Power House Wells

Throughout her multifaceted career, Tina Wells has always found a way to transform her dreams into reality. She turned a business that she launched at sixteen into an award-winning marketing agency, led boardroom meetings as the youngest (and sometimes only) Black woman in the room, and pursued her childhood dream of traveling around the world. But all that success came with burnout, and Tina had to rethink how she thought about work and life. The result of her deep thinking and some trial and error, The Elevation Approach presents Tina’s four-phase plan.

In February 1962, three years into Fidel Castro’s rule of their Cuban homeland, the González family - an auto mechanic, his wife, and two young children - landed in Miami with a few personal possessions and two bottles of Cuban rum. As his parents struggled to find work, 11-year-old Gerardo struggled to fit in at school, where a teacher intimidated him and school authorities placed him on a vocational track. Inspired by a close friend, Gerardo decided to go to college. He not only graduated but placed himself on a path through higher education that brought him to a deanship at the Indiana University School of Education.