transaction into a meaningful relationship. By encouraging people to support others, making the experience enjoyable, and offering a small incentive that doesn’t burden the small businesses, the result is even better.
“We are a trusted partner—that’s what I’m most proud of. Small businesses trust us, community members trust us, public sector leaders trust us, and corporate leaders trust us.”
Clise said that they featured a 20 percent discount on items from the Black History Month marketplace for February. These are campaigns that they do throughout the year to promote and highlight businesses during different heritage and celebration months that also includes Women’s History Month, Earth Month, Asian American Pacific Islander Month and more.
“That is at the heart of why I started Intentionalist in the first place—to try and build something different that prioritized benefit to the small businesses at the heart of our communities,” she added.
“Laura has impacted the community by continually informing people the importance of small businesses,” Emma and Miceala Thomas, co-owners of Emma’s BBQ, shared in an email. They continued, “Small businesses are the fabric of America. She is the person who weaves the tapestry. Laura embodies a fierce tenacity and passion for the people she partners with. She truly believes where there’s a will there’s a way. Our love and appreciation for her presence is beyond words. Grateful is an immense understatement. But we are thankful for her each and every day.”
“Over the past six years, what we’ve done is slowly build the components that ultimately we hope will coalesce into a holistic digital platform, and hopefully an app that makes it easy, compelling and fun to spend like it matters,” Clise said.
Impact on Seattle sports
Passionate about sports, Clise served on the board of directors for Athlete Ally for more than a decade. Athlete Ally is a nonprofit that provides educational programming and tools to make athletic communities more inclusive and less discriminatory, while helping athletes advocate for LGBTQ equality.
Back in 2017, Clise’s passion project was to bring all of the professional sports teams in Seattle for a first event of its kind in the region and country.
To kick off Pride Week in Seattle that year, representatives from the Seattle Seahawks, Sounders, Storm and Reign FC teams gathered for a news conference with Athlete Ally. It was a joint endeavor to stand in solidarity with the LGBTQ community.
“It was the first time the Seahawks did anything external related to PRIDE and it was the first time Lumen Field was lit up in rainbow,” Clise said.
She stood at the back of the room during the news conference and she was most proud of the fact that it had nothing to do with her, but it was the change she wanted to see in the world.
It was a proud moment for Clise, to do something that hadn’t been done before that had national reach and resonance.
“Seeing all of my hometown teams standing in solidarity with the LGBTQ community sends a message locally and nationally about what the Seattle pro sports community stands for, believes in and represents.”
She added, “I’m proud of the fact that my family are huge Seahawks fans and they could see their favorite team be a part of this collective action.”
Through her work, she got to know the Seattle Sounders really well. They even named her the community MVP in 2017.
“When I look at the work I’m doing now, it’s 100 percent rooted in community and the idea that the connections and ideas we have with one another, the community, social fabric that we weave matters.,” Clise said.
Nina can be reached at newstips@nwasianweekly.com.