Influential Women: Carmen Gillis launches Awakening Goodness to reconnect people & teams with joy and alignment.
Hudson, Wisconsin — Carmen Gillis is the Founder of Awakening Goodness, a purpose-driven initiative dedicated to helping individuals and organizations rediscover the goodness of life and the freedom to live and work beautifully from a place of being rather than constant doing. Through her work, she creates environments where people can reconnect with clarity, alignment, and a more natural way of operating that supports both meaningful achievement and genuine fulfillment.
At the heart of Awakening Goodness is Carmen’s distinctive way of seeing the world. She has a natural ability to perceive what is happening beneath the surface within people, systems, and environments, and to bring those unseen dynamics into clarity. This intuitive awareness allows her to bridge structure and feeling, strategy and intuition, and vision and execution. In practice, she helps individuals and organizations move toward greater alignment and wholeness, where decisions become clearer, teams function more cohesively, and work feels more energized, sustainable, and naturally productive.
Carmen’s work offers a clear counter-narrative to the widely held belief that success must be driven by pressure, scarcity, or constant striving. Instead, she is devoted to restoring a deeper perspective: that life flows from inherent goodness and that creation itself is designed with beauty, joy, and delight woven into it. Through Awakening Goodness, she explores what becomes possible when individuals and organizations begin to build from this foundation, creating environments where people feel free to be fully themselves, where creativity and rest coexist, and where success is not only achieved but also deeply experienced.
Her broader vision includes contributing to a cultural shift away from burnout-driven performance models and toward environments rooted in humanity, presence, and authenticity. In Carmen’s view, when people are supported in operating from alignment rather than fear or urgency, they not only perform better but also experience greater well-being and connection to their work and lives.
In her personal life, this philosophy is not theoretical—it is lived daily. Carmen is devoted to cultivating intentional, beautiful environments, traveling with her daughters, and building ventures that allow individuals to express their unique gifts while experiencing both financial and creative freedom. Her work reflects a consistent commitment to creating spaces—internally and externally—where people come alive, reconnect with joy, and experience life in a more expansive and meaningful way.
Carmen attributes her success to an innate gift of intuition, relational awareness, and joy that she brings into everything she does. She believes every individual carries unique gifts meant to be expressed in the world, and she has been fortunate that her own has had space to unfold throughout her career, especially in her work with people. She naturally senses where individuals will thrive, how roles can be shaped, and how teams can come together in ways that feel both aligned and joyful.
Those who work with Carmen often describe her as someone who brings light into the workplace and into collaborative environments. She views this not as a performance, but as the natural result of creating spaces where happiness and authenticity are present—qualities that naturally extend into the broader work atmosphere and influence outcomes in meaningful ways.
This ability, she emphasizes, is not something learned from textbooks or formal systems. It is a core part of who she is. When she operates from this authentic place, she consistently witnesses greater impact in helping others experience both work and life more fully, with less resistance and more ease.
When reflecting on the most impactful career advice she has received, Carmen points to a simple but defining message: have courage and go for it, even when it feels like a stretch. She recalls a pivotal moment when she transitioned from project coordinator to project manager almost overnight. In that moment of uncertainty, a mentor told her, “Just do it, Carmen. Don’t fear the failure, just do it. Just have the courage.”
That encouragement became a lasting influence in her career, reinforcing the importance of action over hesitation. It shaped her willingness to step into new roles and opportunities even when confidence was not fully present, and it continues to guide her approach to growth and leadership.
Carmen’s leadership philosophy is rooted in one central principle: leading from the heart. For her, this means trusting intuitive knowledge as much as analytical thinking and allowing that inner guidance to inform decisions and direction. When she leads in this way, she naturally embodies authenticity, courage, and compassion.
Leading from the heart also keeps her connected to joy, love, and meaning. It has enabled her to create work environments where people feel safe to be themselves and encouraged to contribute from a place of wholeness. In her experience, when leaders operate from this space, they become a stabilizing and elevating presence for others, helping those around them to shine more fully as well.
Currently, Carmen is in the process of launching Awakening Goodness and moving forward with initiatives as she feels guided. She acknowledges that the current job market and broader professional landscape can feel uncertain, and that stepping into greater visibility can be challenging. At times, this path requires her to move through fear and uncertainty while continuing to trust her internal guidance.
Despite these challenges, Carmen holds a firm belief that individuals are powerful creators of their reality. Even in moments when doubt arises, she remains committed to surrendering to her inner knowing and continuing forward with alignment rather than reverting to what may feel safer but less authentic.
The values most central to Carmen’s work and life are freedom, delight and joy, beauty, and play. Freedom is foundational to everything she creates. She believes people come most fully alive when they are free to follow what is stirring within them and to move from alignment rather than pressure or scarcity. Her work is consistently oriented toward creating environments where individuals can express their unique gifts without constraint.
Delight and joy are equally central, not as superficial positivity, but as deep, resilient forces that sustain people through life’s complexity. Having navigated significant personal challenges, Carmen understands that life carries both beauty and difficulty. Yet she also believes there is an enduring light within every person, and much of her work focuses on helping people reconnect with that inner source of joy and presence.
Beauty, for Carmen, is transformative. She views it as something that awakens people to life, softens experience, restores perspective, and reconnects individuals to what is good. Whether in a conversation, a workplace, a home, or a vision for the future, beauty can shift energy and open people to greater possibility and connection.
Play is the final cornerstone of her philosophy. She believes human beings are inherently designed for imagination, laughter, curiosity, and creativity. In adulthood, these qualities are often diminished by responsibility and seriousness. Through play, Carmen seeks to restore a sense of wonder and openness, helping people reconnect with the parts of themselves that still know how to dream and explore.
Together, these values form the foundation of Awakening Goodness—a vision and practice dedicated to restoring freedom, delight, beauty, and possibility in how people live and work.
Learn More about Carmen Gillis:
Through her Influential Women profile: https://influentialwomen.com/connect/Carmen-Gillis
Influential Women
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