Announcing The Nest Expert Network
Community of industry professionals will make an annual commitment to lending their time and talents to businesses in the Nest Artisan Guild
Unlocking and accessing targeted industry expertise and skills can be a costly, but necessary endeavor for artisan businesses that want to scale and ultimately thrive. So often, the talents that artisan businesses demand represent skillsets that the business cannot yet afford to bring onto their team, or skillsets that may not be available in abundance in the communities where they work.
To address this perennial challenge, Nest is proud to announce the launch of the Nest Expert Network – a diverse community of industry professionals who lend their time, talent, and passion to offer professional consultancies and mentorship to artisan businesses within the Nest Guild.
Since Nest’s founding, pairing artisan businesses with talent has been core to how we drive impact. From 2018 to 2020, our fellows contributed 15,672 hours, the equivalent of $957,081. And with the support of corporate partners like the Qurate Retail Group, Hermes and Rue Gilt Groupe, Nest has worked with retail employees to match their talents with the needs of artisan businesses within the Guild.
As the Nest Artisan and Maker Guild continues to grow (200% in the past two years alone), the Nest Expert Network will allow Nest to scale our program delivery. Through a community of passionate professionals who commit to delivering a set number of consultancies (or fellowships) and mentorships every year, Nest will now be able to allocate more of our internal resources to program optimization rather than fellow recruitment. In exchange for their time and talent, members of the Nest Expert Network will receive access to networking opportunities, a community of like-minds and the opportunity to travel to artisan businesses and conduct projects on-site.
Each fellowship project that Nest has facilitated resulted in a specific and targeted deliverable that advances the business’s core need. As Jennifer Lo from Larone Crafts shared, “The Fellowship experience with Nest as an Artisan accelerator cohort member is game-changing! The access to expertise in particular aspects of the business that we were having trouble with allowed us to focus on solutions through re-education, discussion and planning. The lessons are so numerous that I am still letting them marinate in my consciousness. For sure, these will influence the way I run my business and engage with customers and artisans alike in the next twenty years.”
Members of the Nest Expert Network come from Nest’s community of global fellows who have supported artisan businesses in the Guild historically and have demonstrated a capacity to support artisan businesses. This trusted group of skilled industry leaders committed to supporting Guild business over one year through select fellowships and mentorships, covering both one-on-one projects and scalable group support. Guild businesses that are participating in our Artisan Accelerator program, have the opportunity to work directly with and receive mentorship from the Network through the capacity building module of the program. Nest has found that artisan businesses are more successful at facing business challenges when they have the opportunity to engage in real-time problem solving and collaboration with a seasoned industry expert.
The inaugural members of the Nest Expert Network can be viewed here.