The Academy is a survivor-designed, AI-powered business program that coaches and trains women survivors of sex trafficking and exploitation into real business ownership. We start with the woman, then build the business.
Before we talk budgets or business plans, we help each woman shift limiting beliefs, rebuild confidence, and reconnect with her strengths. From that foundation, entrepreneurship becomes a real path to freedom: control over her time, flexibility around healing, and income she builds on her own terms.
Experts from across the Sacramento business ecosystem join throughout the program, so every woman leaves with real skills, a real plan, and a real network.
A six-week journey from mindset to a real, launch-ready business, ending in a hands-on AI Sprint. Experts from the Sacramento business ecosystem join as guest speakers throughout.
Program overview, expectations, and hands-on AI instruction.
Strengths assessment, DISC workshop, communication, and goal setting.
Business formation, the Business Model Canvas, customers, and marketing.
Healing money beliefs, budgeting, accounting basics, and lending readiness.
Ecosystem tours, reflection, and gearing up for the AI Sprint.
Take an idea, build an app with AI, create a business plan, and present a clear pitch.
Practical, hands-on AI skills that make learning and building a business faster and less overwhelming.
From idea to Business Model Canvas to a fundable plan, the real skills to launch and grow.
Before budgets and business plans, we begin with her strengths, mindset, and belief in what she is capable of creating.
Real conversations about money, business, and the beliefs that shape both. Press play for a window into a live Rebuild & Rise session.
Money mindset & generational wealth · 1:22
Guest speaker: healing your money story · 0:49
Heal your money relationship · 0:15
Ready to join the next conversation?
Register for the AcademyThe Academy runs in person in downtown Sacramento. Space is limited each cohort so women get real, individual attention.
Registration link + orientation date to confirm before publish (prior Google Form was for the spring cohort).
Dates extended for the new 6-week format; confirm before publish.
After the cohort, each woman receives three one-on-one mentoring sessions to finalize her strategy and funding needs, followed by weekly launch meetings to keep momentum going. When a woman is ready with an approved plan, Connect 2 Change invests directly in her venture, providing tools, supplies, permits, and ongoing support to help her launch and grow.
Emily leads every cohort personally. A survivor of trafficking who rebuilt her life through entrepreneurship, she is a certified Master Life Coach and DISC Practitioner who has led workshops with organizations across the Sacramento region. Her story is the reason the Academy works: the women see what she built, and begin to believe they can too.
Apply for an upcoming cohort, or refer a woman who is ready for a new way forward.