Member Spotlight: Jules Bosi, Shine

Why SMI? The Bosi family wanted to share resources

Jules Bosi gives middle and high school-aged girls in the Charlotte, North Carolina, area guidance for navigating life as a teenager through a program called Shine.

A longtime career coach for professionals, Jules took over leadership of Shine from founder Jenny Stoner in January.

“I'd been trying to figure out how to create a program that would benefit teen girls socially and spiritually, and she handed me a blueprint for her thoughtfully developed and incredibly impactful program,” Jules said.

Shine was created in 2019 to mentor and coach young women on how to not only survive the teen years but to thrive in them, too. It started with Signature Retreats, all-day events where teen girls go through various exercises and activities to help them understand they are not alone in their struggles and that equips them with action-oriented tools to effectively navigate them.

Today, Jules leads the Shine community.

“A lot of teens feel isolated and insecure,” Jules says. “Social media is a main contributing factor. It’s hard to discern what’s real and what’s a filter and easy to base their identities on worldly external validation factors, so a lot of teens have a distorted sense of who they are.”

Training for the future

Jules’ years of social work and coaching professionals through her own service made her a natural choice to take over for Jenny, who is now focusing on virtual coaching efforts that allow for more geographical freedom.

After earning her master’s degree in social work from Columbia University, Jules secured a job as a social worker at a children’s hospital in New York and quickly learned that the gravity of each case could cause early burnout in a social worker’s career. She left that job after a few months and went to work at a Wall Street law firm in the attorney development department.

One of her responsibilities was to coordinate coaching engagements for lawyers working on specific career goals. She soon learned she enjoyed speaking with the coaches and noticed that those who had been coached were different in positive ways.

“I learned I loved to coach people, and that’s when I enrolled in a coach-training program,” Jules said.

Her training was in energy management, which focuses on helping people manage stress, release limiting beliefs, and take positive, purposeful steps to lead themselves and others.

Similar to that program, Shine addresses how to manage emotions and helps teen girls see that they don’t have a lot of control over what is happening around them, but they do have control over how they relate and respond to it. Jules has learned that, as valuable as her training has been in managing both emotions and conflict, “it feels hard to do that apart from God, but I do still think there is value in learning how to manage your default tendencies.”

Throughout the month, Shine hosts “spotlight events,” which involve special guest speakers sharing their own stories on topics related to social wellness, mental health, emotional wellness, and other topics with the girls.

The beautiful thing is that Shine reaches girls from all walks of life, many of whom who don’t know Jesus.

Jules’ faith direction

Jules’ Shine leadership is another step in her emerging faith.

Almost immediately after she and her husband, Frank, came to faith in Christ and were baptized, Jules felt a very strong stirring in her heart to work with teenagers.

She began thinking she could help young people with the information she had before they became adults.

“I just felt like I was meant to do something with teenagers in a curriculum-based way,” she said.

Despite a strong aversion to writing and a tendency toward perfectionism, she sat down at the computer and wrote out a four-page proposal for a Christian-based coaching program for teenagers.

“I think I was just a vessel in that moment because it was so out of character for me,” Jules said.

At the same time, she was trying to reconcile her faith with her secular coaching and decided this would be a great way of merging the two together. This past summer, she started leading the teen version of the same Bible study she was attending with some of the adult women in her neighborhood, mixing in a bit of coaching.

“It led to group coaching of sorts, but all grounded in Scripture and how our identity changes once we fully surrender to Christ and allow Him to use us for His purposes,” Jules said.

Introduction to Shine

At the end of last summer, Jules was introduced to Jenny and the Shine program through a mutual friend.

“I think God answered our prayers of each other,” Jules said. “I think He put this on both of our hearts and wove us together.”

As of January, Jules is leading Shine. She said she has already seen God provide in different ways, be it through the rebranding a graphic designer in her church offered or a theme song written for Shine by their worship leader.

“Since I said yes to this, people are showing up in ways that feel so divinely orchestrated,” she said. “All of these people with all of these different skill sets is evidence; God just keeps putting everyone in our path. I feel His presence in a strong way all over this.”

The future of Shine

Jules isn’t sure yet where she wants to take Shine.

“I can see where it could be going, but I’m hesitant to say where I want it to go, largely because this is so much bigger than I am. I am walking in step with the Holy Spirit and following His lead,” Jules said. “I do know that I want it to be something that teens are proud to be a part of.”

One thing that is certain is Jules’ desire to pursue non-profit status, which is something that will allow for fundraising and advertising, and hopefully provide more opportunities and programs in the future.

And she knows where her true support comes from.

“I see the hand of God through all of this and am passionate about shining His light into the world,” she said. “I would love for this to be something that feels inviting and warm and alluring for people, and that’s my main goal, even if it’s not that many people, although I do hope and pray that it reaches lots and lots of people.”

Prayer requests

• For a hedge of spiritual protection around Shine leaders and participants.
• For Shine collaborators to work together in a seamless and synergistic way, walking in step with the Holy Spirit, to accomplish God’s will for Shine.