Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world;
indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. 
– Margaret Mead
Wholistic Leadership Circles was initially born as Women’s Leadership Circles (WLC) was born in 2013 out of a quiet revolution of insight, frustration, and care. Around the time Lean In was published, many of us were reflecting on why progress for women in leadership remained slow—even decades after the first wave of breakthroughs. We remembered leaving corporate careers years earlier with hope for change, only to find that many of the same barriers were still in place. Again and again, our coaching conversations echoed the same truth: the pace of transformation was not keeping up with the promise.
We asked why. Despite a proliferation of women’s leadership initiatives, something essential was missing. Our reflection led to a bold hypothesis, and eventually a lived conviction: most leadership programs for women were still asking us to conform to the prevailing norms—masculine-coded behaviors, productivity at all costs, and a culture of over-efforting. These models didn’t empower women to lead from their full authentic selves. In fact, they often pulled women further from their inner wisdom.
WLC emerged as an answer to that dilemma. We knew the deeper work was not about adding new skills, but about unearthing an inner knowing that had long been devalued: presence, intuition, relational intelligence, and soul. The journey we offered was not one of self-improvement, but of liberation—from the constriction imposed by the ego self and enforced by the inner critic, also known as the superego. The superego acts as the ego’s internal police force, ensuring we stay aligned with its agenda—often by suppressing our deeper wisdom, spontaneity, and authenticity. This inner constriction is only intensified when women try to fit into systems that were never designed with them in mind—systems that prize conformity over wholeness, performance over presence, and control over connection. We created a space where women could reconnect with themselves and each other—through mindfulness, the Enneagram, communal learning, and practices that honored both the cognitive and unconscious realms. In this space, authentic leadership could emerge—not through force or the drive to fix ourselves, but through reclaiming what is already whole within us.
Over time, it also became clear that the challenges weren’t exclusive to women. The norms of traditional corporate life ask all of us—regardless of gender—to lean into only small parts of ourselves while leaving big, essential aspects at the door. When we do that, we lose access to our deeper intelligence, creativity, and capacity for wholehearted leadership. Our work invites leaders of all kinds to come home to their authentic selves. As we reconnect with the fullness of who we are, we tap into our true superpowers—our unique soul gifts—and contribute in ways that are both impactful and deeply fulfilling. In doing so, we generate greater collective intelligence, deeper engagement, and more meaningful cultures of belonging and innovation.
Now, in 2025, WLC is evolving once again. What began as a circle of women seeking deeper truth is becoming a more inclusive sanctuary for all who are called to conscious, soulful leadership. While our roots remain in women’s circles, our future includes people of all genders who long to lead from wholeness.
As we enter this next chapter, WLC is aligning with the broader vision of The Leader’s Muse—a body of work devoted to transforming leadership from the inside out. Together, we are weaving head, heart, and body; masculine and feminine; right brain and left brain; strategy and soul. Our approach integrates the analytical clarity and structure of the left brain with the intuitive, empathic, and imaginative capacities of the right. We honor the gifts of diffuse awareness, expanded perception, improvisation, symbolic thinking, creativity, emotional memory, and contextual understanding—capacities that allow us to “read between the lines,” hold the big picture, and sense coherence in the present moment. In this way, leadership becomes not just a function of effectiveness, but an expression of meaning, presence, and wholeness.
Our mission is to co-create a new, wholistic paradigm of leadership—one that awakens and includes the full brilliance of each person in the system. We believe that when leaders reconnect with their deepest selves, they lead with more clarity, love, and coherence. As each leader transforms, they help reshape organizational cultures into spaces of authenticity, creativity, and belonging. And from there, the ripple continues—into families, communities, and society at large—helping to build a world that is more whole, more just, and more alive.
This is the story of WLC—rooted in care, refined through experience, and now reaching toward the future with clarity, creativity, and a deep sense of belonging.