I’m April Bain

I believe that the most fundamental way of knowing someone is to understand who they are at their core - that is, what are their core values? So, in service of my prospective clients getting to know the real me, I am sharing the version of “my story” that informs how my values were established along the way.

My journey started playing soccer on scholarship at Wingate University. I probably had other reputations on campus, but I was definitely known for two things: I always sat in the front row in class and I always touched the line during “Texas suicides” at soccer practice. I spent two years at Wingate and two eye-opening summers as one of the top door-to-door sellers with Southwestern Advantage. I may have had some natural proclivity for selling, but the real reason for my success is that I just dogmatically followed the Southwestern playbook. And I hustled. In the pre-summer training, they told my cohort of thousands to “run” from house to house. I learned after the fact that most of my peers interpreted this as a figurative suggestion to move quickly. I heard it as, “actually run from house to house.” So I did - all summer. The results blew my mind, and it did not seem hard or complicated. I just followed the playbook with fidelity and knocked on my first door by 7:59 am ready to do the work.

After proving to myself that I could muster the GRIT to flourish in competition against thousands of peers nationwide, I was ready to challenge myself further. I transferred to the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce, which I paid for with my earnings from door-to-door sales, and played competitive rugby. From UVA, I found my way to the Sales and Trading desk at Goldman Sachs (ask me about the time I had two black eyes at my Goldman interviews).

Like most people, I learned a lot in college about who I am. I discovered that I harness a bias to action that allows me to capitalize on opportunities that often arise unpredictably. When I put my focus on controlling the controllables, the results will be greater than I ever could have imagined at the outset. This army brat from Killeen, Texas certainly never imagined she would be on the trading floor at the world’s preeminent financial institution. 

After cutting my teeth at Goldman, I joined the Strategy and Operations consulting group at Deloitte. It was at Deloitte that I discovered my passion for working directly with business leaders, to sit side-by-side with their team in a relentless effort to get it right. I spent my non-client hours working towards a PMP and Six Sigma certification. I was repeatedly astonished by how even large companies benefit from an accountability partner to retrain their focus on the simple tools that allow for reliable scaling. 

When I was not at a client site, I was volunteering with Minds Matter of New York, a volunteer-run nonprofit that supports high-achieving but economically disadvantaged high school students. Working closely with such a resilient group of young people called me to extend myself wherever possible to support others. My children will tell you that among the most common refrains they hear from me is to be generous with what is beyond necessity (although I am typically encouraging them to share their french fries with their siblings). My work with Minds Matter proved to be a pivotal experience that inspired me to leave Corporate America to become a teacher. I moved to California to attend the University of Southern California as a Math for America fellow.

Simultaneously, I decided to apply the strategy and operations skills I honed at Deloitte by launching the Los Angeles chapter of Minds Matter. It is gratifying to see many of the processes and tools I built 15 years ago still in place as they have scaled to serve over 10x the number of students. I am proud of the relationships I have maintained with student mentees and colleagues alike. It has been fulfilling to be the connection by supporting many of them with academic and corporate introductions that have proven to be transformative for these ambitious young people.

I taught for 15 years at various institutions, including a top-rated public school in Los Angeles Unified, Culver Academies - a military boarding school - and finally teaching Entrepreneurship at Hawken School in Northeast Ohio. During these years, I was introduced to the 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership. The 15 Commitments were meant to inspire my teenage students as a way they might go about life as adults, yet I found that they also inspired me - and led me to reconsider the professional path I had chosen. While I loved being in a classroom and will forever cherish the student relationships, my Zone of Genius has called me back to my origins in business. I have found that it is in the presence of growth-minded business leaders that I have the greatest impact and most fully live my values. 

My personal life is guided by systems, processes, and core values. As a mother of three, I've streamlined my life to focus on what energizes me. I want to bring that same freedom and choice to my clients, helping them delegate their mental load and spend their energy on what's truly important. By leveraging proven systems and learning from those who came before, I believe in making life easier and more efficient - so more time can be focused on the joyful elements of life. My role is to be the guide while you are the hero of your own story. Just as athletes, students, and couples rely on coaches, I provide essential support to senior leadership teams and business owners who are serious about their success. Tiger Woods has a swing coach—who do you have?