Founder & SHE-EO, Dr. Khnuma Simmonds

The first came after serving nearly a decade as Executive Director of a domestic violence agency while navigating my own experience with domestic violence and a deeply toxic work environment. One day, I realized I already had everything I truly needed: the generational legacy of my grandmother’s home, the abundance of my island that meant I would never go hungry, skills and purpose that no one could take away, and girlfriends who would never let me face life alone. In that moment, I chose faith over fear and left the security of my 9-to-5 to become a full-time entrepreneur.

The second came years later while searching for programs to teach me how to expand beyond my 84 square mile island – how to build wealth, travel the world, and scale globally. Then I stopped and realized I had already been living many of those dreams. As a little island girl from St.Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, I had already expanded a non profit and scaled a business that has stewarded over a million dollars, traveled the world with my family and girlfriends through retreats that I’ve coordinated, and grown my work from serving one island to an entire territory, then nationally, and now internationally, with members representing multiple countries.

That’s when I realized: Everything I was searching for wasn’t outside of me – it had been inside me all along. My job wasn’t to become someone else; it was simply to keep becoming more of who I already was. I still return to that realization whenever I begin doubting what’s possible.