Elise Madrick on Why Real Transformation Requires Changing Your Entire Context — Not Just Your Habits
Gildre · Start to Scale Podcast
“If you want to become a new human, you have to enroll others to help illuminate your blind spots. Pride and the fear of vulnerability are the two things most likely to keep you stuck.”
Elise Madrick at a Glance
- →Founder & CEO of Cerenè — immersive 108-day executive transformation experiences
- →Former executive education faculty at Kellogg School of Management
- →Background in clinical social work and child welfare advocacy
- →Spent years training thousands of leaders across global organizations
- →Founded Cerenè after her own six-week international transformation journey
- →Flagship programs run in Morocco and France with 108 days of follow-on coaching
- →Mission: help leaders and professionals become genuinely new versions of themselves
The Distance Between Change and Transformation
Most people trying to reinvent themselves go about it the wrong way. They read a book, adopt a new morning routine, or hire a coach. They make incremental adjustments to the existing version of themselves. And then they wonder why, six months later, nothing has fundamentally shifted.
Elise Madrick has spent her career studying why that gap exists — and building a program designed to close it. Her company, Cerenè, runs immersive eight-day experiences in Morocco and France, followed by 108 days of structured skill-building and community support. The premise is simple but counterintuitive: you cannot become someone new inside the same context that created the old version of you.
“Change is past-based and incremental,” Elise explains. “Transformation is future-oriented. It's about becoming a person you haven't been yet. Those are two completely different operations.”
From Indiana to Kellogg to a Six-Week Journey Overseas
Elise grew up in Zionsville, Indiana — not an obvious starting point for a global executive transformation business. She studied social work, spent years in child welfare advocacy, and eventually found her way into executive education at the Kellogg School of Management, where she helped train thousands of leaders across industries and continents.
She was good at the work. But she was also, by her own account, personally stuck — in an unfulfilling marriage, in routines that no longer served her, in a version of herself she had outgrown. The turning point came when she gave herself permission to do something radical: step completely outside her life and spend six weeks traveling internationally without an agenda.
“I needed to become a totally different human. Not just a better version of the same one — a different one. And I couldn't do that inside my existing context.”
That journey became the founding insight behind Cerenè. What Elise discovered wasn't just that travel was restorative — it was that removing yourself from your environment makes it structurally easier to break patterns, because the cues and triggers that maintain those patterns are no longer present.
The Four Contexts That Control Who You Are
Elise's framework for transformation rests on a straightforward but underappreciated insight: your behavior is shaped less by your intentions than by the four contexts that surround you every day.
Systems — the rules you live by
Every environment comes with implicit and explicit rules. When you leave that environment, those rules lose their grip. New contexts invite new operating frameworks.
Spaces — your physical environment
The rooms you occupy, the cities you navigate, the landscapes you move through — all of these influence your nervous system, your energy, and the mental models you default to.
Social — the people around you
Your peer group is one of the strongest predictors of your behavior and ambition. New social environments expose you to people who carry different assumptions about what is possible.
Mindset — the lens you see through
Mindset is often treated as something you change by thinking differently. In reality, mindset shifts most reliably when the other three contexts shift first. Change the environment; the mindset follows.
Cerenè is designed to disrupt all four simultaneously — which is why eight days in Morocco or France produce more durable change than a year of incremental self-improvement at home.
The Cerenè Experience: 108 Days, Three Phases
The number 108 is not arbitrary — it comes from the 108 beads of a mala, an ancient counting tool used in meditation traditions to track progress over extended practice. Cerenè's programs use 108 days as the unit of transformation: long enough for new behaviors to become habitual, short enough to feel urgent.
Each journey moves through three phases:
Cocoon— Self-discovery (Days 1–36)
Participants slow down, examine the stories they've been telling about themselves, and begin identifying the skills, relationships, or beliefs they want to shed or build. The in-person retreat happens here.
Emergence— Action (Days 37–72)
The skill each participant chose becomes the focus. Weekly touchpoints, peer challenges, and one-on-one coaching keep momentum alive after the retreat ends. Community is the accountability structure.
Mastery— Teaching others (Days 73–108)
The deepest form of learning is teaching. By the end of the 108 days, participants share what they've built with their community — cementing the skill and closing the loop on their journey.
One participant — a sales executive who had spent decades in a career that paid well but didn't fit — used his 108 days to reignite a childhood passion for acting he had buried at 22. By the end, he had performed in a short film. That is what Cerenè is built for: not incremental optimization, but genuine reinvention.
Who Cerenè Is Built For
Cerenè is not a retreat for people who need a vacation. It is a program for professionals who are in genuine transition — starting a business, navigating a career shift, emerging from a significant personal disruption, or stepping into a new life chapter like retirement.
The community includes founders, executives, and lifelong learners who share two qualities: a commitment to their own growth, and a willingness to actively support others on the same journey. Cerenè is selective about who it admits because the quality of the community is inseparable from the quality of the transformation.
“The people around you during a transformation either accelerate it or slow it down. We're very intentional about building a community where everyone is rowing in the same direction — toward becoming someone they haven't been yet.”
Five Things You Can Do Right Now
Not everyone is ready to book a flight to Morocco. Elise offers five starting points for anyone who wants to begin the process of genuine reinvention today:
Ask someone what they see for you
Reach out to a trusted friend, colleague, or mentor and ask: “What do you see for me that I might be missing?” Most people are surprised by what comes back. Others can often see your potential more clearly than you can.
Map your triggers
Notice what consistently produces joy, energy, or discomfort in your daily life. Don't just observe — write it down. Self-inquiry only compounds when it's recorded.
Enroll at least one person in your reinvention
Tell someone specific what you're trying to become. Vulnerability creates accountability. And accountability is the infrastructure that transformation runs on.
Change one context this week
Work from a different location. Have coffee with someone outside your usual circle. Walk a different route. Small context shifts train your brain to notice new possibilities.
Commit to a 108-day skill
Pick one skill — something that matters to the future version of you, not the current one — and commit 108 days to it. Tell someone. Then start.
Cerenè Executive Experiences
Ready to become unrecognizable — in the best way?
Eight days in Morocco or France, followed by 108 days of guided skill-building and community support. No equity. No shortcuts. Just transformation.
Explore Cerenè Experiences →Start to Scale Podcast
Hear the Full Conversation with Elise Madrick
Elise goes deeper on the four contexts, the 108-day methodology, and the personal journey that led her from Kellogg to founding Cerenè.
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