We launched WFAN in 2019. What an exhilarating journey it has been! Our vision is to bridge the gender gap in the workplace by creating women entrepreneurs in financial services. Our mission is to mentor women to lead a rich and balanced life for themselves and their clients.

This June 2021, we hit the first milestone aligned to our vision and mission. Yes! Our first cohort of holistic financial wellness coaches graduated in June 2021 by completing an intensive and immersive 215 hours of live training sessions conducted by 6 extraordinary coaches across India and North America. Our members are currently in the next phase of working with live clients to complete the mandatory 120 hours of practice to receive two international certifications from our international collaborators and will also be eligible to apply for ICF ACC Certification. While working with clients, our coaches are already working on a fee-only model and few of them are also working with international clients! It fills my heart with happiness that we have been able to create and nurture truly world class Holistic Financial Wellness Coaches through our 12-Month Design Your Life Program and in a domain that is so important for the betterment of humans.

Here is a powerful story of one of our members and how our DYL program transformed her life!

When I look back, I find that we learned so much and developed greater bonding with our members, and building a community that has got each other’s back. With so much uncertainty amidst the COVID-19 and the first phase involving lockdown imposed across India; we had to improvise every aspect of our business. Be it re-designing the curriculum to finding the right coaches for each area of specialization to timings and duration for sessions to signing up our first cohort of members that will have shared values and most important tweaking our business model for the pilot project to focus on delivering value and impact for our members qualitatively and quantitatively. Here is a story of how it all unfolded.

April 25, 2020! India!

It is 7.15 pm! One by one our Design Your Life Program Members joined the Zoom Room for the Opening Session! Amidst the uncertainty of COVID19, 15 women had signed up the previous week! We branded the first phase of the program as DYL 90 Days and the second phase of the program as DYL 9 Months. The first phase was focused on helping the members gain clarity and purpose on what they want to do in life, understand their relationship with money, and get a feel of how international coaching works!

We signed up with 2 world-class coaches across North America to roll out the first phase of the program! The DYL 90 Days was conducted twice a week for 2 hours each through Zoom. Our two North America Coaches Saundra Davis and Lindsay Hindle designed and delivered 24 coaching sessions by July 2020. In addition to this, we organized 3 guest sessions for our members.

On the 9th week of the program, we shared a survey form to assess how our 10 members felt about the program, what has changed in their lives, and whether they will like to continue with the 2nd phase of the program-DYL 9 Months. We got very positive responses with a number of them stating that the program impacted them enormously and they have seen a huge shift in their lives. Some of them stated that they have taken some very important decisions in life, they are very happy these days and have decided to pursue coaching as a career because it gives them more meaning in their lives. The common thing among all women members was that their relationship with money has become healthier and better!

The positive feedback and the members opting voluntarily to continue with the intensive DYL 9 Months Program gave us a tremendous boost and confidence to put together a world-class coaching curriculum. Our single-minded objective and intention of rolling out the DYL 9 Month Program were to help our women members gain confidence, become financially independent, lead a rich and balanced life for themselves and their clients across the world.

Our team got to work by adding 4 additional world-class coaches and collaborated together to custom-design a unique curriculum focused on both technical and soft skills including personal branding, content marketing, and building a one-page business plan and cash flow projections for starting up the coaching business. The four additional coaches are; Geetha Rao for NLP, Rashmi Saran for Leadership and Emotional Intelligence, Shipra Gupta for Mentor Coaching, and yours truly for Financial Concepts and Frameworks.

What is remarkable is that despite the second wave of COVID19 which impacted all most all of us and our families our members showed up and completed the intensive program. The resilience of the members with multiple responsibilities of managing home, work, and some of them younger children and older parents every day along with completing the program and coaching practice with clients across India and the World is amazing!

June 20, 2021, India!

It is 8.15 pm! One by one our members and guests showed up in the Zoom room for our Graduation Ceremony. I was in tears of joy when I noticed that each member had displayed the WFAN logo as the backdrop of their zoom screen, wore a Red Color Dress or a Dash of Red was present in their Attire. They were so Gorgeous and Divine and along with our coaches and guests they elevated all of our moods and the entire zoom room was vibrating at the highest level of pure love!

Each member’s story is magical and the transformation journey they have gone through is remarkable. Gratitude to each and every member for signing up for the program, our internal team members and the coaches for making the program a huge success! And to our Angel Investor who funded this program unconditionally. A true Angel!

What I presented to you was a glimpse of our story and one of our members’ powerful stories of transformation during these trying times and how we emerged stronger and resilient together to achieve success. Inspired by our first cohort’s success, we plan to launch more programs soon.

Last but not the least, when you are an entrepreneur driven by a clear vision and mission to do meaningful work for the community, the Universe will conspire to bring the best of the people to you to fund, collaborate and form a team to make it all happen! Go for it!