Origin story
We’ve always been in business to empower others. WellFests was founded with a mission: to inspire mental and physical well-being through mindfulness and movement practices within daily workflow. To reimagine systematic structures so that the focus from the top down is on an individual's health and wellness. And, to create services that seamlessly put this methodology into practice.
From our expert facilitators, to our clients and their communities, we’re constantly asking ourselves how we can best be of service to everyone involved, as each individual plays a vital role in the sustainability of the business’s ecosystem. With creativity, conscious effort, and gratitude for the ability to do this work, we are committed to achieving our growth goals for WellFests, recognizing the ripple effect that the ecosystem has on the world at large.
Every idea starts with a problem. Ours was simple: sitting all day at a keyboard, working high stress jobs leads to mental burnout and physical injury.
Before WellFests, our CEO / CoFounder, Shannan Slevin, was a manager in high-tech where she first began noticing the impact of working long, stressful hours in sedentary jobs. Robotic tendencies within the workday resulted in employee health issues and turnover.
Alongside tech, she launched a wellness coaching business, helping professionals reach and maintain personal goals. It became clear that the exercises practiced during client sessions and in group classes could be applied beyond the designated frameworks. Curiosity was spiked around the application of wellness practices, integrated within the workday.
As a manager, Shannan began playing with this logic within her own team dynamic. Seeing the value of these initial experiments, she moved on from corporate life to further explore the intersections of health and wellness in the workday.
After a serendipitous introduction to The FruitGuys, a 20+ year old, nationwide fruit provider for corporations and schools, she began working under their Founder / CEO, Chris Mittelstaedt.
Mittelstaedt aided in the entrepreneurial development of our current CoFounder and continues to mentor her endeavors today.
Mittelstaedt is a WellFests advisor, bringing over 20 years of experience to the business. He actively works with both CoFounders and is highly involved in their mission-driven growth strategy and goals.
After launching in 2018, WellFests saw a spurt in the summer of 2019, when now Co-Founders Matt Thomas and Shannan Slevin met at a CEO's retreat. Their shared passions around the value of applying yogic practices within alternative settings inspired collaborations soon-after.
With like-mindedness around the usage of meditation, movement, and mindfulness for professional development, a partnership launched in 2021 to expand WellFests as a global resource. Today, this resource creates a ripple effect of well-being across the world at large, one wellness break at a time.