Share Your Story: A Powerful Partnership

by Anne Barry Jolles
Life Coach, Author and Speaker

The following is a featured entry in our Share Your Story contest, which celebrates our 10-year anniversary with stories from past attendees.

It was 2011, the day before the Massachusetts Conference for Women and my phone rang. It was a client and she said, “Hey, I’ve got an extra ticket for a conference tomorrow. Do you want to go?”

I’d never heard of the conference but it sounded interesting. So, I joined her. And what a day!  As a coach that’s certified through the International Coaching Federation of New England (ICFNE), I was deeply moved by seeing so many women striving to stretch themselves. I was awed by the speakers, their messages and the other women I met. All this amazing stuff in one place on one day that just seemed to end so fast.  I thought, “Now what?”

I wrote this note to the Conference organizers:

“Now what?

After all that inspiration…

What if we could harness the energy from the conference and help attendees to bring it home in new perspectives and action steps? How can we keep it alive between the conferences?

What if we could get 50 ICFNE certified coaches working with hundreds of women at the end of the conference day, making a positive difference in their lives and helping them to take it home…”

The conference director called the very next day, and ICFNE is now in our third year of partnership with Conferences for Women, coaching hundreds of attendees at their conferences in Massachusetts, Texas and Pennsylvania.

As a result of that serendipitous invitation from my coaching client, thousands of people have kept the energy and inspiration of the conference alive in their lives. And the number is growing…