Feb 16, 2024 · By Marion Chomse
Sherri Williams is a Partner and the Head of Investor Relations and Fundraising at The Raine Group. Raine is a global merchant bank that advises and invests in companies in the sports, media and entertainment spaces, including DraftKings, Imagine Entertainment, and SoundCloud.
As a senior leader at The Raine Group, what were the challenges you were looking to overcome with a wellbeing solution?
The firm has been around for 15 years, and I’ve been part of it for 12 of those years, so I’ve seen the growth and challenges that we’ve lived through over the last decade and a half.
Like most other businesses, we’ve been through a transformative few years. COVID has changed the business landscape by moving us from predominantly office based work to a hybrid model. Along with technology advancements that enable 24/7 communication, these changes have posed a lot of challenges for people, both personally and professionally.
As a result, since COVID, I’ve been an advocate of bringing mental health awareness and education resources into the workplace.
How is WONE an effective solution for your wellbeing needs?
When Walking on Earth was first introduced at Raine, it was my own personal curiosity about the platform that drew me to it.
Raine has a subscription to the WONE Platform for employees, and we also have a bespoke Speaker Series that WONE has designed for us. I was attracted to the platform because I had the ability to pick and choose what I was personally interested in, as the programming had so much variety on offer.
I found the sessions with WONE transformational. I gained so much knowledge about how to manage my own stress in a work environment. I gained a clear understanding of the difference between the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems, and how to manage these systems using simple breathing techniques, to help manage my stress during the day.
We’re in a people business. Our assets are our people. We should invest in our people’s mental and physical health so that they are at their best at work. I truly believe that leadership has an important role to play in driving meaningful change. So the next step for me was how I could take those learnings and apply them to my own management and leadership style. Now I walk away from the sessions with WONE thinking about how I’m going to be a better manager for my team, and knowing I’ll perform better at work as a result.
We’ve been working with WONE for over a year now, and I’m a huge advocate. I’m always talking about WONE to other companies. I’ve done a lot of informal advocacy and also referrals to people who are interested in the topic.
How has WONE increased engagement and helped evolve the culture at Raine?
I think collectively the world has done a great job of building awareness of the personal stress and anxiety that many people live with. However, I don’t think people are fully comfortable talking about this in a working environment. WONE has been instrumental in helping change this at Raine.
Having a shared topic and experience through WONE sessions, has built relationships across the company at all levels of seniority. I’ve noticed an increase in engagement between work colleagues as a result of using the WONE Platform. For example, I can see other colleagues of mine in a WONE session, and that gives us the opportunity to connect outside of that session to talk about our shared interest. It’s given us a forum to connect, check in with each other, and share our experiences with each other.
Additionally, the WONE speaker series helped us advance company culture by encouraging open dialogue.
As a high performing business with lots of high performing professionals, it was important to us that we had speakers capable of bridging their own experience with that of the commercial world. Our speakers included the former Olympian, Jack Green, and the Harvard Professor, Dr Ashley Whillans, who spoke to high performance and time management as it relates to pressured work environments. Through the Q&A with these incredible experts, we were able to encourage open dialogue around Raine specific working culture and pressures, in a way that we haven’t done previously.
The combination of these two solutions has really helped us build relationships across the business.
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How Plume Employee Transformated His Blood Results With WONE
Feb 11, 2026 · By Marion Chomse
Abhishek Svami is a Software Engineer in the R&D team at Plume Design Inc, a leader in next-gen smart home tech. Based in San Francisco, Abhishek has worked at Plume since 2017, and has been using the WONE platform since 2019. We sat down with Abhishek to learn how he uses the WONE platform to improve his health.
What problems were you experiencing with your health that made you turn to the WONE platform?
In 2018 I thought I was leading a healthy lifestyle. I was active, I didn’t drink alcohol, smoke or consume red meat.
But my health was not good, and I started experiencing symptoms. I was tired most of the time and didn’t have much energy to pursue things outside of work. Because I was always active, and enjoyed different activities, it felt surprising and concerning that I was often too tired to do them. I also had leaky gut symptoms, and felt bloated pretty often.
I went to the doctor who ran some tests. My blood markers came out bad - my cholesterol numbers were high, and I was also developing insulin resistance. The doctor told me to focus on improving my health with a low carb diet and improved nutritional habits.
I was gutted initially. As I said, I was someone who was always active, non-drinker and non-smoker and a vegetarian. So I was a little shocked to find out. But it also made sense -it felt like my body was not absorbing the nutrients and this was causing low energy and bloating. Work was also a little stressful around that time and so I wasn’t paying attention to my eating habits and consistent exercise routines. I thought I was leading a healthy lifestyle, but I was not. I had to change my diet and eating patterns.
It started me on a journey to understand my health much more deeply.
How do you approach changing your diet and eating habits?
I’d been doing my own research on nutritional health but getting ideas for my specific issues was like finding a needle in a haystack. I had tried a few things but didn’t really know where to start.
It was around that time that Plume started working with Walking on Earth. I was intrigued by the platform because I’ve always been interested in breathwork and yoga for stress management, but this was the first time I needed to focus on improving my nutrition.
WONE offers tons of nutrition and activity sessions, and what I really liked is that it comes to me - I don’t have to go searching for the sessions. It was a huge incentive that they gave me a path to follow - it made it so easy. The fact that their experts are so experienced was also a huge draw because I knew they would have encountered people similar to me before, and therefore know exactly how to help.
I tried to attend all your available nutrition and activity sessions, I probably ended up doing a few each week. By trying lots of sessions, I found a nutritionist that I really liked, and so I set up a private 1-1 consultation. It was a game-changer for me. The nutritionist helped with my leaky gut symptoms and set me on the right path.
What improvement did you see?
The information that I gained around nutrition, eating and sleeping habits, and exercise, was invaluable. In particular, I learnt a lot about various micronutrients such as vitamin D and magnesium, which I’d been deficient in. I also learned the importance of protein and fats and how to stay on a low-carb diet.
Within weeks, my numbers vastly improved in blood tests. My cholesterol numbers improved dramatically and my insulin resistance also came down. I felt more energetic and vigorous. I believe it’s from the steps I took, and information I gathered, in the WONE nutrition sessions.
I still feel good now. I feel more energetic, vigorous and like my old self again. I understand that this is a journey and not a destination, and that I need to keep doing the right things everyday. But I am grateful for the knowledge and the gained experience.
Feb 16, 2024 · By Marion Chomse