Michelle Poitier doesn’t just say that love is important to her business, she has built her business around that belief.
Michelle is the founder and executive director of Healing Women Healing Nations of Northeast Florida, a nonprofit organization that works primarily with homeless female veterans and their children. It’s a work founded on love, run with love, and that generates love. So when my team and I evaluated the responses we received to a campaign looking for stories about how love impacts business, Michelle’s rose quickly to the top.
As a result, we’re sending Michelle an autographed set of my three books (The Radical Edge, The Radical Leap, and Greater Than Yourself) and free access to my new eCourse, The Extreme Leadership Edge ($500 value). We’d also like to give her a group hug from the world and a collective “thank you” for making such a difference the lives of people.
Michelle, a veteran of the U.S. Navy, founded HWHN in 2015. You can learn more about HWHN at its website, but the short version is that it helps women in need with reintegration, housing, behavioral health, employment, education, finances, legal assistance, and volunteerism. This work was born of Michelle’s journey of self-discovery, which includes her personal story of homelessness and abuse.
“It has taken me over half of the 46 years I’ve been on this earth to come to a place of self-acceptance, self-love, and self-care,” she told us. “It has become my life’s mission to assist other women to come to a place that they are comfortable with themselves and do my part to guide the next generation of young women to living a life balanced with a healthy sense of self.”
The way to stop the dysfunctional cycles many women are in, she says, is to help them learn to love themselves and love others.
“We must begin to let down our mask and learn to love ourselves without apologies, shame or reservations; embracing the unique qualities that are in our DNA,” she wrote. “When we do that … we heal a nation … one woman at a time. That is my why. That is why I believe #loveisgoodbiz.”
What a powerful story of love impacting business. Thanks, Michelle. And keep spreading that love!