Innovator Stories
Stephen Warley is so community-oriented, he recently helped plant a sunflower patch at the end of Main Street in North Adams alongside the Mayor of the city.
“I was literally putting down roots,” he said, chuckling.
After backpacking and crashing on sofas since 2018, Stephen now owns a house in North Adams. And now, he serves as the Director of Community Engagement at Lever, starting June 1.
After a career in digital media that included behind-the-scenes stints in broadcast news, Stephen initially turned to solo-entrepreneurship, teaching folks who want to run a business skills they may not have learned otherwise.
Innovator Stories
Meet Stephen Warley
Stephen Warley is so community-oriented, he recently helped plant a sunflower patch at the end of Main Street in North Adams alongside the Mayor of the city.
“I was literally putting down roots,” he said, chuckling.
After backpacking and crashing on sofas since 2018, Stephen now owns a house in North Adams. And now, he serves as the Director of Community Engagement at Lever, starting June 1.
After a career in digital media that included behind-the-scenes stints in broadcast news, Stephen initially turned to solo-entrepreneurship, teaching folks who want to run a business skills they may not have learned otherwise.
While interested in the next generation of innovation, it was through a standard cold call that Stephen met the Lever team for the first time in the fall of 2021. He had been looking to network with economic development and community organizations in the area, and found immediate chemistry with Lever.
The Director of Community Engagement position is in lockstep with his contributions to the Massachusetts Founders Network (MFN). MFN, launching live this fall, is a virtual network for early-stage startup founders throughout the state to gain acceleration tools. MFN also offers valuable networking, resources, mentorship, and community for startup founders in Massachusetts.
“You can be the founder of a high-tech startup and still feel alone. Everyone’s entrepreneurial heroes had help, so to me MFN is about building community and boosting founders’ and entrepreneurs’s confidence and motivations,” he said.
He describes the economy as fluctuating due to how seldom new business ideas stick, let alone come to fruition.
“Take artificial intelligence: At the end of the day, it’s happening, and I want to understand it. Entrepreneurs feel the acute changes of the economy faster than corporate companies. They are at a leading point [with innovations], to a certain degree,” he said.
He referred to video rentals to illustrate: “Renting videos was a big deal when I was 10, then died when I was 25.”
Another example of Stephen pinpointing trends was in the spring of 2020. He was traveling through Bali when the pandemic broke out, suddenly ringing true his prediction that remote work would become more common than rare.
“All of my friends and family said ‘you were right, you saw this coming,’” he said.
Working to be ahead of the curve again, Stephen sees MFN assisting entrepreneurs in both their recovery from and strategy toward challenges, like recovering from the pandemic and the rise of AI.
He elaborated that AI can be a tool for the entrepreneur ecosystem, but with pros and cons.
“It can offload a lot of tedious work, potentially giving you a quicker perspective on something by giving you a messy first draft. But there are unresolved copyright issues, with content being scraped off the web, and thinking that AI is going to do all of the work for you.”
Stephen hopes to share the perspective that you should be hands-on with the obstacles in your way, considering it energy management rather than time management.
“When you are an entrepreneur, you need to be honest with yourself. No more blaming anybody, you have to own yourself. Keep creating your own work,” he said.
Acting on his passion for building a community, Stephen also inaugurated the LumiNAMA Holiday Lights in North Adams this previous winter.
“The city has creative, artistic vibes and nature everywhere. And I’ve been shouting through the abysses of internet for so long that it’s great to be physically a part of the community,” he said.
He noted that the Berkshires resemble the parts of New England he grew up in. “It’s easy for my friends and family to visit,” he said.
That feeling of home shapes Stephen’s support for Lever’s Berkshires Interns program, facilitating the curriculum for college students interning at leading local businesses every summer.
Stephen said he’s excited about building community in many ways now that he’s landed in North Adams, and at Lever. “I was generally interested in economic development in North (Berkshire) County and North Adams,” he said. “Now we’ve led up to this!”
While interested in the next generation of innovation, it was through a standard cold call that Stephen met the Lever team for the first time in the fall of 2021. He had been looking to network with economic development and community organizations in the area, and found immediate chemistry with Lever.
The Director of Community Engagement position is in lockstep with his contributions to the Massachusetts Founders Network (MFN). MFN, launching live this fall, is a virtual network for early-stage startup founders throughout the state to gain acceleration tools. MFN also offers valuable networking, resources, mentorship, and community for startup founders in Massachusetts.
“You can be the founder of a high-tech startup and still feel alone. Everyone’s entrepreneurial heroes had help, so to me MFN is about building community and boosting founders’ and entrepreneurs’s confidence and motivations,” he said.
He describes the economy as fluctuating due to how seldom new business ideas stick, let alone come to fruition.
“Take artificial intelligence: At the end of the day, it’s happening, and I want to understand it. Entrepreneurs feel the acute changes of the economy faster than corporate companies. They are at a leading point [with innovations], to a certain degree,” he said.
He referred to video rentals to illustrate: “Renting videos was a big deal when I was 10, then died when I was 25.”
Another example of Stephen pinpointing trends was in the spring of 2020. He was traveling through Bali when the pandemic broke out, suddenly ringing true his prediction that remote work would become more common than rare.
“All of my friends and family said ‘you were right, you saw this coming,’” he said.
Working to be ahead of the curve again, Stephen sees MFN assisting entrepreneurs in both their recovery from and strategy toward challenges, like recovering from the pandemic and the rise of AI.
He elaborated that AI can be a tool for the entrepreneur ecosystem, but with pros and cons.
“It can offload a lot of tedious work, potentially giving you a quicker perspective on something by giving you a messy first draft. But there are unresolved copyright issues, with content being scraped off the web, and thinking that AI is going to do all of the work for you.”
Stephen hopes to share the perspective that you should be hands-on with the obstacles in your way, considering it energy management rather than time management.
“When you are an entrepreneur, you need to be honest with yourself. No more blaming anybody, you have to own yourself. Keep creating your own work,” he said.
Acting on his passion for building a community, Stephen also inaugurated the LumiNAMA Holiday Lights in North Adams this previous winter.
“The city has creative, artistic vibes and nature everywhere. And I’ve been shouting through the abysses of internet for so long that it’s great to be physically a part of the community,” he said.
He noted that the Berkshires resemble the parts of New England he grew up in. “It’s easy for my friends and family to visit,” he said.
That feeling of home shapes Stephen’s support for Lever’s Berkshires Interns program, facilitating the curriculum for college students interning at leading local businesses every summer.
Stephen said he’s excited about building community in many ways now that he’s landed in North Adams, and at Lever. “I was generally interested in economic development in North (Berkshire) County and North Adams,” he said. “Now we’ve led up to this!”