Naomi Schafer
Student Coaching Sales Leader
Naomi Schafer is an educator, entrepreneur, nurse, and coach with extensive experience in leadership and mentoring. She helps students build the confidence, resilience, and skills they need to thrive.
Meet Naomi
Naomi Schafer brings a rare combination of entrepreneurial drive, educational expertise, and hands-on caregiving to her work with students and families. Her career began in sales and leadership development with Southwestern Advantage, where she discovered that helping people grow is what energizes her most.
After earning a Bachelor of Arts in Elementary Education from Michigan State University, Naomi built a career with Southwestern Advantage. As a corporate recruiter and salesperson, she personally selected and trained 48 summer interns from more than 30 universities nationwide and built a client base of over 1,500 families from all walks of life.
She went on to co-create and manage Skwids.com, a children’s educational website, serving as creative director and lead content developer writing scripts, directing film crews, and starring in more than 150 educational videos. Skwids.com grew into a multimillion-dollar platform, generating more than $5 million in revenue in its first five years.
Naomi later pursued a second calling in healthcare. As a registered nurse at University of Michigan Health-Sparrow, she was promoted to charge nurse within six months, leading and training fellow nurses and care staff, mentoring new RNs through complex and emergent patient situations, and earning additional certifications in chemotherapy administration to better support patients and their families through difficult moments.
Throughout her career, Naomi has also given back to her community, coordinating an after-school tutoring and meal program for local students in need and partnering with university and community volunteers to keep it running each week.
Naomi has been married to her husband, Aaron, for over 20 years, and together they have four children: Elizabeth, who attends Aquinas College in Grand Rapids; Emma, high school student; Sophie, a middle school student; and Andrew, an elementary school student. The Schafer family is active in their church, plays a variety of sports, and enjoys time at their lake house, along with board and card games together.
Naomi sees coaching as the place where everything she’s done comes together: building something from nothing, teaching with patience, and caring for people in their most vulnerable moments. In sales, in the classroom, and at the bedside, she’s seen that people rarely reach their full potential alone; it takes someone who believes in them, challenges them, and walks alongside them. That’s what draws her to coaching students today: helping them build the confidence, resilience, and skills they need not just to succeed, but to thrive.
Areas of Improvement
In a recent survey, those who completed six months or more of Southwestern Student Coaching reported the following improvement or increase after coaching:
- 51%
Increase in Vision for the Future
- 104%
Improvement in Self-Motivation
- 104%
Improvement in Time Management
- 43%
Improvement in Confidence
- 35%
Improvement in Prioritizing Education
- 57%
Improvement in Stress Management
What is Student Coaching?
The Student Coaching program pairs students (ages 13-21) with a highly-trained student coach to hone in on their unique growth areas and equip them with the real-world skills they need to succeed, both inside the classroom and beyond. In addition to 1:1 coaching calls, they work together through training modules, assessments, videos, and more as part of our Student’s Edge curriculum. Parents are kept appraised of progress milestones with frequent progress reports.
