When Grace found WOW!, she had hit a wall. Working at a mayor’s office with a 15-year career in politics under her belt, she had found her “body, mind, and spirit tested to their limits.” In June of 2021, she quit her job and took a 5-month sabbatical to restore her health. Hungry for spiritual nourishment, she saw that WOW! was offering a virtual Soul Care cohort; WOW! saw that she was between jobs and offered her a scholarship. The Soul Care space was transformative for Grace. “I had a lot of breakthroughs,” she said. “One of the biggest in that Soul Care space was realizing that God really cherished me and my gifts. That I can see myself as a leader and see myself as priority number one. I always saw myself as a number two. Always VP versus President, Vice Chair versus Chair. Always thinking I wasn’t good enough. That session was about going through the wall – things that hold you back, struggles and obstacles. On the other side of the wall, I realized I can be number one. That was good for me, that was affirming for me.” For so many, internal barriers compound the hurt of unjust systems, breaking through the wall allowed Grace to be free to pursue her purpose.  She attended silent retreats, which WOW! also subsidized, and referred friends to these retreats that were so impactful for her. 

Now, it’s been almost two years since Grace launched her national consulting firm helping Asian American Pacific Islanders enter public office and connecting AAPI nonprofits to the government. The lessons she learned at WOW! inform the way she leads on a fundamental level. “WOW! has had a tremendous impact on not only my leading a political consulting firm, but also how I lead it,” she said. “That grounding experience really stayed with me and is essential to how I lead.” The values of rest and collaboration she found at WOW! were an antidote to the hustle culture she had experienced at work. “That culture that was tough for me at City Hall. I fight against that everyday in how I run my team. I want people to feel valued and feel like it’s collaborative and that I take every person’s input seriously. I really believe that what I’m trying to do in my company is to be countercultural in the political space.” As she leaned into her radical calling, WOW!’s spiritual direction sessions continued to be an oasis when overwhelm started to creep in. 

WOW!’s vision is to transform churches, communities and cultures by empowering each woman to find and free her voice. We want leaders like Grace to experience breakthroughs so that they can flourish and lead others into flourishing. “I think it’s an important and necessary resource,” she said. “Especially in that Soul Care space, a lot of the women had shared that they don’t feel like they can just be vulnerable because they’re leading orgs and churches and they have to be the strong one. Seeing everyone be vulnerable and share struggles, there was this trust that was built with all the women. It’s really important to have strong Christian sisterhood. Being a woman in the world, it’s tough. There are unique challenges.” And that’s why Grace is grateful to “have a community to walk alongside.”