A Message From Our Founder

Welcome to the Women For Arms website! I hope you find our site to be an informative and interesting resource. I am pleased to have this opportunity to share information about my background and my motivation to create Women For Arms.

I grew up in a small town located in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York. My father was a skilled shooter and lifetime gun aficionado. He introduced me to target shooting and taught me about the safe handling and operation of handguns and rifles. With my father's encouragement and continued coaching, I cultivated my shooting interest and skills throughout my childhood, high school, and college years.

Upon graduating with a Master's of Business Administration (MBA) degree from the University at Albany, I moved to Atlanta, GA to work as a management consultant for a large professional services firms. My work focused on organizational behavior and change management for Fortune 500 companies. As an organization and change manager, I was able to acquire significant experience developing training programs and delivering training to adults.

During my spare time I continued to practice at the shooting range and often brought along friends who were interested in learning how to shoot. I enjoyed teaching them about gun safety and coaching them on the fundamentals of shooting. I was amazed at the transformations I witnessed in my friends’ attitudes about guns, their shooting skills, and self-confidence.

I was also strongly affected by the violent murders of Jennifer Ewing on the Silver Comet Trail (the mother of one of my consulting colleagues), and murder of 24 year old Meredith Emerson on Blood Mountain. These tragic murders coupled with encouragement she received from the friends I trained compelled me to take my lifelong interest to the next level. I became an NRA certified instructor and pursued advanced firearms training at the Inquest Training Academy, in Cartersville, GA. I earned the respect of their most skilled and experienced instructors, and was invited to co-instruct with them.

My passion for firearms, my training experience, and my desire to provide women with self-protection and defense skills motivated me to create Women For Arms. Our vision at WFA is to be the standard of excellence among our nation's firearms training providers. To this end, we are whole-heartedly committed to our mission to:

• Empower women with the knowledge, skills, and abilities to effectively avoid life threatening conflicts,
• Enable women to defend themselves in situations where life threatening conflicts are unavoidable,
• Educate citizens about firearms safety,
• Dispel firearms related myths,
• Actively support the second amendment, and
• Promote a positive image of gun ownership in America.

Furthermore, we are guided by our shared values that we live by as a company and as individuals. One of our values is 'collaboration'. We partner with some of the most respected and talented experts in the firearms training field to provide the highest quality training for Women For Arms course participants. I encourage you to view our course offerings and contact me directly with any questions. I hope to see you in our next class!

Sincerely,

Nicole Ferguson