The Wise Women's Council Experience
A year-long incubator designed to elevate women in leadership through structured learning, community support, and personal growth.
APPLY TO JOIN THE COUNCIL
THE EXPERIENCE
The Wise Women’s Council is built to meet you where you are, and gently (but powerfully) walk with you through growth, clarity, and transformation. With our custom blend of community, coaching, and curriculum, you’ll be guided through our leadership curriculum while also having ample space to show up fully as yourself. With a blend of structure and spaciousness, we make it possible for you to engage deeply without burning out.
What we’ve found in running this program for eight years is that this one-of-a-kind community becomes an incubator for your personal and professional growth. The structure—a weekly cadence of live calls and hands-on discovery—is focused on creating critical space for your own exploration, expansion, and integration.
This is a sacred place to let your full self show up. It’s place to develop, test, and refine your leadership skills. In doing so, you’ll expand your leadership capacity, connect with other brilliant women, and tap into a leadership network that you can lean on for a lifetime.
LEADERSHIP FRAMEWORK
AT-A-GLANCE
CURRICULUM
Monthly All-Group Leadership Sessions
Every month, we host a leadership All-Group Call to learn our core content, deepen your leadership frameworks, and put the material to practice in real time alongside other women in your peer group.
COACHING
Executive Coaching Hot Seats 2x Monthly
Work with our experienced executive and entrepreneurial coaches in one or both sessions each month. Join to get insight and clarity, as well as to learn from or support other women in the program alongside you.
SMALL GROUPS
Structured Small Group Masterminds
Monthly breakout sessions with a small group, facilitated by our master coach. Elevate your peer coaching skills, learn key management tools, and get breakthrough insights with your small group sessions.
WORKSHOPS
Expert-Led Training & Workshops
We invite specialized experts and workshop leaders to join us throughout the year, often customized to the needs of the group. Core trainings include decision-making, business design, mindset, and voice.
THE CALENDAR
The core calls are on Thursdays at 10AM Pacific / 1PM Eastern. Calls are 90 minutes.
* Special Workshops and Guest Teachers are scheduled outside of core calls, typically on Wednesdays or Fridays.
ALL GROUP CALL
LEADERSHIP CURRICULUM
At the start of the month, we gather the Council for a live call. It’s our anchor point—a time to pause, connect, and ground together before the month unfolds. Each call begins with an introduction to the monthly theme and curriculum, then opens into space for real conversation. This is where we reflect, share, and hear from one another. No small talk, no posturing—just an honest circle of women leaders willing to go deeper.
COACHING
TWICE MONTHLY OPEN SESSIONS
In our hot seat coaching sessions, you’ll be guided by an experienced executive coach alongside a handful of peers. These circles are intentionally intimate—designed to give you space to bring your challenges, questions, and goals into the light. With hot-seat coaching, reflection prompts, and facilitated dialogue, you’ll get tailored support while also learning from the perspectives of other women leaders walking a similar path.
SMALL GROUPS
DEEP CONVERSATION + PEER MASTERMINDS
Every month, you’ll join a small group break-out session to go deeper with your peers. These sessions are rooted in peer coaching and deep listening. Together, you’ll share openly, ask brave questions, and reflect on what’s working (and what’s not). The small-group setting creates trust, accountability, and space for real connection.
This is where lifelong friendships begin and where transformation happens—through being witnessed, supported, and challenged by women who truly understand.
EXPERT WORKSHOPS
GUEST TEACHERS + BUSINESS BREAKTHROUGH SESSIONS
Join us for expert-led workshops designed for exploring new business ideas, expanding your leadership capacity, and working at your personal growth edge. Our core workshops include sessions on business design and sequencing, boundary setting, decision-making, professional visibility, and whole-life leadership.
“I loved everything about the program. The women who joined me were inspiring, thoughtful, emotionally intelligent, and eager to be in community. That alone made every forum for interacting worth my time and focus. SKP is brilliant at holding space, providing sparks for connections, and letting go of any attachment of a plan in service of meeting the group where they are and what they are needing.”
— Alicia Jabbar, Experiential Facilitator, Speaker, Writer
COACHING
Meet the brilliant coaches that have been a part of The Wise Women’s Council.
JESSICA WAN
Executive Coach, Marketing Leader
Hi, I’m Jessica. You can also call me JWan. I spent nearly 20 years as a marketing leader, working to connect people with products they need and love. I spent a decade building and managing teams. Through team leadership I discovered my calling: to help others take action and unblock barriers in the way of their success.
