Phoenix Flops – Tyson Glover is co-founder of the organization and on-going campaign to celebrate failure and encourage resiliency. Designed identity and branding, produced documentary, developed and facilitated workshops and events, created social media following of over 1,000+ users on Instagram and Facebook.
The Phoenix Flops program came to life in January 2017. Co-founders Tyson Glover and Caroline Dean explained that defining the relationship between failure and resiliency is one of the overarching goals of the “flopshops” programming.
Turning Failure Into Growth
“We want participants to understand that failure is a stepping stone toward success,” Glover explained. “It is completely normal to fail at different aspects in life, whether those are personal, professional, et cetera. The key is coming up with a toolkit for how to ‘fail forward’ after these setbacks.”
Degrees of Failure – Designed and created a “degree of failure” to allow college students to celebrate their resiliency and turn a failure into a learning experience.
Phoenix Flops Live – Created a live Ted Talk style presentation event. Curated the stories and created the event with over 1,500 registered attendees.
Social Media campaign highlighting student stories about overcoming failure and resiliency. Interviewed students, faculty, and community members to create a more authentic brand on social media news feeds.
I was talking with a group of first year students and asked them what was the best part of orientation. All three said it was the session on Phoenix Flops. They all said that they had connected with one of the speaker’s stories…a good sign that the program is worth continuing in the years ahead. Congratulations on a successful launch of what is clearly a meaningful concept. Great work!
—President, Elon University, 2019
