Since the turn of the century, there has been a push for students to focus their studies in STEM, where professionally Black people have been historically underrepresented. DEI was once an exemplary work practice, now polarizing and eliminated in many employment opportunities. Imposter syndrome is commonplace for talented Black professionals experiencing isolation at work. One South Florida company works to reprogram the mindset of minority professionals working in the healthcare and STEM industry.
Natoia Adella McGarrell does not call herself a coach. She calls herself an alignment architect — and the distinction is her business.
McGarrell is the founder and CEO of eXcelR8*Now Inc., (pronounced accelerate now) a Hollywood, Florida company behind a talent-development program built for the next generation of healthcare and STEM professionals. She makes it clear that talent isn’t the issue for students of color.
“It’s the misalignment,” she said. Students and professionals arrive in H-STEM fields with the degrees, the ambition and the technical chops, then stall out anyway. The theoretical work is learned in the classroom, she argues, but the soft skills that determine whether someone actually thrives in the workplace are never addressed.”
Her framework for fixing that is what she calls the Trifecta Reset: mindset, language and action. “Those are the three components, or three keys, that drive the reality that we live,” she said. When a high performer feels disconnected from their work, she says, one or all three are out of sync. If you think the person next to you is better, reinforce it with your words, and the work follows the script you wrote.
The idea traces back to her own academic path. As a high school senior in Philadelphia transitioning into her freshman year of college in Arizona, McGarrell went through a professional-development program for underrepresented students. She loved parts of it and saw gaps in the rest. She believed she could close those gaps for people like herself. She began sketching the concept as a college freshman.
It sat there for years while she built a career. Following undergrad, McGarrell earned an MBA from Nova Southeastern University in 2013 and has worked in sales positions for healthcare companies since. She continued to work on the ideas little by little and self-funded her business.
McGarrell’s willingness to volunteer opened up doors for her business. While serving as Florida president of National Association of Health Services Executives from 2019-2021, she launched a pilot program inside the organization.
“It gained so much traction within the industry that I knew this was definitely something I needed to bring to the world,” she said.
She officially incorporated eXcelR8*Now in 2022. McGarrell had already invested in credentialing herself, becoming a certified John Maxwell trainer, coach and consultant in 2025. She services people at all levels, high school students all the way up to CEOs.
McGarrell wants eXcelR8*Now to be the place people go to get realigned. “So they’re no longer feeling like, do I belong here,” she said. “They absolutely know with certainty that they do.”
