For over two decades, Julia Williams lived at full speed. She started on Capitol Hill and eventually became Senior Director of Government Relations for a large nonprofit – the kind of career that looks impressive on paper and feels relentless in real life. Exciting but crazy-making, she calls it now.

When COVID hit and the future of her field looked uncertain, Julia made the decision to retire early. She didn’t have a plan. She just knew she needed out.

What she didn’t expect was how hard the quiet would be.

“I did not enjoy the downtime,” she admits. She was bored. She was depressed. She took a retail job just to have somewhere to be. It wasn’t the future she’d imagined for herself – but it was where a friend finally said something that changed everything: he thought she had a lot to share.

Julia had always been the person others came to for advice. She just hadn’t thought of it as a skill you could build a career on.

As she looked into coach training, one thing became clear: if she wanted to coach senior leaders in the federal government, she needed the ICF credential to be taken seriously. And she wanted to do it without setting her faith aside – something her political career had never really allowed. “In my career I felt very inhibited about sharing my faith,” she says.

That’s what led her to PCCI. Not just the accreditation, but the promise that her faith wouldn’t have to stay in a separate compartment from her work.

Even so, saying yes wasn’t automatic. “I had to get my head around spending money to invest in myself,” Julia says – a hesitation a lot of us understand. What finally settled it was simple: she read the PCCI website, and she read the testimonials, and something in her said this is it.

Julia expected online training to feel distant. Instead, she found a family.

“Though the courses are online, the teachers are real and you get to know them,” she says. “It’s really a PCCI family.”

But the moment she comes back to again and again happened in her small practice group during The Essentials of Life Coaching. “I’ve had many ‘aha’ moments in practice group coaching,” she says. “I had an incredible small group for Essentials. It seemed like they could read my mind.”

That’s the kind of thing that’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t experienced it – being coached by people who are learning alongside you, and somehow still seeing you more clearly than you see yourself.

Along the way, Julia learned to use tools like Clifton Strengths to help leaders discover what she calls their superpowers. But more than any single skill, something in her shifted. “I discern, rather than judge now,” she says.

Today, Julia coaches leadership and personal development clients, and she’s building toward her original goal of coaching senior leaders across the federal government.

One relationship stands out. Julia has coached a pro-bono client for several years now, and when she finally asked for a testimonial, she wasn’t prepared for what she heard back. “I was thrilled at what she had to say in terms of my contribution to her career and well-being,” Julia says. “It is very gratifying.”

The change hasn’t only shown up in her client list. It’s shown up in her. “I benefit from the coaching and coach training as much as my clients do,” she reflects. “I’ve grown spiritually, am wiser and more mature.”

The woman who once ran on ambition and worked herself toward burnout describes her life differently now: “I’m much more at peace and energized in a positive way.”

Julia doesn’t pretend the decision to pursue coaching is simple for everyone. Her advice is the same thing she had to do herself: “Search yourself and pray if it’s the right direction for you. Then step out and try it through PCCI. You’ll know if it energizes you or not.”

Looking back, her only regret is time spent second-guessing. “I would not have spent time dabbling with other coaching programs that are not Christ-centered and focused on excellence like PCCI,” she says.

Her final word for anyone sensing a nudge toward this path echoes a line she’s held onto: “Martin Luther said to be bold. If it’s not for you, it will be clear.”