Learn more about CEO Cassandra Kiger’s entrepreneurial journey and how the launch of CFR is a call to accept the changes around us and build resiliently. A 5-minute read.
Welcome to the launch of Consulting for Resilience! I am so grateful that you are here, whether as an interested party or a casual passerby. I’m hopeful that in some way we can support each others’ work and find ways to build a more resilient future together.
This launch is with the support, knowledge, and expertise of dozens of amazing people who have helped steer a concept into a reality. Just to name a few: Paul Kiger, Rae Humphreys and Mas Marketing, Tivi Jones, Kristine Sloan, Erica Madden, Jessica Davis, Shaleiah Fox, Pat Sosa Verduin, and John Regan.
A Life-Long Entrepreneur
I was born and bred an entrepreneur in an entrepreneurial household. My dad’s first LLC is named after my older brother’s initials, placing just two of his biggest creations in an even smaller Venn diagram some 40+ years ago. As for myself, my first business transactions took place when I was in charge of the farm’s chicken coop and began selling free-range eggs for 50 cents a dozen (inflation, am I right?!). I was a hustler from the start. When my grandmother very kindly asked if she might get a discount on her dozen eggs, I drove her a hard bargain at 50% off, but only if she paid up front in cash. I was four years old.
By the time I turned eleven I had a semi-official loan taken out through my dad’s bank account (banks, very reasonably, won’t loan to 11-year-olds) and bought two vending machines that I set up in the warehouse of his business. I would spend the next five years begging rides and checkbook signatures off of my parents so that I could go to Sam’s Club and use every ounce of my body weight to haul around dollies with cases of pop and snacks towering taller than I was. I would spend weekends packing and fixing machines and counting quarters like a tiny gangster. This business was my first opportunity to play with growth and expansion, and I spent summer days walking around to the 100+ employees and getting their survey feedback on what items they would like to see in the machines and how I could improve services. I partnered with the HR team when they had company-wide weight loss and steps challenges to give healthier food options, and I began cleaning the microwave and kitchen areas so that my microwaveable soups sold better in the winter months when the warehouse was cold. One of my biggest growth investments early on was the acquisition of an automatic change counter that counted and rolled my hard-earned quarters, dimes, and nickels into little rolls that I could deposit into my account and pay off my loan with. When I was nearly 16 I sold the business for a profit to another employee at the warehouse and put the money towards my car fund.
Building Resilience
Throughout my entire career I have nailed the “diversified income” checkbox, having as many side-hustles as I could fit into the week to make the budget work. It has allowed me to invest in myself professionally, and ensured that when one option ended, I had others to fall back on. Until this past year, that is.
The year 2025 was not the first time I’ve lost a job to political and congressional funding changes, by any means, but it was the first time that I looked at the budget, realized what new political changes would mean for my role, and I didn’t have a back up plan. I have three college degrees and an enormous range of experience, and I had no idea how I was going to use any of that to pay the bills and contribute to my community when it needs it the most. I was caught on my heels and realized I needed to make a change.
I have spent well over a decade professionally working to build people, programs, systems, and organizations that are resilient. I have worked in refugee resettlement, foster care, child abuse prevention and healing, mentoring, workforce development, local government, and every field I have ever worked in has started from the basis of saying, “this person or community or group has taken an awful hit; now what do we do”? How do we take something awful and build resiliently from the ashes? How do we reteach our brains, our bodies, our organizations, and our communities that something ending or changing, even tragically, does not mean it is the end?
I spent a career working with this consistent goal in mind, and yet I was not prepared to respond resiliently myself. Therefore, to those of you wondering why I am launching Consulting for Resilience now? Why I am launching it when I am not ending my current employment? Because it is time that I take my own good advice and remember to build resiliently.
Resilience grows a lot like a meditation practice. (Meditation is actually a key way to grow neurological resilience.) “Doing meditation correctly” is just taking a lot of tiny steps to plan to meditate regularly, and then spending time observing, (the body, the brain, the environment), without immediately trying to change anything.
You spend this time simply listening, reflecting, allowing observations to come and go, and often you find key moments of growth and alignment that bring you closer towards your goals without having had any large “outputs”. You grow more mentally flexible, you increase your mental and emotional capacity, and the next time life throws something hard at you, you can pivot easier and with less distress.
Build With Us
Consulting for Resilience is my professional “meditation”. I am doing what I do best and growing my own personal and professional resilience in this moment, without undue anxiety or judgement. In the coming weeks and months, I will share more about what resiliency-building looks like, and why it should be a priority in our work at this exact moment. In the meantime, I encourage you to visit consultingforresilience.com and learn the basics of the business. I would love to hear from you in the comments or via email (cassandra@consultingforresilience.com) about how you are building resiliently even in 2026, or areas where you see the need for it. If I can, I would love to support you in building resiliently. Mostly, I want us to keep waking up each day with a little bit of tenacity and grit, with a lot of kindness for ourselves and others, and with our minds equally balanced to solve the immediate needs before us, while also being prepared to pivot the moment when things change and are born anew.
How will you grow resiliently? Change is inevitable. Resilience is intentional.
– Cassandra Kiger, CEO of Consulting for Resilience
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