We were lucky to catch up with Natalie recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Natalie thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea

For me, Formativa Collective didn’t start as a business idea.It started as a personal search for purpose, impact, and honestly, myself.

After my second son was born, I found myself in a place I had never experienced before. I had always been the high-potential, tenacious achiever. I was the person who moved quickly, raised my hand for opportunities, learned fast, and advanced in my career.

From the outside, things looked successful.
Inside, I felt stuck.

I was in my early 30s, a boy mom balancing family life and a corporate sales career. I was running hard, accomplishing goals, checking boxes, and operating in high-intensity mode, but if I’m honest, I was on autopilot and no longer sure where I was headed.

For the first time, I found myself asking a difficult question:“Is this it?”

Not because there was anything wrong with my career. In fact, I was grateful for it. But I felt disconnected from the parts of myself that loved building, creating, mentoring, and helping people grow.

At the same time, I was experiencing firsthand the impact mediocre leadership can have on someone’s confidence, growth, and sense of purpose. What started as frustration eventually became curiosity.

I became obsessed with understanding how people grow, why some people thrive through transitions while others get stuck, and what it really takes to create meaningful change in your life and career. I’ve always been curious, and the older I get, the more I realize how much there is still to learn.

Then 2020 happened.

While much of the world was navigating uncertainty and fear, I found myself becoming increasingly curious about the impact I could have on others.

Around that same time, my company gave me an opportunity to help launch and build an employee resource group initiative. Through that work, I took on what would become my passion project: completely redesigning a mentorship program.
What started with just eight mentorship pairs grew to more than forty-four mentorship partnerships. But what mattered most wasn’t the growth. It was watching people gain confidence, build relationships, develop new skills, and realize they were capable of more than they thought. That experience changed me.

For the first time, I wasn’t just selling products or driving business results. I was building something that created transformation for people.

From that point on, I started paying attention to what energized me. I noticed that people constantly came to me when they felt stuck. Friends. Colleagues. Women navigating career pivots, leadership challenges, major life transitions, or ambitious goals. And the interesting thing was that I wasn’t giving them answers. I was helping them create structure. I was helping them organize the chaos, identify what mattered most, and turn overwhelming ideas into actionable next steps.

At first, I assumed this was simply something I was naturally good at. But the more conversations I had, the more I realized there was a pattern. The same challenge kept showing up. Talented women weren’t lacking ambition. They weren’t lacking intelligence. They weren’t lacking information or capability. They were drowning in options, overwhelmed by competing priorities, and struggling to move from clarity to execution.

That realization became the seed for what would eventually become Formativa Collective.

The journey from idea to execution wasn’t one giant leap. It was hundreds of small steps with a few years in between.

I documented frameworks. I tested ideas. I facilitated workshops. I listened, observed, changed, pivoted, and refined. I made mistakes, stayed up late working on plans.
And, finally built the courage and opened an LLC. And then… I waited.

Like many aspiring founders, I fell into the trap of believing I needed more clarity before I could move forward. More certainty. A more polished plan. More proof that I had credentials or qualifications. Until one day, a dear friend challenged me.

Ironically, she was someone I had previously encouraged to pursue her own dream. When it was my turn, she handed that encouragement right back to me. She challenged me to stop waiting and start building. She gave me an opportunity to step onto a stage and share my story with other women. And that moment changed everything.

On February 26, 2026, Formativa Collective officially launched. It launched as a passion project all while still keeping my corporate role. What feels like a side business as turned into my 5-9 and weekend gig at times. But so worth it when we hear stories of women transforming their lives, learning how to dream again, hit simple goals with consistency and build momentum for themselves.

What began as my own search for purpose became The RED Experience—a cohort-based experience built around the RED Framework: Realign, Elevate, and Design. A framework designed to help women create structure, practice self-leadership, organize what matters most, and build systems that support their goals instead of abandoning them.

Today, Formativa Collective exists because I finally gave myself permission to build something that sits at the intersection of everything I’ve done throughout my life and career: leadership, learning, strategy, mentorship, community, and structured execution.

The biggest lesson I’ve learned is that purpose rarely arrives as a lightning bolt.

For me, it looked more like paying attention to the problems I couldn’t stop trying to solve. And then finding the courage to start building before I felt completely ready.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My name is Natalie Fernandez, and I’m the founder of Formativa Collective, a structured life organization and execution platform designed to help women move from mental overload into intentional progress.

Professionally, I’ve spent more than two decades in corporate leadership and sales, working across diverse teams, cultures, and markets throughout the Americas. As a bilingual Latina navigating corporate leadership, motherhood, personal growth, and entrepreneurship, I’ve experienced firsthand the complexity many women carry every day.

For years, I watched capable, ambitious women struggle not because they lacked talent, intelligence, or drive, but because they were trying to manage competing priorities without an integrated system to support them. At the same time, I was experiencing many of those same challenges myself.

Like many women, I was balancing career ambitions, family responsibilities, personal growth, cultural expectations, and the desire to create meaningful impact. On paper, everything looked successful. Yet I often found myself asking the same question I now hear from so many women: “Why does it feel so hard to sustain momentum when I know I’m capable of more?”

