Swati Saini
Jul 8, 20204 min
Michele Gunn is a certified coach leading with a mission to help people enhance their lives. She has over 30+ years of experience in working with people from different industries. Her coaching cultivates individuals to thrive in their personal and professional lives. She helps people understand their strengths and find their true purpose in life. Her aim is to make every life meaningful that comes in her pathway. Through her values, she leads people towards a path of self-discovery and growth which turns their ordinary lives into a fulfilling and rewarding journey.
For Michele, her family comes first. She has been married for over 30 years. She has 3 adult children and 2 beautiful granddaughters. Michele started her career as an Administrative Assistant where she supervised the crew for smooth business processes. After working there for 2 years she moved on to become a Shift Manager and then a Receiving Area Team Leader. In 2004, Michele started working as a Secretary/Bulletin Editor in Immaculate Conception Church. This is where her love for God thrived and she became quite attached to the teachings of the Church. She inculcated all those valuable teachings into her life. She had prior work experience in management and an academic background in business administration with a focus in marketing. So, She combined all her learnings and experiences to start marketing for the Church and Bishop Kelley Catholic School. She realized that evangelization is marketing Jesus and there is no other product better than salvation!
During this time she faced some of the biggest struggles in her life. Michele’s husband, who was the primary income of the family, worked in skill trade in Automobiles. Unfortunately, the industry crashed. A lot of people drawn out of work. Her husband, who was highly skilled could not get a job as there were thousands of people applying for jobs. Michele’s job paid for their family’s health insurance and unemployment for her husband was running out. They had 3 kids, 15 years wiser and younger. The financial pressure was so high that they had to move their family to a new state.
In February of 2007, her husband scheduled a couple of interviews through a recruiter in Texas. He accepted a job and moved there. Michele and her kids joined her husband in Texas after the school year was through in June 2007.
Once things settled down, she thought she could start a marketing career now that the kids were grown. But that did not work out, so she went to work in an Archdiocese. After 5 years of working there, she went on to manage the Sacred Heart of Jesus Church. Along with that, she also did a part-time job for 2+ years to support her family. She also began her entrepreneurial venture with ‘Purple Passion Jewelry.’ She creates beautiful jewelry pieces for her online business.
At the Church, she was a brilliant manager. But her passion to help people was so deep that she did not feel fulfilled at that job. She wanted to work more directly with people. As part of a transition to grow the church, she became an Independent Gallup Certified Strengths Coach. Upon taking the CliftonStrengths assessment, she started working as the Director of Outreach for the Church.
She was good at management, but still not satisfied being so on. Her hunger to help people took her to dive deep into this sphere. She fell in love with coaching and mentoring. After about 6 months of coaching church staff, she went on to build her own coaching business - “Cultivate and Thrive”.
She has vast knowledge in the field of human behavior and identification. She uses it to train people to become more unified and appreciative of each other. She describes CliftonStrengths as a mechanism to look at what is RIGHT with people.
“We build on our innate talents, things that are uniquely us. There are 34 Talent Themes. The chance that two people have the same top 5 themes in the same order is 1 in 33 million. We are unique. Together we are better!”
“The Talent Theme of Achiever has remained the most commonly occurring Strength, showing up in more than 31% of 15 million individual’s Top 5 Strengths. Conversely, Command remained at the bottom of the list.”
Michele is a benevolent being who loves seeing people identify their true potential. She works tirelessly to ensure that every person she coaches becomes successful in mastering his/her talents and aptitudes. She goes to the very extent of assisting people in their needs by giving her best to everything she does. She offers her services in numerous areas such as Team Building, Interview Preparation, Life Coaching, Social Media Marketing, Content Strategy, Content Marketing, Brand Marketing, Change Management, Public Speaking, Career Development, Coaching, and much more.
She has utilized the power of social media platform LinkedIn to help spread her message. Owing to her value addition, her network grew over by 39,000 people within 5 months. Michele considers this as a big achievement that she has been able to touch the lives of so many people within such a short span of time with her work. Her network considers her an asset to their social media lives. Her influential & thought-provoking posts enrich the experiences of followers.
She is a true believer in God and his creation. Her work is an endeavor to nurture it further as much as possible. She has an unshakable belief in the power of kindness and empathy. Her life is a symbol of generosity and humanity.
Michele Gunn is an inspiration for every person. Her life journey is a symbol that your passion can take you to places that you have never imagined of in life. Constant Perspiration & Never Give Up attitude is all it takes to cultivate and thrive in life.
Muthu Krishnan & Team celebrate Michele’s journey and achievements in life that lead her to become a successful influence in so many other lives. Her drive towards making every person recognize the essence of their lives is a value that will keep blossoming endlessly!
“We are each given innate talents to serve people and grow God’s kingdom. We will be truly fulfilled only if we participate actively in this mission. We, as people, must recognize and value every other person for who they innately are.” - Michele Gunn, Cultivate & Thrive