From Personal Trainer to Leadership Expert

Yaro Fong-Olivares is the executive director of the Center for Women and Business at Bentley University. A member of the Bentley community since 2019, Fong-Olivares draws on her background in personal training and leadership development to make an impact in the CWB and across campus.

Congratulations on being named executive director of the Center for Women and Business! Can you tell us about your career path and how you got here?  

I joke that I took the scenic route to my current profession. I graduated in the early 2000s and knew that I wanted to change the world for the better. I did a lot of activism in college and was really involved on campus as a community leader. I also wanted to move across the country to San Francisco — I had recently come out in college. So I moved to San Francisco like many other folks at the time and started my career in youth development working in a high school coordinating co-curricular and after-school activities for Latinx youth. I love working with young people and became really involved in community activism there.

That love of working in a community brought me back to New York, where I started working with young people who because of overcrowded classrooms and bullying had not found success in high school. Around my 10-year mark in nonprofits, I reached the point in which I felt a crisis of meaning. I wasn't sure if I was making any change in my community and started to question some assumptions that I held very deeply. So I took a risk and left a very prominent leadership role at a nonprofit in New York City to go and do some soul searching. I was approaching my late 20s and trying to figure out what to do and realized “Hey, this is not completely fulfilling to me anymore.”

I decided to leave the nonprofit sector and took a year off to start working with a personal trainer for my own health and wellbeing. I loved that environment, and I decided to become a personal trainer and health coach as a pivot and started my own business. That was completely different than anything I've ever done. I was a liberal arts major in college and thought I was going to become a lawyer. .

That’s such an interesting transition. How long did you work as a personal trainer? And what brought you to Bentley?

For a few years. I had my own business as a personal trainer and also worked as a health coach. I did some leadership development consulting because I still had the network from my previous job and previous career. During that time, I started to get more in touch with leadership development as a sector, and so I would basically lead the physical and mindfulness activities during leadership trainings for women of color and gender-variant people of color. 

So, going back to my comment about the scenic road, it was during my time as a personal trainer that I realized how much I love organizational change and development. Many of my clients were very powerful women in leadership roles in their own sectors, and they would spend the time during weight training to share their challenges being leaders in organizations, which was fascinating. 

Over the years I found myself saying, “Hey, I'm actually more interested in what my clients are doing at work than their fitness goals.” So I recognized that I needed to make a shift. I enrolled in graduate school to study change management at the New School in New York. During that time I couldn't get enough learning; I just participated in every activity and every class and haven't looked back since. It’s great to be able to think strategically about the direction of organizations and be able to connect that to a greater purpose and mission. I always tell folks that I found that through the most unlikely pivot, which was becoming a personal trainer. For that I feel very, very grateful.

Then I decided that I wanted a change of location, so I got connected with someone here at Bentley who sold me on the Center for Women and Business. In about an hour I was sold. I just loved the mission.

As the executive director, what are you looking forward to in the years ahead?

There's so much to be excited about. I’m looking forward to continuing to grow our relationships with corporate partners and thinking about depth, not just breadth right now. I think there will be opportunities to do some equity coaching with leaders who are really committed to advancing women in the workplace and gender-variant folks who are upcoming and who are transforming the workplace right now. 

The other piece that I'm really excited about is bringing more research opportunities to Bentley, especially in collaboration with our faculty. Research around trends in women's leadership in the corporate world is a high priority right now. I’d also love to see how the CWB can help more women get c-suite positions. That’s a big goal of ours. It may take some time and effort, but I think we're very well positioned to do that.

And I can't say enough about the amazing team that we have here at the CWB. Folks here are so passionate about the mission and the work that we do. I know they have tremendous ideas, and I want to be able to bring their voices in and work collaboratively with them.
 

There are so many great resources in the CWB. Are there any you’d like faculty and staff to know about that are available to them?

I would love to see more faculty and staff visiting our space. We’re located in LaCava and have a library of resources and reports they can access. I’d also love for faculty to invite us into the classroom to connect with students and share what we do.  

The other thing I’d like faculty and staff to know is that we’re open to collaboration, so if there's something that we are not doing that you think we should do, please reach out to me or someone on my team. We’re in this innovation and transition phase, and it would be great to get everyone's ideas as we’re planning for the next year.

Also, we’re planning to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the CWB. We’re a little delayed because of COVID, but stay tuned for more! 

Lastly, with so much going on, how do you like to unwind? What are some of your hobbies?

Well, I, like many folks invested in a Peloton, which is a great thing to have at home; I really love following the exercise programs that they have. I also love to dance. I recently went to my first dance class in person, which was challenging with a mask, but also incredible. Sometimes I do home dance classes online, too. 

And, I like to sleep a lot! Rest is really important to me. So I make sure to make time for that so that I can restore my energy.

The Gloria Cordes Larson Center for Women and Business (CWB) at Bentley creates more inclusive and equitable workplace cultures where all employees thrive and succeed. They partner with organizations to help them create and nurture more inclusive, equitable and diverse workplaces.

Learn More about the CWB