That question ultimately became the foundation of Formativa Collective.

What I discovered is that most women don’t need more information. We’re surrounded by information. Podcasts, books, courses, social media, experts, plus AI.

What many women are missing is structure.
They are carrying invisible operational overload, managing careers, homes, relationships, health, finances, transitions, leadership responsibilities, and the mental load that often comes with being the person everyone depends on. The problem rarely is motivation. The problem most of the time is lack of structured system that works for the life or season you’re in. I’ve labeled it as structured execution system that helps women organize what matters most, remove friction, build sustainable habits, and consistently move forward on the goals that align with the life they want to create.

One aspect of my work that is especially meaningful to me is creating spaces where women from different backgrounds feel seen and understood. As a bilingual founder, I am passionate about building experiences that serve both English-speaking and Latina women because I believe personal growth, leadership development, and structured support should be accessible across cultures and communities.

What I’m most proud of isn’t a framework or a business milestone. It’s watching women begin to trust themselves again. Watching someone move from overwhelmed and scattered to clear, focused, and intentional is one of the most rewarding experiences imaginable. At its core, Formativa Collective is about self-leadership.

The name Formativa comes from the idea of formation—the continuous process of becoming. We often talk about success as if it’s a destination, but I’ve come to believe that growth is an ongoing practice. We are constantly being formed by our experiences, decisions, relationships, challenges, and choices.

As a bilingual Latina, I was drawn to a name that felt both rooted and expansive. Formativa reflects the belief that none of us are finished products. We are always evolving, learning, adapting, and creating new possibilities for ourselves.

The second part of the name, Collective, is equally intentional. For me, collective represents something much bigger than a community or membership. It represents the future of how women grow and support one another.

Too often, personal growth is treated as a solo journey. I believe meaningful transformation happens when women have access to both structure and community, when they can learn from one another, share experiences, exchange wisdom, and realize they don’t have to navigate life’s complexities alone.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

One of the biggest lessons I’ve had to unlearn is the belief that I needed to feel completely ready before taking action.

For years, I confused preparation with progress. I thought if I just learned a little more, planned a little longer, or refined the idea one more time, then I would finally be ready to move forward.

The reality was that readiness rarely arrived.

Like many high-achieving women, I spent years checking boxes that looked successful on paper. I built a career, raised a family, and took on more responsibility. But behind the scenes, I often found myself waiting for certainty before making decisions about what I really wanted next.

The turning point came when I realized that growth doesn’t happen after confidence arrive, it happens because you move before you feel fully confident.

When I started building Formativa Collective, I didn’t have everything figured out. I didn’t have the perfect website, perfect framework, perfect audience, or perfect plan. What I had was a conviction that many women were struggling with the same thing I had experienced: feeling stuck between where they were and where they wanted to be.

I also had to unlearn the idea that perfection was the same as excellence.

Perfection often keeps us waiting. Excellence requires commitment, action, learning, and adjustment. One creates momentum; the other creates delay.

Today, that lesson sits at the heart of the work I do. I help women stop waiting for the perfect moment, perfect plan, or perfect version of themselves. Instead, we focus on creating clarity, taking intentional action, and making small adjustments that build momentum over time.

I’ve learned that most meaningful transformations don’t begin with certainty. They begin with a decision to start before you feel ready.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

One of the most defining examples of resilience in my journey isn’t about overcoming a single obstacle it’s about learning how to build something meaningful without walking away from everything I’d already built.

Like many aspiring entrepreneurs, there were moments when I convinced myself that if I could just quit my corporate job, I’d finally have the time, energy, and freedom to pursue the ideas that were pulling at me.

But the reality was more complicated.

I had a successful career, a family depending on me, and responsibilities I wasn’t willing to abandon. For a while, I viewed those realities as barriers. I thought progress would only happen once I had the perfect conditions to start.

What I eventually realized is that resilience isn’t waiting for ideal circumstances. It’s learning how to move forward despite imperfect ones.

Instead of making a dramatic leap, I started building in the margins. Early mornings. Evenings. Weekends. Small experiments. One conversation at a time. One framework at a time. One woman helped at a time.

That slow and often invisible work eventually became Formativa Collective.

There were plenty of moments when it would have been easier to stop. Building something from scratch while maintaining a leadership role, raising a family, traveling for work, and navigating life’s unexpected challenges requires patience and persistence.

What kept me going was the belief that meaningful things don’t always have to be built quickly. Sometimes they’re built steadily.

Today, I still lead in the corporate world while growing Formativa. I’ve learned that entrepreneurship doesn’t have to look like burning everything down and starting over. Sometimes resilience looks like honoring your responsibilities while creating space for your future.

The biggest lesson I’ve learned is that you don’t have to choose between where you are and where you’re going. You can build the bridge while you’re standing on it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://formativacollective.com/
• Instagram: @FormativaCo @ilovethisNat
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalie-fernandez-11842b2b?utm_source=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=member_ios

Image Credits

Image used in presentation when I’m speaking, credit to: oh, I’m not a real artist by Kate Rasche.

Professional photos are owned by submitter with credit to Fluid Frames Dance Photography.

All other images are owned by the submitter