Name: Rodney Williams
Profession: Founder of LISNR
Age: 31
Baltimore, Maryland, also known as Charm City, is a historical society pervaded with rich customs, a variety of multicultural attractions, and delicious eatery. From its near-omnipresent row houses, the distinct slang, and the Inner Harbor, Baltimore remains a unique location for residents and tourist. Some of the most well known successful Hollywood stars, philanthropist, and business owner’s hail from these grounds. One of these remarkable individuals includes technology guru, Rodney Williams.
Discovering innovative ways to drive marketing and advertising messages to millennial consumers to drive revenue is critical to business growth. No matter the size of your marketing and advertisement budget, creatively delivering your brand message is essential to win today. LISNR a high frequency inaudible technology communication protocol founded by Williams is changing the way we share across physical and digital spaces. LISNR provides content creators and brands a distribution platform for mobile that delivers unparalleled second screen experiences and proximity based messaging via the smart tones’ identification and triggering capabilities. For marketing and advertising teams this means a more seamless and efficient interaction experience for consumers through the mobile channel.
Coming from Baltimore, Williams understood the importance of higher learning. At the age of 18, he went on to pursue an education at West Virginia University, receiving two undergraduate degrees in Finance and Economics. Following the completion of his undergraduate education, the young minority scholar went on to receive his masters degree in Finance and Supply Chain Management at Howard University. ” I chose to go to Howard over NYU because I sat in the office with them and they said they believed in me. That’s what sold me,” Williams tells BE Modern Man.
Rodney’s competitive edge was understanding how technology could
be used to make his job or his teams job easier. In this understanding is where his idea has evolved. As of today, LISNR is the most efficient tool to connect to any device. “If you want to compare us to anything, you just compare it to Bluetooth,” says Williams. “It’s just audio, audio that you can’t hear.” The advantage with LISNR is that the platform can turn on anything that has the ability to broadcast sound. “Every speaker, every television, every smartphone can be used to trigger this type of experience based on wherever you are. It has a very powerful effect.”Read more on page 2…
When traveling the path to success, no one is ever guaranteed a success story. “The biggest challenge is understanding how it’s done, or understanding how it should be done. You know, if you never really know how to
ride a bike sometimes you have to get on and fall. Unfortunately, if you fall in the business that just means that it does not exist anymore. So my biggest challenge is really connecting ourselves with the right level of mentorship, advisement, investors, and even people on my team.”Giving back to his alma mater and the youth happens to be a deep passion of Williams. Within the past nine years, the mogul has returned to speak to students, raised thousands of dollars for the university, and also created an organization titled SOLO. “I think it’s very important to give back,” Williams tells BE Modern Man. “When you grow up in a community, you tend to imitate people you want to be. When I saw business owners, that was the one thing I wanted to imitate.” Despite being a fairly new organization, SOLO has already raised $4 million, traveled the world, received a plethora of awards, and most importantly, shared a road map for others.
“As I started to understand technology, I also started to see how technology founders that we’ve all grown to love, create a road maps for us,” says Williams. “A BE Modern Man is a man who lays down the blueprint in terms of how you innovate, accelerate an idea, and become a catalyst in this industry. Those are the things that inspire me and I want it to inspire others.”
The BlackEnterprise.com team acknowledges Rodney Williams for continuously giving back to the youth and paving the way for those inspiring to pursue a career in technology. We look forward to seeing how his innovative ideas improve the world of technology.
It’s our normal to be extraordinary. Follow @blackenterprise and join the BE Modern Man conversation using #BEModernMan.
–written by Tara Strigler