Influential Women Highlights Felise T. Matlock Brown: HR Executive And Founder Of Sanctuary Of Self

HACKENSACK, NJ, UNITED STATES, August 12, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Helping Accomplished Women Reconnect With Themselves Through Whole-Being Coaching, Wellness, and Personal Transformation

Felise T. Matlock Brown is a human resources executive, wellness advisor, and the Founder of Sanctuary of Self, a bespoke whole-being coaching practice designed for high-performing women who have built remarkable careers and successful lives, yet find themselves asking a deeper question: What is all of this actually for?

With more than 25 years of experience partnering with C-suite leaders at globally recognized organizations, including Google, Bank of America, GE/NBCUniversal, Pepsi, and Citigroup, Felise has spent her career understanding the complex relationship between professional achievement, organizational systems, and human potential. Through her leadership roles in human resources, she has witnessed firsthand how accomplished individuals—particularly women—can become disconnected from themselves while striving to meet expectations within environments that often prioritize performance over wholeness.

Felise understands this tension because she has lived it herself. She experienced the contrast between external success and internal depletion, learning that achievement alone does not always create fulfillment. That realization became the foundation of the work she now leads through Sanctuary of Self, where she helps women move beyond the performance mask and reconnect with the deeper parts of who they are.

Felise holds a Master’s Degree in Human Resources and Industrial Relations from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and has spent two decades leading enterprise transformation, organizational design, workforce planning, and culture initiatives at scale. Throughout her corporate career, she developed deep expertise in helping organizations evolve while supporting leaders and teams through periods of growth, change, and transformation.

In 2025, Felise experienced a significant professional transition when her role at Google was eliminated. Rather than viewing the moment as an ending, she describes it as a gift — an invitation to pause, reflect, and return to herself.

What followed was a period of intentional recalibration. Felise invested in a coaching certification, began a doctoral journey in holistic medicine, and committed to her own transformative coaching experience. The process allowed her to explore healing, identity, purpose, and alignment beyond professional accomplishments.

The internal shift she experienced became the blueprint for Sanctuary of Self.

On April 3, 2026, Felise officially launched Sanctuary of Self, a whole-being coaching experience rooted in the integration of Mind, Body, and Soul. Through individual coaching, retreats, and select corporate wellness programming, she guides accomplished women toward a deeper sense of alignment and fulfillment.

Sanctuary of Self was created from Felise’s own lived experience of navigating the space between achievement and alignment. She describes the practice as a sanctuary for women who have built lives that appear successful from the outside but are seeking a deeper connection with themselves, their purpose, and the way they want to experience life moving forward.

Sanctuary of Self is built on a three-part method Felise calls Mind, Body, Soul — Mental Architecture, Physical Rhythm, and Spiritual Authority. Mental Architecture examines the beliefs and inherited patterns a woman has mistaken for her own character. Physical Rhythm treats the body not as a vehicle to be optimized but as an intelligence — nourished by Felise’s own training as a classically trained chef and integrative nutrition coach. Spiritual Authority is the practice of intuition and presence, of learning to co-create a life rather than execute one handed to her.

Felise is a Certified Life Coach through the National Board of Certified Counselors and a Certified Holistic Health Coach through the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. She is also a classically trained chef from the International Culinary Center, bringing together her understanding of leadership, wellness, and nourishment. She believes healing requires an approach that honors each individual’s unique journey.

Felise believes many accomplished women reach a point where the strategies that built their success stop working — not because the women have failed, but because the strategies were never built for this chapter. Sanctuary of Self isn’t a program that helps her do more. It’s a return to what she already carries. The mirror isn’t for fixing. It’s for remembering.

The foundation of Sanctuary of Self is a single conviction. Felise’s role isn’t to hand a woman something new — it’s to help her recognize what she’s been carrying the entire time, often hidden under decades of proving she deserved to be in the room.

Felise doesn’t measure success by what a woman builds. She measures it by whether the woman is still inside what she’s building — connected to it, nourished by it, present for it — rather than performing her way through a life that looks complete from the outside and feels hollow from within.

When asked what she wants women to know, Felise doesn’t offer three rules. She offers one belief, stated plainly: you already hold the key.

Not a key you earn through the next promotion, the next certification, the next version of yourself that finally feels ready. The one you already have.

Felise has watched fear take a hundred different disguises in the women she’s worked with — inside boardrooms and inside coaching sessions alike. It rarely announces itself as fear. It shows up as not enough data yet. As let me just get through this next quarter first. As waiting for permission that was never going to arrive, because the only permission that was ever required was her own.

Her counsel isn’t “believe in yourself” as a slogan. It’s recognition before instruction — the conviction, tested against her own life and every client who’s sat across from her, that the wisdom a woman needs was never missing. It was buried under performance, under proving, under twenty-five years of being excellent at everything except returning to herself.

She tells women they don’t need to see twenty steps ahead. They need one inspired step — and the trust that the next will reveal itself once they’re standing in it.

Felise’s own journey reflects this philosophy. Each day, she begins by asking, “Lord, what are we going to co-create today?” From that place of faith and openness, she allows inspiration and guidance to unfold. A simple nudge toward a website, a piece of research, or an idea she had not previously considered often becomes the next step in a larger journey.

For Felise, growth does not wait for certainty — it requires courage. She encourages women to embrace opportunities, step beyond fear, and trust their ability to navigate what comes next.

Faith remains the foundation of Felise’s personal and professional life, while family serves as her greatest source of strength and grounding. As a mother of two children, whom she lovingly refers to as her “Little Humans,” she considers her time with them sacred and non-negotiable.

She also prioritizes practices that allow her to remain centered and present, including spending time outdoors, placing her feet in the grass, praying, meditating, traveling, and allowing herself time to rest without apology.

Felise believes these moments are not indulgences — they are essential sources of renewal. Through experience, she has learned that she cannot pour from an empty vessel. Caring for herself allows her to show up fully for her clients, family, friends, and community.

Through Sanctuary of Self, Felise is building more than a coaching practice—she is creating a movement centered on helping women redefine success through self-connection, intentional living, and whole-being wellness. That movement takes physical form each year at The Luxury of Presence, SOS’s signature retreat — five days at Spice Island Beach Resort in Grenada, February 22–26, 2027, held for a group of just 14 women ready to move from achievement into alignment. It is one of the ways Felise makes the SOS Method tangible: not a weekend of rest as escape, but a container for the deeper recalibration her clients are seeking. Interested women can inquire directly with Felise for participation. Her mission is to support women who are ready to move beyond survival mode and into a way of living where ambition and well-being can exist together.

Based in New Jersey, Felise lives with her husband and two children. Through her leadership, coaching, and commitment to whole-person wellness, she continues to help high-achieving women redefine success—not as something they achieve at the expense of themselves, but as something they experience through alignment, purpose, and wholeness.

Learn More about Felise T. Matlock Brown:

Through her Influential Women profile, https://influentialwomen.com/connect/felise-matlockbrown or through her website, https://www.sanctuaryofself.life/

Influential Women

Influential Women provides a platform where women from all backgrounds can connect, share their perspectives, and create content that empowers themselves and others. Through storytelling, thought leadership, and creative expression, Influential Women amplifies voices that inspire change.

Learn More about Felise T. Matlock Brown:

Through her Influential Women profile, https://influentialwomen.com/connect/felise-matlockbrown or through her website, https://www.sanctuaryofself.life/

Influential Women

Influential Women provides a platform where women from all backgrounds can connect, share their perspectives, and create content that empowers themselves and others. Through storytelling, thought leadership, and creative expression, Influential Women amplifies voices that inspire change.

Editorial Team
Influential Women
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