I didn’t build one thing. I built a lot of things — and it took me a long time to understand that was never the problem.

Worship ministries. Counseling rooms. Operations frameworks. Sermons. Councils. Coaching sessions. For a long time, all of it lived in separate rooms, under separate names, like they had nothing to do with each other. They do. Every one of them was the same instinct, aimed at different places: take what you’ve been trusted with seriously enough to build something real underneath it.

That instinct has a name now. Stairs to Stars.

— Shantoria “Tori” Potts, Founder

Where This Came From

For a long time, I felt stuck. Not because I hadn’t built anything — I’d built worship ministries from the ground up, sat on councils, run operations for organizations that needed someone willing to tell them the truth, taught, preached, counseled, coached. But none of it lived under one name. It felt less like a body of work and more like a dozen unfinished rooms with no house around them — and it’s hard for anyone to take you seriously when you can’t hand them one sentence that says who you are.

I know now that wasn’t a failure. It was an address problem.

Stairs to Stars is the address.

The Story

I’m an ordained elder, a certified pastoral counselor, and a certified life coach — but the ordination and the certifications were never really the beginning. The beginning was always the same question, asked in a dozen different rooms: what’s actually being stewarded here, and is there a structure strong enough to hold it?

I’ve asked that question leading worship — building ministries from nothing, not just leading a set on Sunday. I’ve asked it serving as a pastor on a pastoral council, and sitting on apostolic councils, where the question wasn’t musical, it was governmental: is what we’re building here sound, and are we the ones equipped to steward it well. I’ve asked it running operations across multiple clinical organizations — startup locations, departments, and whole organizations alike — building the metrics frameworks and SLAs that told leadership the truth about whether a system was actually working, not just whether it looked like it was. And I’ve asked it one-on-one, in pastoral counseling and coaching rooms, where the “structure” being built isn’t a business at all — it’s a person, rebuilding their own foundation.

My role has been consistent everywhere I’ve stood — not a coincidence, but evidence. That consistency is indicative of the anointing itself, not separate from it.

I’m also a psalmist — which, if you know the Psalms, means I don’t believe honesty and holiness are opposites. The Psalms hold lament right next to praise, doubt right next to declaration, a person fully in the flesh still reaching for God anyway. That’s not a contradiction to resolve. That’s just what real faith sounds like out loud. It’s the same spirit behind The Stairwell — real conversations, still climbing, still human.

For a long time I thought all of this was scattered — too many rooms, too many hats, nothing you could put in one sentence. What I’ve come to believe instead is that it was never scattered. It was range. A pastor who understands operations. An operator who understands the weight of a calling. Someone who’s sat in enough different rooms — ministry, clinical, creative, governmental — to see the same pattern everywhere: vision either scales, or it collapses, depending entirely on what’s built underneath it.

Stairs to Stars is what happens when all of that finally gets one address.

Credentials

  • Ordained Elder
  • Certified Pastoral Counselor
  • Certified Life Coach
  • Pastor, Theologian, Preacher, and Church Teacher
  • Psalmist
  • Served as a Pastor on a ministry's Pastoral Council
  • Served on Apostolic Councils and ministry leadership teams
  • Operations leadership across multiple clinical organizations — startup locations, departments, and organizations — SLA and metrics framework design
  • Range of creative and coordination experience, including event coordination and curation

What I Believe

There is so much the Lord wants to release in the earth. What hinders it isn’t a lack of passion — it’s ignorance, and a lack of stewardship. I don’t think of myself as the source of anyone’s vision. I think of myself as a midwife to what’s already trying to be born. My work is helping a purpose come into the earth safely — strong enough, structured enough, to actually survive being born and keep growing after. Not polish. Not performance. Germination — Godly vision infiltrating spaces it was never expected to reach, taking root until it becomes what’s there, because it was built right. That’s the Kingdom coming a little closer to earth.

Vision is a privilege. It’s given, not earned — and what you build underneath it is how you answer for having received it.

I don’t treat every request as one to build right away. Before anything gets built, I ask real questions, and we pray through what we find together — because some visions need to be refined before they’re built, and that’s not opposition, that’s partnership.

I partner with you to build the framework — and I share the weight of building it, spiritually and emotionally, because those two things were never meant to be handled by two people who’ve never met.

Nobody climbs alone.

Whatever room you’ve been building in — a ministry, a business, your own life — I’d love to help you find out what’s actually underneath it, and build something strong enough to carry it forward.

Seek the Foundation →