Q&A with Alicia Williams, Founder & CEO of Selah

Hello there and welcome back to Thrivency’s weekly newsletter! 👋🏽

One of the most fascinating things about watching the approximately $7 trillion wellness industry grow is observing how technology pushes it forward. From groundbreaking medical devices to new mobile applications—it’s apparent that data will continue to be a driving force behind innovation.

But what concerns me is that far too often, people of color are not the designers and decision-markers behind these life-altering technologies.

That’s why I’m ecstatic to use this week’s Community Voices Q&A to spotlight a tech innovator and wellness entrepreneur whose work caters to underrepresented women in need of care.

Meet Alicia Williams, the founder and CEO of Selah, an intelligence wellness platform that’s arming women with personalized insights about their hormonal health to help them navigate every day life and live well.

A quick word from our sponsor and then we’ll dive in ⤵️

Winter calls for rituals that actually make you feel amazing—and Pique’s Sun Goddess Matcha is mine. It delivers clean, focused energy with zero jitters, supports glowing skin and gentle detox, and feels deeply grounding on cold mornings. Smooth, ceremonial-grade, and crave-worthy, it’s the easiest way to start winter days clear, energized, and glowing from the inside out

Get Up To 20% Off

Q&A with Alicia Williams

Starting big picture: Why wellness? Was there any personal motivation to enter this industry?

Wellness found me before I found it. For a long time, I was doing all the “right” things: building companies, leading teams, achieving milestones and still feeling profoundly tired in a way rest alone didn’t seem to fix. I realized I wasn’t burnt out because I lacked discipline or ambition; I was burnt out because I lacked permission to pause, to listen to my body, to move in rhythm instead of resistance.

Wellness, for me, became less about optimization and more about remembrance. Remembering that our bodies are intelligent. That rest is not a reward. And that women, especially high-achieving women, deserve systems that support them—not just tools that demand more from them. Selah was born out of that personal reckoning.

Is this your first entrepreneurial venture?

No, it’s my third. Before Selah, I founded and scaled a mental health edtech company serving middle and high school students, and before that a consulting firm. That work taught me how deeply early stress, identity, and emotional regulation shape a person’s life trajectory. Selah feels like a continuation of that story just further downstream. It’s still about mental health, but now through the lens of women, biology, and sustainable leadership. Every venture I’ve built has brought me closer to this truth: we don’t need more grit we need more grace, structure, and support.

How has Selah evolved from concept to now?

Selah started as a question, not a product: What would wellness look like if it actually honored how women live and function? At first, it was simply a desire to create space—for rest, for reflection, for margin. Over time, that evolved into a platform that blends technology, data, and lived experience. Today, Selah is a wellness intelligence ecosystem: an app, a scoring system, curated experiences, and community all designed to help women understand themselves instead of override themselves. What’s changed most is clarity. Selah is no longer just about rest it’s about rhythm.

Why did you choose to focus on hormonal health?

Because hormones impact everything we do and yet most women are never taught how to work with them. So many women blame themselves for things that are actually biological: fatigue, brain fog, mood shifts, inconsistent energy. I wanted to change that narrative. Hormonal health is not niche, it’s foundational. It affects how we lead, how we create, how we rest, and how we relate to ourselves. Focusing on hormonal intelligence felt like telling the truth out loud.

Can you describe what the Selah Score™ is?

The Selah Score™ is a daily snapshot of how aligned a woman is with her body, not just her calendar. It synthesizes inputs around rest, stress, sleep, emotional state, and hormonal signals to offer something simple but powerful: clarity. Not judgment. Not pressure. Just insight. It answers the question many women are already asking quietly: “Why do I feel like this today?”

How can women leverage all of the data that the Selah app will provide?

The goal isn’t more data, it’s better decisions. Selah translates information into guidance: when to push, when to pause, when to nourish, when to protect your energy. Over time, women begin to recognize patterns how their bodies respond to work, travel, stress, and rest. It’s less about tracking and more about trust. Selah helps women rebuild trust with themselves.

Where are you right now in the app development process?

We’re in beta, actively testing and refining the experience with early users. The foundation is built, and now we’re in the listening phase watching how women actually use the app, what resonates, and where it truly supports their lives. It’s a very intentional pace. Our V1 will launch in the Spring.

Tell me a little bit about the event you hosted at this year’s AFROTECH.

At AFROTECH, we honestly did what Selah does best—we created a pause in the middle of all the ambition.

Our Porsche & Pilates event sold out, and it was really special to watch women walk in carrying the weight of the week and leave lighter. The intention was simple: movement, beauty, and care without the pressure to perform. Partnering with women-owned wellness brands mattered to us because Selah is about building with women, not just for them.

After Pilates, we hosted a Cool Down Wellness Happy Hour so no one had to rush off. People stayed, talked, laughed, and just exhaled. That was the whole point. AFROTECH opened so many doors for us: new relationships, new visibility, real momentum and we’re genuinely grateful for that space. It affirmed that there’s a real desire for wellness that meets women where they are, especially in high-performance rooms. We’re already excited to do it again.

What’s your biggest lesson or takeaway from the past year as an entrepreneur in the wellness space?

That alignment is the real competitive advantage.

This past year taught me that building slowly, intentionally, and in integrity creates something far more sustainable than chasing speed or trends. Wellness is not about aesthetics—it’s about truth. And women can feel when something is real.

Selah is growing because it’s honest. And I’m learning that my job as a founder isn’t to have all the answers it’s to listen deeply and build responsibly.

If this resonated with you, here are all the ways you can support Alicia and Selah:

If you enjoyed today’s newsletter, reach out to a loved one that you think should subscribe. We’ll meet back here on March 5 for the next edition of Wellness News You Can Use 🗞

Thrivency quick links: