TOGETHER WE RISE
A place to pause, reconnect, and intentionally become.
A place to be supported, strengthened, and encouraged forward.
This is not about fixing you.
It is not about becoming someone else or pretending the hard parts of your life did not happen.
It is about creating the space, support, tools, and relationships that help you pause, reconnect with what matters, and choose your next courageous step.
Five minutes at a time.
One intentional choice at a time.
Together.
You do not need to have everything figured out.
You do need to be willing to show up—for yourself and for the women rising beside you.
You do not need to have everything figured out.
You do need to be willing to show up—for yourself and for the women rising beside you.
You don’t have to have it all figured out.
You just have to be ready for something more.
Is Together We Rise for You?
Together We Rise is for women who are ready for meaningful growth and willing to participate fully in the experience.
You may be:
Rebuilding after a difficult or unexpected season
Carrying responsibilities that have left little time for yourself
Working toward greater personal or financial stability
Exploring employment, education, entrepreneurship, or leadership
Ready to strengthen your confidence, boundaries, or support system
Seeking clarity about what comes next
Tired of trying to carry everything alone
Ready to move from surviving toward intentionally becoming
You do not have to arrive confident, certain, or fully prepared.
Come as you are—but come willing to participate, reflect, connect, and take action.
Together We Rise is not a self-paced online course. It is an interactive cohort built through relationships, guided learning, accountability, and shared commitment.
What You Will Experience
During the 20-week Together We Rise experience, you will receive:
Weekly live virtual cohort sessions and integration weeks
Guided reflection and personal-development practices
Gentle somatic movement and body-based practices
Behavior-change coaching that helps turn insight into intentional action
Practical tools for navigating stress, decisions, boundaries, and change
Trauma-aware learning and practices led in part by a licensed therapist
Individualized guidance, coaching, and mentorship
A supportive community of women committed to growing together
Opportunities to clarify your strengths, values, goals, and priorities
Support identifying practical pathways toward greater stability and opportunity
An Empowerment Declaration and plan for continued growth
Continued connection through the FIERCE Network
This experience is designed to help you pause long enough to hear yourself again, recognize the strengths already within you, and begin making intentional choices about what comes next.
What You Will Begin to Build
Every woman enters Together We Rise with a different story, set of strengths, and vision for her future.
Together We Rise provides the structure, relationships, and tools to help you build greater:
Confidence and Personal Agency
Recognize your strengths, trust your voice, and make choices that align with the woman you are intentionally becoming.
Clarity and Direction
Identify what matters most, establish meaningful priorities, and determine your next intentional steps.
Resilience and Self-Awareness
Develop practices that help you pause, regulate, refocus, and respond to challenges with greater intention.
Boundaries and Healthy Relationships
Explore how communication, accountability, support, and healthy connection can strengthen your life.
Stability and Opportunity
Identify practical next steps related to employment, education, entrepreneurship, leadership, financial well-being, or personal goals.
Community and Belonging
Build meaningful relationships with women who understand that becoming does not have to happen alone.
Want to Contribute to Research?
Together We Rise includes a completely optional, invitation-only research study designed to learn how trauma-informed, community-based support enhances emotional and financial resilience.
Participation is voluntary, won’t affect your access or cost, and requires signed consent with de-identified data protection throughout.
Our Intended Impact
Together We Rise is designed to create change that extends beyond the 20-week cohort.
When a woman has the space to reconnect with herself, strengthen her confidence, practice new ways of responding, and take intentional action, the impact can reach her relationships, family, work, business, and community.
Our goal is for participants to leave Together We Rise with:
Greater confidence in their voice, strengths, and decisions
Practical tools for navigating stress, uncertainty, and change
Increased self-awareness and emotional regulation
Healthier boundaries and stronger support systems
Clearer personal, professional, educational, or financial goals
Increased readiness to pursue employment, education, entrepreneurship, or leadership
A stronger sense of agency, belonging, and possibility
An Empowerment Declaration and actionable plan for what comes next
We also measure the broader impact of Together We Rise through participation, engagement, goal progress, increased stability, new opportunities pursued, businesses or income pathways created, and the ways women continue contributing to their families and communities.
The goal is not to tell women who to become.
The goal is to create the conditions in which each woman can recognize her capacity, make intentional choices, and continue becoming on her own terms.
Mind, Body, and Behavior
Lasting change is not created through information alone.
Together We Rise helps participants connect what they understand with what they feel, practice, and choose in everyday life.
Somatic Movement
Sessions may include breathing, grounding, stretching, gentle movement, body awareness, and other somatic practices.
These practices help participants slow down, reconnect with themselves, and notice how stress, emotions, and experiences may show up in the body.
All movement is invitational and adaptable. Participants are encouraged to honor their bodies and participate in ways that feel safe and appropriate for them.
Behavior-Change Coaching
Together We Rise includes behavior-change coaching to help participants move from insight to action.
Participants learn to:
Recognize patterns that may be keeping them stuck
Identify choices that are within their control
Break large goals into realistic next steps
Practice healthier responses and routines
Strengthen accountability without shame
Reflect on what is working and what may need to change
Build progress through small, intentional actions
The goal is not perfection.
The goal is to help each woman strengthen her ability to make choices that support the life she is intentionally becoming.
FIERCE 5
Throughout Together We Rise, you will practice FIERCE 5—a simple way to pause, reconnect with what matters, and choose your next intentional step.
FIERCE 5 uses the BFF sequence many in our community already know:
Breathe.
Pause long enough to create space between what is happening and how you respond.
This may include breath, gentle movement, grounding, or another body-based practice that helps you become present.
Focus.
Reconnect with what matters most, notice the choice in front of you, and identify what needs your attention now.
Fierce Action.
Choose one courageous, intentional next step—even when that step feels small.
FIERCE 5 begins five minutes at a time.
Five minutes is not the limit. It is an accessible place to begin when life feels overwhelming, your capacity is limited, or the next step feels too big.
One breath.
One focused choice.
One fierce action.
How Together We Rise Works
Step 1: Complete the Application
Begin by completing the Together We Rise application.
The application helps us learn more about where you are, what you hope to gain from the experience, and whether you are ready to commit to the full 20-week journey.
Submitting an application does not guarantee placement. Cohort space and sponsored seats are limited.
Step 2: Join Us for a Right-Fit Check-In
After your application is reviewed, you may be invited to a brief check-in with a member of the FIERCE Foundation team.
This is not an interview you need to prepare for.
It is a conversation to:
• Learn more about you and your goals
• Review the program experience and expectations
• Discuss any accessibility or participation needs
• Answer your questions
• Determine whether Together We Rise is the right fit for you at this time
We want every woman to understand the commitment before accepting a sponsored seat.
Step 3: Join the Upcoming Cohort or Waiting List
Following the right-fit check-in, selected applicants will either:
• Be invited to join the upcoming Together We Rise cohort, or
• Be placed on the waiting list for a future cohort
Placement depends on readiness, program fit, available sponsorship, and cohort capacity.
If the current cohort is full, being placed on the waiting list does not mean you were declined. It means we will contact you when another appropriate space becomes available.
Step 4: Begin the 20-Week Experience
Together We Rise includes a combination of weekly live sessions and integration weeks.
Live Sessions
During live virtual sessions, participants come together for guided learning, conversation, reflection, coaching, somatic movement, practical skill-building, and community connection.
Live sessions are interactive. Participants are expected to attend on time, keep their cameras on, and participate fully.
Integration Weeks
Integration weeks create space to pause, practice, and apply what you are learning in your everyday life.
Instead of attending a full live cohort session, you may be asked to:
• Complete a guided reflection
• Practice FIERCE 5
• Try a new behavior or routine
• Work toward an individual goal
• Connect with an accountability partner
• Complete a short learning activity
• Notice what is changing and what still needs attention
Integration is an important part of the program.
Transformation does not happen only during the live sessions. It happens when you begin practicing new choices in your actual life.
Participants are expected to remain engaged during both live-session and integration weeks.
Step 5: Create Your Empowerment Declaration
Throughout the 20 weeks, you will reflect on your strengths, values, goals, boundaries, commitments, and vision for what comes next.
You will use these insights to create an Empowerment Declaration—a personal statement of who you are, what you are choosing, and how you intend to continue moving forward.
Step 6: Continue Rising
Completing the 20-week cohort is not the end of your journey.
Graduates may have opportunities to remain connected through the FIERCE Network, continued learning, peer support, leadership opportunities, and future FIERCE Foundation experiences.
Together We Rise is designed to help you build tools, relationships, and practices that continue long after the cohort ends.
A Sponsored $7,500 Experience
Together We Rise is a transformational experience valued at approximately $7,500.
Through the generosity of our sponsors, donors, and community partners, selected women receive access to the full 20-week program without paying its market value.
A sponsored seat is both a gift and an investment.
When you accept a seat, our sponsors and community partners are investing in your growth, your future, and the difference your becoming can make within your family and community.
We ask each participant to honor that investment by making the time and space to show up fully for herself and for the other women in her cohort.
Financial circumstances should not prevent a woman from applying. Eligibility and available sponsorship will be discussed privately and respectfully during the right-fit check-in.
What We Ask of You
Transformation does not require perfection.
It does require presence and participation.
Together We Rise is built through the commitment each woman makes to herself and to the women beside her.
Participants are expected to:
• Attend the scheduled live sessions consistently
• Remain engaged during integration weeks
• Reserve the full scheduled time for each live session
• Arrive on time and prepared to participate
• Test Zoom, camera, and audio before the session begins
• Join from a quiet location whenever possible
• Have enough lighting for your face to be clearly seen
• Keep your camera on throughout the live sessions
• Minimize distractions and avoid multitasking
• Participate in conversations and activities
• Complete agreed-upon reflection and action practices
• Respect the privacy and experiences of other participants
• Communicate with the program team when an emergency affects attendance
• Show up fully for yourself and contribute to the collective experience
Your presence matters.
The other women in the cohort will listen to you, learn from you, encourage you, and trust you with parts of their journeys.
We ask that you offer them the same presence in return.
Why Cameras Are On
Together We Rise is built through human connection—not simply through logging into the same virtual meeting.
Cameras are expected to remain on during live sessions.
Please find a location with enough lighting for your face to be clearly seen.
Seeing one another helps us build connection, trust, accountability, belonging, and shared presence.
You are not expected to have a perfect background, a perfectly quiet home, or everything around you completely organized.
Come as you are.
We simply ask that you create the best environment you reasonably can and remain visibly present with the group.
We understand that emergencies, technology limitations, disabilities, and accessibility needs may affect camera use. Participants should communicate privately with the program team when an accommodation or exception is needed.
Who Receives Priority?
Together We Rise welcomes applications from women who are ready to actively participate in a 20-week experience of intentional growth, connection, stability, and action.
Because sponsored seats are limited, priority may be given to:
• Women referred by nonprofit or community partners
• Women whose financial circumstances limit access to comparable opportunities
• Women who meet ALICE criteria—Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed
• Women navigating a meaningful life transition
• Women who demonstrate readiness to participate consistently
• Women seeking personal, professional, educational, entrepreneurial, or financial growth
Placement is based on program fit, readiness, available space, and available sponsorship.
Not every applicant will be offered a seat in every cohort.
A Safe, Trauma-Aware Experience
Together We Rise is grounded in dignity, compassion, personal choice, and respect.
The experience includes guided reflection, somatic movement, behavior-change coaching, mentorship, community support, and practices led in part by a licensed therapist.
Participants will be invited to reflect, connect, move, and participate, but no one will be required to disclose private experiences, share more than she chooses, or participate in movement that does not feel appropriate for her body.
You are more than what has happened to you.
Your experiences may help explain where you are, but they do not determine who you are capable of becoming.
Together We Rise is not a replacement for individualized therapy, medical care, physical therapy, crisis support, legal services, or other specialized professional care.
When additional support may be helpful, participants may be connected with an appropriate provider or community resource.
Optional Research Participation
Together We Rise may include a voluntary, invitation-only research component designed to help measure the impact of trauma-aware community support, guided personal development, and intentional action.
Research participation is completely optional.
Choosing not to participate will never affect:
Your ability to be selected for the program
Your access to a sponsored seat
The support you receive
Your standing within the cohort
Any research opportunity will be explained separately. Participants will be able to ask questions and make an informed choice before agreeing to participate.
Program Support
Together We Rise is supported in part by the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation through the Diverse Business Development Program.
The views and program content are those of the FIERCE Foundation and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation.
Made Possible With Support From
Are You Ready to Show Up for Yourself?
You do not need to have your entire life figured out.
You do not need to arrive fearless.
You do not need to become someone else before you belong here.
Come as you are.
Come hopeful.
Come willing to show up fully for yourself.
Together We Rise will provide structure, tools, accountability, encouragement, and community.
You will bring your presence, your participation, and your willingness to take the next intentional step.
Your seat matters.
Your voice matters.
Your becoming matters.
You do not have to do this alone.
We rise—together.
Contact Us
FIERCE Foundation Incorporated is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
EIN: 87-2596615
Donations are tax deductible as allowed by law.
Mailing Address:
P.O. Box 391
La Crosse, WI 54602