Dear Reader,

I’m not here for a victory lap. I’m here to share a call-to-action.

I started this year not knowing if we could scale our impact without losing what made Embrace Change special in the first place.

Ten years in, and I was facing the question every founder asks when they hit a ceiling: Do you stay small and safe? Or do you build something that reaches exponentially more people…but risks everything that came before?

Here's what I learned: scaling doesn't mean dilution. It means building systems that multiply impact instead of multiplying noise.

This year alone, we redistributed over 6 figures directly to the BIPOC community––through team compensation, scholarships, referral fees. Not charity. An exchange for expertise, talent, and effort that too often get dismissed, rejected, undervalued.

(Impact, not noise.)

Let’s zoom out for the bigger picture.

In the past decade, we’ve redistributed over half a million to the BIPOC community. And I started this business with $10,000 from my salary as a public defender.

Meanwhile, EC clients have generated almost $2M more for themselves in salary increases, business revenue, fellowships, and side hustle income.

(Again: impact, not noise.)

This is the compound effect of giving women of color the right tools and the right strategies at the right time.

This is Embrace Change.

In a sense, the question was never whether we could scale. It was whether we could do it without losing what made this work in the first place.

So we built systems and infrastructure that are bigger, more stable, than any one person or even an all-star team.

We got the Embrace Change Coach Certification program ICF-Accredited. Our first 8 BIPOC graduates now have a pathway to globally recognized coaching credentials (and multiple new revenue streams available to them) through a program built by us, for us. No code-switching or masking required.

We launched Year 2 of the award-winning EC Collective with 145 members to date building careers, businesses, and fulfilling lives in community with each other. The 24 women in the ECC+ tier joined affinity pods that they dubbed "The Baddies"––because when you're operating at a certain level, you need peers who can keep up with you. Who can match your ambition.

We had 91 women go through our very first WOC Entrepreneurs' Summer School to get Embrace Change certified as WOC Entrepreneurs. These rockstars aren’t just starting hobbies and vanity projects. They are building vehicles for wealth that will change their lives forever––and that of those following in their footsteps.

107 women of color showed up to our first large-scale conference, Rise & Recognize, in January. Scheduled to take place 10 days after the inauguration because I knew this year was going to be a repeated sucker punch in the face for us. Hailing from 84 cities, our attendees celebrated 74 founders and entrepreneurs. We recognized our first set of Rise & Recognize awardees for their impact and leadership. We partied to DJ sets. We connected at themed networking tables. We hosted a panel for the ages and I delivered a State of BIWOC in the Workplace Address. We created a space where being seen felt normal instead of rare.

The visibility kept growing too. My CNBC course dropped in April, filmed at 30 Rock with full hair and makeup. I recorded 20 podcasts, delivered keynotes, moderated panels. Published my 35th article for Forbes. Every engagement, every appearance, every rep was a bet on us within a larger effort to make the expertise and the power of our community impossible to ignore.

We continued supporting transformation and growth within institutions, too. We finished training all 340+ Employee Assistance Program coordinators for the State of New York. More locally, we created and delivered LeadWell, a 6-session leadership wellness training for NYC agency managers. They came in skeptical. They walked out championing the program and more equipped than ever to support well-being at work. In an extremely tough work environment, mind you. Another organizational client gave me an iPad as a thank you after we facilitated a custom version of the Leadership Accelerator for their managers.

We launched small cohort Executive Roundtables. One participant wrote afterwards: "I never would have thought that a conversation with a couple strangers would lead to answers, ideas and more insight."

We also closed on the property that will house the EC Residency. Because women of color don't just deserve programs and training and coaching. We deserve physical institutions that outlive us.

This wasn’t even everything we accomplished this year either. There are literally too many milestones to list here, or you’d be looking at Don’t Stay in Your Lane: Part 2.

None of this was smooth, btw. None of this was a given.

We don’t have outside investors. We aren’t venture backed. We’re not a B Corp.

We simply have an unshakable resolve, and we renew our commitment to our mission every single day.

And we recognize that the times we’re in demand brave and hard decisions.

We launched ECC+ while sunsetting the Leadership Network. We hired a new ECCC Director while tilling the ground for the next cohort to begin in April. We built layers and layers of foundation while running programs across 6+ time zones.

Scaling means continually deciding what to keep and what to release.

Ten years ago, I started Embrace Change in part to prove that women of color don't need fixing. We’re not deficient. We’re not less than. We just need strategies that work for us, support from people who understand, and systems that center us.

A decade later, $2.5 million in cumulative impact proves that when you give women of color the right systems, we don't just advance our own careers. We build wealth. We create institutions. We rewrite the rules.

2026 brings the EC Residency opening, the coaching certification growing, and the Collective expanding with women who understand that community is a non-negotiable. At a certain point, you need people in your day-to-day who push you to dream bigger, think smarter, move bolder.

None of us need permission to scale our impact. We just need to keep building infrastructure for women of color to claim their power and generate wealth.

If this year taught me anything, it's that we were always capable of winning. Of course we were. You could even say it is our destiny. We just need enough of the right people to really see us and give us access to the pathways to make it happen.

Before I close: I didn’t share these milestones for congratulations. Applause doesn’t build social change. Participation does.

If you’re a woman of color and you’re not already inside this community, ask yourself what joining us in 2026 looks like. If you are already part of the EC “multiverse,” what’s your next level with us?

If you’re not a woman of color, amplify our work to others. Nominate us. Fund us. Send people to our programs. Open doors. That is how exponential impact compounds.

Here's to ten years of building, one year of scaling, and a lifetime of impact that's just getting started.
Cynthia

P.S.

If today’s email moved you, reply and tell me:

What was your biggest career or business win in 2025—and what’s your bold move for 2026?

We may spotlight a few inside the EC ecosystem.

Ready to supercharge your career? 🚀
Embrace Change offers personalized pathways to success for POC professionals:

1. Secure your spot in our vibrant and empowering WOC-only support network, the EC Collective, the next time doors open: Join the waitlist 🌟
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2. Connect and grow at our dynamic virtual workshops and networking events for BIWOC 👋🏾 ​
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3. Coach yourself through any career transition with Don't Stay in Your Lane: The Career Change Guide for Women of Color, our bestselling book 📚
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4. Accelerate your professional growth with personalized guidance and strategy from our BIPOC career coaches 📈

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