Keisha Shields
Keisha Shields
theClubhou.se tends to have this seemingly invisible draw which gets confirmed when a recent transplant to Augusta walks in and says, “Yes!” and we know a new member has arrived and they are getting to work. Keisha Shields understands value, recognizes accomplishments, and sees the potential in people to rise above others’ stigmatizing mentalities. She has set up shop at theClubhou.se!
“I am the Leadership & Business Adviser that women executives turn to when they want to show up authentically with zero apologies,” is how Keisha describes herself, elaborating, “I teach legacy-driven women how to ditch other people’s expectations and use the power of their voice to command the high-powered career and lucrative business they deserve to have.” As an example and inspiration, Keisha has created a life for herself, bypassing the doubts and limiting thoughts of others.
Keisha grew up in Augusta, Georgia, and shared, “I was a humanitarian from the time I was in elementary school on up, coordinating food drives, volunteering at the soup kitchen, volunteering full-time at the children's hospital, raising money for causes, teaching kids how to read...the list goes on. I was the kid with very big visions of who I could become in my lifetime. I always knew that I would champion my own enterprise, so it makes me chuckle thinking back on that.” Deciding to leave after high school to seek her opportunity elsewhere, Keisha moved to Atlanta, attended Georgia State University and graduated with a degree in Psychology.
Keisha’s career began as an Executive Assistant, serving as the right-hand to Vice Presidents in corporate business, enabling her to be folded into the professional world. This meant she was arriving at the space where her personal life and work life began to merge. Though professionally driven and proving herself in the workplace, Keisha had been a private person. This presented new challenges which Keisha decided to address, and around this time, she founded A Day in My Life, beginning a blog about the fear of being judged for the stigma associated with having an incarcerated partner. This activity would go on to inform the growth of Keisha’s brand over the next decade.
“I have met many professional and entrepreneurial women who have self-silenced and not allowed their work to become as high-profile as they truly desire and the majority of them deeply regret it. This is why my work is so important for me.”
Keisha continued seeking opportunity and made her way to Sacramento, California next. She started up a new service, Pink Label International, to focus on luxury branding for her clients. Her business savvy combined with C-Suite acumen and her real-life experiences influenced her business the most, and as a result, is why she is most often hired to advise her clients. “I started out doing corporate consulting,” Keisha says, “but what I found was that the 'person' behind the 'role' actually had wounds and unfulfilled desires that would actually catapult their impact and their income if only they could be coached through them.” This leadership development is geared towards women who are interested in developing themselves and their professional profile/brand as a more advanced and more well-known leader. This continued Keisha’s efforts to empower high-achieving women in the corporate world to ascend to the next level of their professional careers. She also began coaching stigmatized executives on the side, a move which would soon make room for another break through in her own brand. Keisha provided some insight by saying, “As the years went on, I started to notice two significant problems in the C-Suite... women were feeling silenced and feeling that their ideas and what they brought to the table were not considered with the same depth and enthusiasm as their male counterparts, and women were less likely to go for high-visibility roles because of fear of judgment of their personal life and how that would impact their reputation and income.” This hit close to home for Keisha. For over ten years, Keisha says she silenced herself and did not go for those major opportunities for which she knew she was the best fit. She admitted, “This was simply because of the concern of having to have my personal life in the limelight. I have met many professional and entrepreneurial women who have self-silenced and not allowed their work to become as high-profile as they truly desire and the majority of them deeply regret it. This is why my work is so important for me.” She works with career women, entrepreneurs, and those in the C-Suite, stating, “My specialty as a Leadership and Business Adviser is in understanding intimately how grief, trauma, stigmas, and stereotypes can keep high-achieving women leaders from believing bigger, finding the power in their voice, and truly becoming who they are divinely destined to be.”
Stepping from behind the name of Pink Label International, she founded the Keisha Shields brand, positioning her name to the forefront of the business, a move which exemplified the progress she empowers her clients to achieve. This is the Leadership and Executive Advising aspect of her business. It focuses more on high-level personal and leadership consulting & coaching for women in (or entering into) senior level roles in their careers or business who are dealing with the aforementioned challenges. Keisha works with her clients to dissolve the line between private life and work by highlighting their accomplishments and avoid being solely defined by supposed stigma. She creates a dialogue to objectively discuss the stigma to become comfortable talking about the experience openly and minimize the perception of shame. Keisha says she is inspired, “by the challenges I faced navigating shame and biases due to my personal experiences, and the fear I faced worrying that the negative judgment of others would impact my professional reputation and my bottom-line in both my career and my business.” Keisha often connects her clients to organizations which focus on the particular issue.
Though Keisha emphasizes working with women, she is quick to note, “My work is gender-inclusive,” so she can work with men. She continues, “However, my work centers on the challenges and plights that are most commonly had by women.” A majority of Keisha’s clients are virtual, so her marketing is done almost entirely online. She gets the word out about her business through alliances with people she has masterminded with or met in various business programs, as well as her She Will Not Be Silenced, with Keisha Shields podcast, Facebook ads, and, she says, “Of course good old word-of-mouth.”
Keisha recently returned to the Augusta area to care for family. Though remote, and working with clients throughout the country, Keisha found she needed a dedicated work space and access to rooms for virtual meetings and recording her podcast. In addition to her 1:1 private consulting, she offers e-courses (on Finding Your Voice, Barriers to Visibility, etc), mastermind groups, workshops, and retreats, so there are a variety of options at a range of prices and levels.
Next on the horizon for Keisha Shields is teaching others her methodology so that they can be apt at coaching clients using her framework, and getting higher-level contracts with high-powered companies/organizations. Personally, Keisha is also working on creating a line of journals and writing fiction kids books. It is a brand for which Keisha has broad-reaching goals.
Keisha’s work and ethic assuredly rings true with theClubhou.se core value, Be Worthy of Trust. She shared, “100% of the clients who hire me do so because they feel a level of trust -- that I am who I say I am, that their privacy is well-held and well-protected, and that they will get the amazing, unprecedented results that I offer to them.” Keisha has maintained her vision throughout her career and it has steered her work through college to California and back. “Many people won't understand or believe in your vision,” she says, “but if the vision was given to you, it is something that you are likely called to do, so go for it even if you're the only one who can see it.” We can get on board with that sentiment here at theClubhou.se.