Empowering Women Emphasized By Loudoun-Based Personal Coaching

STERLING, VA — In 2010, women from the business and faith communities gathered in Edna Howard's home seeking empowerment and networking opportunities. Those gatherings were intended to gather women together to encourage them, empower them, and keep them connected with others. Since then, those home gatherings have transformed into a business reaching a wider net of women and organizations.

Voices of Encouragement is a Loudoun County-based training and people development company providing consulting, coaching and professional services with a focus on women in the community and workplace. Howard, a personal development and empowerment mindset coach, runs the business while balancing full time information technology and human capital work. The workshops cover topics such as effective work, workplace engagement, employee mindset shift, stress management and work-life balance.

"We've been driven by the same ideas we initially founded our faith-based organization upon, which is, we really want to change this crazy world...flooding the human spirit with encouragement, hope and promise through empowerment workshops, and education and prayer," Howard told Patch.

A key milestone for Voices of Encouragement came in 2017 when the first empowerment workshop launched. Howard recalled planning the workshop as a pilot and hoped to get 30 participants signed up. It turned out that the 30 slots filled quickly, and she had to open another 30 slots.

"That was exciting to watch because from something that started in my home from my heart, and from a desire to want to help people and bless other women, it just morphed and transformed into this amazing live workshop that I just was very proud to watch," said Howard. "And then other women rallied around it to make sure that we were successful."

Voice's of Encouragement's larger workshops happen quarterly and are limited to 100 women. But Howard says it's the smaller group workshops with five to seven women that give more time to engage with participants.

One-on-one coaching has also drawn more interest since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. While empowerment workshops drew plenty of interest before the pandemic, the business had to pivot and offer a virtual platform Howard called the Encouragement Café.

"Women were really struggling in terms of just the whole COVID, Zoom fatigue, everything was happening," said Howard. "So what we saw was a need to offer mental wellness and stress management and self-care and health."

Despite the pandemic limiting staffing and income for the small business, Howard says a positive has been reaching more women who may not otherwise be able to attend the in-person workshops. Howard has seen both coaches and participants join from various locations outside Northern Virginia.

Participants may be seeking coaching and training for different reasons, but one common thread Howard has seen is women seeking to manage stress. Rotary Clubs and other organizations have also asked her to teach her class on achieving a positive mental attitude. That class is a three-part webinar series with a different topic for each: perspective, attitude and choice.

"That one has been very much sought after because it talks about perspective," said Howard. "By shifting your perspective if you're having a negative day or negative month, negative year, shifting your perspective can help as well as attitude. That's a big one...shift in attitude and mindset, and then also shift in the choices that we make."

With over 30 years of experience in the workplace, Howard understands the need for personal development in the workplace. Now with a trend of people leaving their jobs in pursuit of better ones, it's timely for employers to invest in workshops on wellness and work-life balance.

"So what better way to treat your employees as a valuable asset to bring in an organization that can help them be empowered because they'll work beyond the paycheck?" said Howard. "I've done it when I'm empowered within the job, the role I'm in. I'm working beyond the paycheck, you know, because I enjoy what I do. I feel valued. I feel like I'm being seen, and I feel like I'm being heard."

As a small, Black-owned business, Voices of Encouragement is a member of the Northern Virginia Black Chamber of Commerce. In 2018, Howard decided she wanted to join a chamber and learned there was a Black Chamber of Commerce. The chamber provides resources and advocates for its members, which come from all over Northern Virginia.

"It's been a real resource, a really great resource to be able to plug into, and when COVID hit they were offering a lot of different resources and programs to help with navigating the business and staying above so that you wouldn't throw in the towel," said Howard. "And so staying connected to them has been very valuable to me. I look at it as a way to continue to thrive in the community as well as business."

To learn more about Voices of Encouragement, visit www.voicesofencouragement.com.