I’ve coached people managers and individual contributors, managed creatives and analytical folks, and built diverse teams. In my last role, I sat on the executive team and served as a mentor to folks throughout the organization.
I understand how challenging it is to be a leader in the workplace. You’re balancing so many roles as strategist and visionary, team activator, and decision maker. Sometimes it might feel like you’re in an echo chamber. As a coach, I elevate people like you through a supportive process where we uncover real insights. As your sounding board and trusted advisor, we work together 1:1 to make the invisible visible and develop an action plan to fulfill your goals.
Most of my clients work with me on work-related issues; however, I have found that as whole human beings, we can’t truly separate work from life and vice versa. Our identities are all wrapped up in both.
Michelle Florendo
Decision Engineer & Coach for Type-A Professionals
Michelle Florendo is a personal and executive coach for Type-A professionals and is known for her analytical approach to coaching. With a BS in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University, and an MBA from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, Michelle uses a blend of decision engineering, design thinking, and lean startup principles to help her clients map their path forward. Michelle teaches driven professionals how to use the principles of decision engineering to craft careers that energize them.
Michelle has lead workshops at the Haas Berkeley Women In Leadership Conference and guest-taught on career decision making in Stanford’s famous Design Your Life course. She served on the inaugural coaching team for Seth Godin’s altMBA, is a founding member of the Forbes Coaches Council, and is an adjunct faculty member at New Ventures West.
JANIS VOGEL
Transformational Life Coach, Divorce Coach
Janis Vogel is certified transformational life coach and neurolinguistic programming practitioner. Janis’ coaching is powerful in part because she has been there. She has been divorced and healed from toxic relationships and childhood trauma by building unshakeable self-worth and self-love. Now she helps others do the same.
Janis worked for decades in the film industry for directors such as Ben Stiller, Celine Song, and Spike Lee. Janis’ writing has been published in various publications, such as Poetry for Coaching: Transformation Through Verse and The Brick Journal as well as an upcoming anthology on divorce.
A queer, black, mother of a fierce six-year-old, she grew up on the bucolic island of Martha’s Vineyard, cut her teeth as an artist in New York City for 13 years, and now lives in a tiny beach town, Leucadia, CA.
JESSICA ELEY
Mindset Coach
Jessica Eley is the founder of Madison Executive Coaching, is an entrepreneur, and a mindset wizard. Jess has spent over eight years helping entrepreneurs, executives, and leaders (yep, even the ones drowning in both deadlines and diaper duty) shift perspectives, transform communication styles, and optimize leadership skills.
She’s the go-to when relationships get tricky, tensions rise, and everyone’s ready to throw in the towel. If you’ve ever felt stuck, frustrated, or like you’re having the same conversation for the millionth time, Jess will show you how to break the cycle and lead with confidence.
Sara Taylor Tans
Founder, Pathways To Parenthood
Sara Tans is an ICF-certified coach and founder of Pathways to Parenthood, where she provides strategic support to new and working parents and the companies who employ them. Sara believes that every parent could benefit from having a coach. She is passionate about helping women navigate the overwhelm that comes with the parental transition and supporting them in finding ways to continue to grow the spaces in their lives that make them feel like themselves, while still being the parent they want to be. Sara also believes that companies have a lot of work to do to provide the type of work environment that allows families to thrive and aims to provide solution- based guidance to both organizations and their employees. Sara has supported hundreds of working parents through her businesses, Pathways toParenthood and Coaching By Sara. Sara also serves as a Career & Back-to-Work Coach for Maven Clinic.
“It was amazing how kind, helpful, and loving these people I hadn’t met in person could be, and sometimes I felt more seen and heard by them than people I see and talk to every day.”
— Erin Simpson, Founder, WildCat
THE CORE CURRICULUM
Core leadership topics & discovery
Each month, we dive into one of our twelve leadership topics. The topics are layered, and build upon each other. Each quarter, our themes align with the seasonal energy and shifting moves of the world around — and within — us.
“ I loved having a designated space, time, and community with which to dive deep into the most pressing questions in my personal and professional life. This structure worked really well for me because it provided structured times to pose and answer important questions, an accountability group that inspired me and pushed me to dig deeper, and finally a look into the questions, struggles, and aha moments of other ambitious people!”
— Michele C, Social Entrepreneur
APPLY TO JOIN
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