Growing careers, one willing student at a time.

“Anyone can set goals just as anyone can dream about success, but only the willing student can build a career that inspires and prospers.” – Tawanda Chirenda

The quote above has become my life metaphor. Feel free to adopt it if it makes sense to you too. I founded Becoming a Willing Student because as a former young leader who struggled with career anxiety, I saw firsthand the need for authentic career development coaching for young leaders everywhere.

I used to think passion was enough to build a great career, go through life as a young leader or young entrepreneur, and succeed at work. I was wrong, very wrong. I discovered the hard way that you need strategy. I discovered you need to learn how to lead yourself first before you can lead anyone else. I am now a Willing Student and I am on a mission to teach others what I have learned and what I am still learning.

I still have my passion. In fact, I am more passionate now than I have ever been my entire life. I am passionate about empowering students to take control of their lives the right way. Yes, there is a wrong way to go about it. I know a lot about that. I want every student to inspire and prosper and become who they want to be.

The struggle I went through as a young leader and young entrepreneur inspired me to create Becoming a Willing Student, a career development coaching program for smart, passionate and compassionate students who want more from their careers and their lives.

Becoming a Willing Student is for caring students who want more focus, clarity and confidence in life and in their careers. If you want to live your purpose, aligned with your values and according to your strengths, Becoming a Willing Student is for you.

I am building this movement for committed and passionate students like you. I believe in authenticity. I believe in inspiring the human spirit. I believe in igniting passion in others. I believe in creating true and lasting impact. I believe in building a high-performance team around you. I believe in authentic career development.

I will be honest. I am also doing this for a younger version of myself. I wanted to build a program to teach you things that my mentors couldn’t teach me early in my career journey. I want to teach you things that I wish someone had taught me earlier. What I needed the most when I was a student was a coach who could challenge me to go deeper than I had gone before and I found out the hard way.

I am not saying it was all my fault. I am saying I didn’t know. A great man told me the other day that it’s called “unconscious incompetence.” We don’t know what we don’t know. I want to change that. I want authentic, high-quality career coaching to be accessible to every student who needs it, sooner rather than later.

I want to be your coach and then watch you take control of your career and your life with a grin on your face. I feel like each time I write these words, there is a younger version of me that’s healing. So, forgive me if I seem to go on and on. I am learning to lick my own wounds and I want to teach you how to lick your own wounds too. The truth is, we are all recovering from something.

Why am I telling you this?

I care about you and your future. I don’t care about what you think of me. I am just being honest. I want the same for you. I want to teach you how to take control of your life by caring less about what other people think of you and more about how you show up in your career and in your life. This is not about being selfish. It’s about becoming the best you and learning to put things in their proper order. This perspective has changed my life in ways I couldn’t even imagine a few years ago.

I call it taking control of your life the right way. It starts by leading yourself before you can lead anyone else. Before you can change anyone’s world, you have to change yours first. This starts with clarity of where you are going and confidence in who you are. I will teach you how to turn your passion into real results.

We start with your goals, but we don’t stop there. Yes, goals are important, but so are integrity, humility, sincerity, authenticity, credibility, and trustworthiness. These are values that matter to me and to the students I work with. I believe your values matter more than your goals.

Why Me?

I know the tools, skills, knowledge, and mindset you need to grow your career and accomplish your goals. I have spent most of my career working with corporates, executives, nonprofits, and startups in Toronto. I have helped small to mid-size businesses and organizations grow and reach more people with their products and services. I have helped charities use their programs to create meaningful relationships with their communities.

I have grown social enterprise programs for organizations that are looking to create new revenue streams. My favourite social enterprise program of all time is the Caring Company Certification which I grew and managed at Imagine Canada. The Caring Company Certification is the largest corporate community investment accreditation program in Canada.

In this role, I got to work with leading Canadian companies and brands that are investing a minimum of 1% of their pre-tax profit back into the communities their employees live and work. I got to see first-hand how these companies make more by giving more. This work taught me a lot about the power of clarity, vision, purpose, mission, and values when it comes to growing your career and building something truly amazing.

I want to help you grow your leadership and build a high-performance team around you. Growing your leadership is the fastest and most effective way I know to become who you want to be as a young leader or young entrepreneur and accomplish the goals you have for your career and your life. I want to coach you first and then show you how to become your own best coach and make the impact you want to have with your life. That’s how we change the world, one willing student and one coaching session at a time. This is my mission in life and I want you to join me on this incredible journey.