Michele R. Jones

I attribute my success to faith, resilience, and the courage to follow a calling that required both personal healing and professional sacrifice. My faith was deeply rooted and modeled by my grandparents, while resilience was shaped in a military household where my father rose through the ranks from infantry to two-star General—teaching me discipline, excellence, and perseverance. My courage was forged through consistently being among the first women—and often the first African American or both—to break through “glass ceilings” from grade school to the corporate world.

That journey gave me a firsthand understanding of perseverance, diligence, teamwork, and sacrifice in the pursuit of meaningful goals. Ultimately, my life has been shaped by obedience to purpose, disciplined leadership, and an unwavering commitment to helping others transform their pain into purpose-driven impact.

The best career advice I ever received came from my mentor, Dr. Myles Munroe, a prolific leadership author and global voice on purpose. He taught me, “Love people, don’t use people. When you truly love people, you help develop them to reach their full potential, see beyond their challenges, and rise into who they are called to become.” That principle reshaped how I lead, serve, and build others.

He was also the one who challenged me to write my first book, Your Call to Freedom, reminding me, “Daughter, the world needs your voice—why are you holding it back?” Because of that encouragement, the message has now reached readers in over 17 countries. Dr. Munroe consistently pushed those he mentored to grow beyond self-imposed limits, pause for reflection when needed, and return to challenges with renewed clarity and strength.

His life and teachings left a lasting imprint on me. After his passing in a tragic private aircraft accident, it took time to grieve and process the loss of such a formative mentor. Yet his legacy continues to shape my leadership—anchoring me in purpose, service, and the belief that helping others rise is the highest expression of success.

First of all, take time to discover your voice. Take time to discover your uniqueness, what I call your secret sauce, your secret power. Because that's where the creativity is going to come, that's where your income is going to come, that's where you're going to be really set apart. And when you know you're set apart, you don't have time for competition. You don't even think about the competition, because you're unique in what you do. And when you're unique in what you do, that's where others will have value. They will see the need for it. You can't be all things to everyone, so you have to know your unique niche. I also want to encourage them to enjoy the journey. It's going to be, and is, a learning process. You learn a lot of life lessons along the way that encourage you to keep going forward. I encourage young women who I mentor to journal, to write down their dreams, their ideas, their aspirations, because that becomes pretty much your GPS. I can look back as a little girl and see from the things that I used to do, even got punished for, that I'm doing today. I was an adventurer, an explorer, and I remember getting a really strong talking to because I came in late at night after finding a new creek in the woods, skipping rocks, listening to the water, and dreaming about how one day I'm gonna travel, I'm gonna be a businesswoman. And here I am, doing those very things that I dreamt about. So write down your dreams and aspirations, because along the way, you are going to have practical life lessons that are going to sharpen you to prepare you for those levels. Also, have a good circle of true friends around you. People who will encourage you, not discourage you, because those aren't your friends. The ones who say you can do it, I'm in your corner. The ones who aren't intimidated by you, but they're inspired by you. And again, have fun along the way, because there's going to be some days you're like, oh, I can't deal with this, this is too hard, or what's going on, life's not making sense. Just keep going. It's gonna get better the next day. It will get better. God is still writing your story. Don't you close the book just because he put a pregnant pause in there.

Some of the biggest challenges in my field, especially being the founder and a voice in this space of domestic and dating abuse prevention and intervention, is that people don't really believe that it happens to high net worth women. They do not believe that it happens to women who are highly educated. So I spend, and our organization spends, a lot of time in churches, corporations, and community groups on how to be relevant and how to be compassionate to that type of demographic, because it's highly overlooked. In my 25 years in this space, we've had the opportunity to be referred to women who are pastors, women who are celebrities, women who are lawyers and professionals, but they have encountered and endured some very challenging marriages. And because of being high profile, you definitely want to keep that private, so you suffer in silence. When people think of abuse, they only think of physical, but really, the dynamics include verbal, emotional, psychological, sexual, financial, and even spiritual, where doctrine is held over women's heads. If you're a woman who lives in a six-figure community and you're married, the resources in most communities would be a shelter, but a high net worth woman is not going to go to a shelter, nor would she be qualified to go to a shelter. The numbers are staggering: 1 out of 4 women are impacted by these behaviors, just in the United States alone. So a lot of our education is community awareness. To date, I've trained over 2,500 faith leaders from every faith, whether it's Hindu, Jewish, Christian, Baha'i, and so forth, to really understand these dynamics so that we can be relevant to help these families navigate through challenging seasons. Our big focus is also breaking the generational cycle so that those behavior patterns do not pass to the next generation. That's a key piece: education and awareness.

Most important of values to me is my faith in God, frankly, in Jesus Christ, because without that, I know that I would not have been able to endure the emotional trauma that I went through in making the decision in leaving the marriage. It wasn't an unwanted choice, but it was a healthy choice. What else do I value? I value that you have to understand your self-worth. Because without your self-worth, an individual literally sets themselves up to be abnormally used, which is abused. So where you'll be undervalued, or allow yourself to be in situations where you're burning yourself out unnecessarily. That's the second value: know your self-worth in God, in Jesus Christ. And also having a healthy work-life balance, that you enjoy what you do, because I do enjoy what I do, but I also have people who hold me accountable to keep the fun in my life. Because I'm constantly thinking, oh, what about this? We could do this, we could add this, we can enhance here, we can help people there. You need to know when to turn off your creative juices and just get somewhere fun. So my fun thing is to be by the ocean, somewhere by the water, or cruising. I try and do that at least once a quarter or so to get to the ocean, get to the water, and it recalibrates me, so I come back fresh with new ideas, new energy and inspiration to handle the requests that are in front of us, whether it's to speak, to coach, to train, to encourage. That gives me the energy. So those are my three key drivers, and it keeps me healthy.