Influential Women: UX/AI consultant Shayla Williams Fender, founder of The Groundswell Strategy, drives innovation.
Farmington, Connecticut — Shayla Williams Fender is a UX/AI Transformation Consultant who helps entrepreneurs gain time and money freedom through soul-aligned technology and human-centered design. Her career began in public service, working in the Mayor’s Office in Hartford, Connecticut, where she focused on community relations and constituent services. She later worked in state government supporting AmeriCorps programs with grants administration, followed by nonprofit and federal government roles centered on program management and strategy. While she valued public service, Shayla became frustrated by the long timelines required to see measurable impact through policy work. This led her to pursue user experience design, a field that aligned with her psychology background from Williams College and her passion for understanding how people interact with technology to create meaningful, real-time improvements in their experiences.
Shayla transitioned into UX research and consulting after completing a certification at Bentley University, eventually moving into management consulting with Slalom Consulting, where she supported Fortune 500 companies and government agencies on experience strategy and transformation initiatives. Throughout her career, she has balanced professional leadership with her entrepreneurial spirit, which began early when she ran a successful childhood candy-selling business with her sister. In October, she launched The Groundswell Strategy, a consulting and coaching practice that helps founders and coaches align their business operations with their purpose through AI-driven systems design. Her work focuses on helping clients move from chaos to clarity by automating repetitive work, improving workflow architecture, and creating businesses that support both productivity and personal well-being.
As a neurodivergent business owner, Shayla is deeply committed to building neuro-affirming businesses that meet people where they are while supporting sustainable success and time freedom. She helps entrepreneurs who feel successful on paper but overwhelmed in practice design systems that allow them to focus on what matters most. Her approach blends UX principles, behavioral psychology, and AI transformation strategy to create businesses that are not only efficient but also aligned with the natural ways people think, work, and process information.
Shayla attributes her success to community. One of her core values is community over competition, and she wholeheartedly believes that it takes a village not just to raise children, but to stay connected to her divine self. She relies on many communities to encourage her, to support her on the challenging days, and on the days when she is jumping from thing to thing and cannot find her own center. Her communities bring her back to that space. Her human design communities, her technology community, her Growth Hub communities, her AI consultant communities—she has many communities she is able to be active in and participate in, thanks to AI. They all help her to grow and to continue expanding.
The best career advice Shayla has ever received is that she hasn’t received traditional advice that has served her. She explains that all of the neurotypical advice she has received in her career hasn’t worked for her, and she has had to craft her own path. She has had to learn everything the hard way through trial and error, over and over again. The best insight she has gained is to be relentless—both in trying and in quitting what doesn’t work.
Shayla’s advice to young women entering her industry is to know that they are meant to be there. She emphasizes that it is not easy in technology as a woman to make space and establish oneself, but it is absolutely worth it to push through doubts, shatter limiting beliefs, and dedicate oneself to leading from authenticity. She believes that when women do this, they carve out their own space and redefine what leadership in tech and consulting can look like.
One of the biggest opportunities Shayla sees in her field right now is that more people are realizing traditional productivity and career advice does not work for everyone. There is a growing openness to approaches that are more personal, sustainable, and aligned with how people actually think and work. However, she also notes that many industries still rely on one-size-fits-all systems, which can make it harder for people to build careers or businesses in ways that truly fit their strengths.
The values most important to Shayla in both her work and personal life are community over competition. She also lives and breathes her values when it comes to family—her clock shuts off when her daughters get home from school, and very little work gets done once they are home. Every night she is fully present for her children. She values having the autonomy to be exactly where she wants to be and intentionally choosing how she spends her time. She is also deeply committed to creating neuro-affirming spaces and helping neurodivergent business owners show up as their authentic selves, making space for diverse ways of thinking and approaching the workplace.
Through The Groundswell Strategy, Shayla Williams Fender continues to champion a new paradigm of business and technology—one that integrates efficiency with humanity, innovation with well-being, and strategy with purpose.
Learn More about Shayla Williams Fender:
Through her Influential Women profile: https://influentialwomen.com/connect/shayla-fender
Influential Women
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