About Us

LeEllen Smith

LeEllen Smith founded OUTsideIN in an effort to create jobs for marginalized women in her community. She relied on the sewing skills she learned at 12 and the accounting degree she earned at the University of Tennessee at Martin. After having been a stay-at-home mom for many years, she realized she had a window of opportunity to "make a difference" after her children became adults and founding a social enterprise seemed the perfect way to do that.

LeEllen has been married to her husband Jimmy since 1983 and they have four children. She was raised on a farm near Obion, Tennessee and attended Obion County Central High School, Freed-Hardeman University and the University of Tennessee at Martin.

LeEllen enjoys travel and brainstorming new ideas for products and other ways to change the world.

Lisa Salazar

Lisa Salazar has worked at OUTsideIN since the very earliest days of our social enterprise. At the time she started, she only had a few weeks of sobriety but has now been sober since May 23, 2013. She is proud of the framed picture near her machine that proudly proclaims this date and the fact that “Around Here We Celebrate Recovery.”

Lisa is married to Rick and they have four children and eight grandchildren who are her “pride and joy”. Lisa had basic sewing skills when she came to work at OUTsideIN but has expanded those significantly. She does the finishing construction steps for our bags and is careful that each bag is given attention to the details that make our bags strong and beautiful.

In her free time, Lisa enjoys other needle arts, crafts and camping. Lisa has always been a hard-working and dedicated employee. She is friendly and supportive of all who work alongside her, offering encouragement and a powerful testimony of recovery from the addiction of alcohol. We are extremely proud to have her on our team.

Kayla Wilson

Kayla Wilson came to work at OUTsideIN through the On-the-Job training program of the Tennessee Department of Human Services Vocational Rehabilitation Program and was hired as full time upon completing her training in 2019. She possessed no sewing skills in the beginning but quickly caught on to the basics of cutting out and sewing our bags. She is responsible for the first steps required to construct our bags but she can make our Wristlet bag from start to finish on her own and is very efficient in doing so. Additionally, she is often called upon to snap a lifestyle photo when it's time to update our social media and has added photography to her skill set.

Kayla is mother to her daughter Makayla who is in Elementary school. She enjoys spending time with her friends and documenting all of Makayla’s activities with photos.

Kayla is always taking steps to try to improve her circumstances and to provide a good and stable life for her daughter. It is inspiring to see how far she has come in this process. We continue to be excited for her future and look forward to seeing how much further her dedication to hard work will take her.

Anna Pollard

Anna joined our team in 2020 as Marketing and Communications Coordinator. Her work with us is her "side hustle" but we believe she sees it as her own way to give back and serve. She has been responsible for posting to our social media accounts and creating email updates for our customers. As a result, our presence on social media has grown and sales have too.

Anna is a graduate of Lipscomb University and is an Associate, Strategy and Performance at Ankura in Nashville, Tennessee. We are happy to share her and her amazing talents with this organization.