This has been a project I have wanted to do for a long time. As a woman in the security industry, I had the pleasure and the luck to have worked along with some amazing female professionals from different parts of the world and security fields. Personally, I have been blessed with my networking contacts, developments, and public exposure. I feel like I owe a lot of my brands’ success to my relationship with my network and other colleagues. That is why I decided to “Give Back the Stage” to a different woman every month. Women don’t tend to be very public about their stories, their achievements, and their struggles. So, every month I will be using the power of my networking platforms and connections to promote and bring awareness to a specific female in the security sector. My goal is to help them grow their own brands, connections, and publicity by showing their stories and sharing them with my network and contacts. I learned a long time ago, success comes not only from hard work, dedication, keeping the standards up, but also from having the right connections. And what these connections taught me is that sometimes by simply asking, you will be given an answer, help, a tip, a new introduction, and sometimes a job offer.
Please join me in this effort and welcome these women, invite them to your professional network and reach out to them if their services align with what your organization or clients may need. If you know a woman who must be on this “Stage”, please reach out to me and send me a recommendation.
The first woman to whom I am giving the Stage for this month is Kelly Sayre. Kelly is the Founder and President of The Diamond Arrow Group, a company that builds women’s self-confidence with realistic tactics and tools to help them live life safely and on their own terms. Her refreshing angle on women’s safety emphasizes non-physical, proactive situational awareness techniques that recognize and avoid threatening situations before they happen. With a grounded approach and high energy, Kelly works with law enforcement, nonprofit, corporate, and youth organizations on emergency preparedness, situational awareness training, and personal safety. She is a frequent speaker at national events and a guest on global podcasts.
Kelly is trained in FEMA’s Community Emergency Response Team program, the Department of Homeland Security’s Active Shooter Preparedness Workshop, and Texas A&M Extension Service’s crisis communications. She is a member of the Association of Threat Assessment Professionals, TeamWomen, FEW, and the Tri-County Humane Society. Kelly lives in Minnesota with her husband, children, and a 190-pound Great Dane.
I met Kelly some months ago, although I had her as a LinkedIn connection, I never had direct communication with her. One day Kelly called me and asked if I would be willing to read her book and give her my feedback, which I gladly did. It was refreshing to see another woman who actually gets it when it comes down to personal safety. Talking with her further I found out that the reason she decided to write the book and get a different approach in teaching other women how to be safe, was the fact that for years, Kelly saw women’s self-defense courses were focused on handling physical altercations, while domestic violence advocacy has circled around helping women who are already in abusive relationships. Meanwhile, the statistics on violence committed against women have remained stagnant for decades.
According to Kelly, there is a better way of handling these issues. Women have unbelievable intuition skills. They notice when a loved one is “off.” They feel the vibe or energy of a place. Their amazing instincts help them take care of others. What if they could use these natural abilities to enhance their situational awareness and avoid a physical fight? What if they could learn to recognize the red-flag behaviors and get out before the violence starts?
Now, they can! In her book, ‘’Sharp Women’’, Kelly Sayre breaks down ways for women to deal with everyday situations using their best self-defense weapon—their intuition. In this book, they’ll discover how to sharpen their natural skills, build a solid plan to protect themselves, and move forward through their life with confidence. One of the reasons Kelly wrote this book was the fact that she approached the topic as an everyday woman. And when she looked for answers to the questions she had on how to increase her situational awareness, as an everyday woman, the resources were scarce. There were no options for training outside of the law enforcement and military communities and some martial arts instructors. She found two books, and while she found both excellent resources, they were both written by men. Kelly decided to do more research and gain more experience with this new information and wrote the book to share what she has learned to date, from a female perspective, having experienced a lot of the scenarios she talks about firsthand.
Safety doesn’t happen by accident….Author Unknown
As a female in the security industry for two decades and as a martial arts athlete since my early childhood days, I had the opportunity to sit in many ‘’self-defense’’ and combatives classes. As an experienced woman and athlete on the training mat as well as the security professional working in real-life scenarios in different environments, I found most of these teachings were ‘’irrelevant’’, ‘’insufficient’’, and ‘’unrealistic’’ especially when delivered to women who had never practiced any kind of close contact fights or knew anything about safety. And here is this writer who had put down her questions, did her research, and put together a great book that can teach an everyday woman how to be safer. A book I truly feel can be useful to my daughters or mother. In simple words, with research and real scenarios and examples, Kelly has managed to put together a useful guide of how to be A Sharp Woman.
If you are a woman interested in learning more about how to be safe, grab her book or send her a message on LinkedIn with your questions. If you represent an organization or school reach out to Kelly for a presentation or speech.
Founder & CEO
Athena Academy
Managing Partner
LeMareschal LLC
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