Bea Wray

Athlete, Business adviser, Business leader, Business mentor, Change Agent, Christian, Concerned citizen, Connector, Consultant, Entrepreneur, Idea generator, Investor, Life mentor, Parent, Potential employer, Single, Social entrepreneur, Startup, World traveler, Writer/Editor

An entrepreneurship and marketing expert, Bea helps select high growth entrepreneurs tell their stories to build their field authority and promote their excellence. As Chair of the Entrepreneurship Practice Group, Bea further leverages the wisdom and experience of these innovators through branding, visibility, and marketing efforts that are substantiated by the ForbesBooks brand name. Displaying her passion for entrepreneurship, Bea contributes extensive experience and expertise to her work. She successfully built and exited SourceHarbor Inc., expanding the company to serve thousands of clients internationally along the way, and has consulted with hundreds of startups. Prior to joining the Advantage|ForbesBooks Team, Bea served as the Executive Director of The Creative Coast, a regional non-profit building the innovation economy in Savannah, Georgia. Her years of energy and effort are an immediate benefit to ForbesBooks Authors. Through her experiences, Bea understands the decisions and challenges entrepreneurs often face while navigating their fields. In growing and then later successfully exiting her own company, SourceHarbor Inc., she witnessed first-hand the importance of communicating with and learning from a network of peers. Bea believes in the power of Authority Marketing to achieve and maintain status as a field leader, crucial to entrepreneurial success. In exciting news, Bea has been selected to share her own story as a ForbesBooks author! Her book, titled What Harvard Taught Me, But My Kids Made Me Learn, is expected to arrive in early 2018. She is looking forward to sharing how her experiences as a mother of three taught her how to negotiate, communicate, and adapt in the business world. Bea holds an MBA with Distinction from Harvard Business School, is a summa cum laude graduate of Emory University, and is one of South Carolina’s prestigious Liberty Fellows of the Aspen Global Leadership Network. She is a frequent keynote speaker on entrepreneurship and business growth, and an inspiring contributor to various publications, including Entrepreneur.com and The Savannah Morning News.

support for mentally ill and their families, entrepreneurship, racial equality, women's rights, small government

Mental health needs to be talked about not judged Over involved governments create moral hazards that destroy communities

11 years of my marriage to a brilliant, loving, fun, handsome, faithful, world-travelled, and well-read man were characterized by months of roughly 27 days of a dream life and 3 days of violent horror. When would the 3 days come? Our realities were divided on two levels. First, my husband would go into a "zone" and experienced his 4 hour outbursts as more of a bad day. To me and my children it was a terrifying rage. Secondly, my husband was in denial so we never worked through it. I experienced walking on eggshells for all 30 days while he recognized disruption for only 3. In over 18 years of marriage, we fought back to end 3 marital separations, we sought advice from 12 therapists who all recommended medication and treatment for my husband which only ensured he promptly changed doctors searching for "another opinion." I mistakenly believed 5 things: 1) His love for me was greater than the shame of accepting a mental illness in a taboo culture and that he would choose to treat rather than deny it. 2) My skills in optimism and forgiveness would help our lives when in reality they exacerbated the problem compounding his low self-esteem. 3) Turning to church leadership for guidance would strengthen our family, not ruin us. 4) My husband's family wanted him to be healthy. In reality they were more concerned with protecting the family narrative that my husband is the scapegoat. 5) He would hit rock bottom. So I waited 6 years for that to happen. Yet, I found myself buried under total financial devastation, lumps in my breasts, one child on the verge of an eating disorder, another speaking of suicide, and the third acting out and even running away from school. I was at rock bottom.

loving, encouraging, supporting, parenting