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Purpose Ventures · Chicago

Transformational Leadership Coaching for Powerful Leaders

Boutique executive and leadership coaching for founders, executives, and the families and family offices shaping their legacy.

Coaching For Founders Coaching For Family Offices
What we do

Purpose Ventures is a boutique executive and leadership coaching practice. We facilitate deep personal growth for founders, executives, and leaders transforming how they lead their lives and their organizations — and we support high net worth families and family offices actively shaping their legacy and impact.

01

Coaching For Founders

1-on-1 transformational coaching for founders, executives, and leaders — deep personal growth that changes how you lead your life and your organization.

Explore founder coaching
02

Coaching For Family Offices

Coaching for high net worth families and family offices actively shaping their legacy and their impact on the world across generations.

Explore family office coaching

Meet Our Founder

"Empowering clients to amplify their leadership, creativity, and impact."

Emily Fowler Pellen, smiling in a tan caramel jacket, leaning against a window frame

Emily Fowler Pellen

Founder & Head Coach · ICF Professional Certified Coach

Emily Fowler Pellen believes everyone can access their innate brilliance to create positive change. As founder and head coach, she works with executives, family offices, federal governments, entrepreneurs, innovators, social activists, and change makers dedicated to transforming the world.

She founded Purpose Ventures in 2016 after earning her coaching credentials at the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching (IPEC), and is a Professional Certified Coach through the International Coach Federation (ICF).

Before coaching, Emily led inside corporate and nonprofit organizations. In 2011 she co-founded HeroX.com, the open-innovation platform for XPRIZE-style incentive competitions — drawing over 1M fans and $25M in launched challenges, including work for NASA.

Emily has been in the rooms of some of the world's most influential leaders — invited by the UN Secretary General to the Nelson Mandela Peace Summit during the 2018 UN General Assembly. She was a 2019 Global Woman of Chicago nominee and, in 2021, named one of Chicago's top 20 coaches. Becoming a mother in 2020 deepened her passion for human potential, interconnected empowerment, and family connection.

  • ICF Professional Certified Coach
  • IPEC Trained
  • Founded 2016
  • Co-founder, HeroX.com
Coaching For Founders Coaching For Family Offices

In the rooms of some of the world's most influential leaders

  • UN Peace Summit · 2018
  • NASA challenges via HeroX
  • Top 20 Chicago Coach · 2021
Misty coastal cliff edge with a bird in flight and fog over crashing waves below

Growth begins the moment
you turn inward.

Our Personal Development Philosophy

There are many ways to grow. This is the philosophy that guides how we coach — what we believe:

  1. 01

    Your inner world creates your outer world.

    What you know and believe about yourself from the inside is what you then seek (and create) outside of yourself. This is true at a personal level as well as at an organizational level. Understanding this perspective gives you the power.

  2. 02

    Your past matters and then it doesn't have to.

    Your history is precious in its own right and merits exploration. When you grow, you reach a point where you get to choose which aspects come with you and which ones fall away.

  3. 03

    A title does not a leader make.

    A big leadership title doesn't necessarily mean that you are the leader. Often leaders are actually loyal followers to their hidden fears. To become a great leader requires the courage to take an inner journey unlike any other.

  4. 04

    Fear serves an important purpose.

    This is an important ingredient in our evolutionary tale and when truly appreciated for what it is — a tool — it can be invited into its proper and productive role.

  5. 05

    When you are in alignment with your authentic self, your leadership flows.

    Life becomes difficult when you aren't aligned with who you truly are. As soon as you unearth that, your purpose and pathway become clear.

  6. 06

    You are the greatest source of wisdom and power.

    No one has the answers outside of yourself. When you've forgotten how powerful you are, work with someone who's an expert at facilitating your re-membering.

Coaching For Founders Coaching For Family Offices

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Occasional reflections on leadership, growth, and living on purpose.