Podcast w/Jessica Wise on Creating The Litas
Mar 3
“I was very green and I think that actually worked to my benefit”
Jessica Wise isn’t afraid of going against the “norm” and shows exactly that with how she designed The Litas. Despite others opinions, she pushed forward and created a community of women that stand for inclusivity, openness, and of course, hell-raising. Now, five years after the groups formation, The Litas are in 335 Cities, 35 Countries, with over 13,000 riders.
On this podcast, Jessica sits down with Tony Gonzalez from Garage Composites on their podcast, Garagecast, and shares her story on how The Litas was created, as well as her aspirations to shift the industry to be more inclusive for women.
Below, see some of the highlights on what Jessica thought was most important when creating The Litas, why she wanted to spread it to as many women as possible, and what it’s like being female in a male dominated industry.
On the initial design of the group:
“I was 24 and didn’t have any knowledge of motorcycle groups, clubs, I didn’t know anything about that. I was very green. I think that actually worked to my benefit when creating The Litas because for the Salt Lake group when I was defining things, I was imagining it like “what makes sense to me?” I just didn’t have any bias changing that. I was able to design it and create it based on what I was looking for, which was openness, inclusivity, and I just wanted to have a good time.”
On spreading the love:
“The biggest thing I had to figure out was how I was going to scale it, how I was going to make it work. It was just me and I had a full time job. I think in the first few months we had 30 cities who wanted to start branches and I had to figure out how I was going to manage it. Everyone had opinions on how I should do it, but I just kept focusing on what the group was like in Salt Lake, inclusive, and it was important to me to figure out how I could spread that to the most people.”
On walking into a dealership as a woman:
“In dealerships it is less common to see women working in there, but I will say in the corporate world I have seen a lot of women making decisions. I’ve even worked with an entire team that was all women. There are a lot of women out there doing things for the industry, and the community. Thats one of the things I want to do with The Litas, is break down some of those barriers (of getting into riding), make it more accessible, more comfortable, more welcoming.”