By JULIE CARLE
BG Independent News
At 14, Sashette McPherson was already learning lessons about money that many adults spend a lifetime trying to understand.
Growing up between Jamaica and Ethiopia before returning to Jamaica with her family, McPherson witnessed the complicated relationship between ambition, financial stability and personal habits. Her father was an entrepreneur whose business experienced success before financial difficulties began to emerge. Watching his journey left a lasting impression on the young McPherson.
She admired his confidence, drive and entrepreneurial spirit. But she also saw firsthand how financial habits could undermine a business and threaten stability.
By 14, she was working to support herself and eventually help her family. At 17, she was living independently.
Those early experiences shaped more than her work ethic. They planted the seeds of a philosophy that would later become the foundation of her business, Power Moves Global. She learned that financial success is not determined by knowledge alone. It is also influenced by the beliefs, habits and experiences that shape how people see themselves and make decisions.
Today, McPherson is building a business around that idea, encouraging people to look beyond their bank accounts and examine the deeper patterns influencing their financial lives.
Beyond the budget
For McPherson, the conventional approach to financial education leaves an important question unanswered: Why do people who know what they should do with money sometimes struggle to do it?
Budgeting, saving, investing and managing credit are essential financial skills. But McPherson believes that understanding these practices is only part of the equation.
Through her work with clients and her research into behavioral finance, she began examining how childhood experiences, family dynamics, social expectations and personal beliefs can influence financial behavior.
Someone who grew up in a household where money was scarce, for example, may develop habits designed to cope with uncertainty. Another person may spend to maintain a particular image, meet social expectations or keep pace with what they see online.
These behaviors can persist even when a person’s income or circumstances improve.
McPherson calls the underlying concept “financial identity”—the emotional patterns, beliefs, habits and expectations that influence how people relate to money and approach wealth-building.
“Your identity will change your behavior and your behavior will change your outcome,” she said, describing the philosophy behind her work.
It is a framework that shifts the conversation from simply asking people to save more money to asking them to understand why they make the choices they do.
For McPherson, awareness is the starting point. Before people can change a pattern, they must first recognize it.
An education in finance—and in life
McPherson’s professional background provides a foundation for her approach.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in banking and finance and economics in Jamaica, then began her career in accounts payable. After working in the field, she decided to pursue a master’s degree in the United States.
In 2023, she came to Ohio for a master’s degree after Dr. Gary Oates, a BGSU sociology professor with ties to Jamaica, introduced her to Bowling Green State University. In one year, she completed a master’s degree in financial economics, then moved from working as a graduate student assistant into a full-time position as a financial analyst on campus.
Her academic and professional experiences gave her a strong grounding in finance. Yet her interest in human behavior pushed her to explore the personal dimensions of financial decision-making.
She became increasingly interested in why people with intelligence, education and earning potential could still struggle to manage money effectively.
The answers, she believes, often extend beyond spreadsheets and financial formulas.
Family traditions, childhood memories, fear, comparison and the desire for acceptance can all influence the way people spend, save and plan. Social media can intensify those pressures, creating the impression that success means displaying a particular lifestyle rather than building a stable future.
McPherson has experienced the pressure of those expectations herself. She describes a period when material pursuits, social media and people-pleasing pulled her away from what she wanted her life to represent.
Losing the stability she had known in Jamaica and beginning again in Bowling Green became part of a larger process of reflection and rebuilding.
“Before I was lost and now I am a woman building with intention,” she said, describing her personal transformation.
Through her personal transformation, she recognized a connection between the lessons she had learned and the work she felt called to do.
When every experience becomes a power move
The name Power Moves emerged during a period of reflection after McPherson completed her master’s degree.
Alone in Bowling Green, away from her family and watching friends move on to other stages of their lives, she began questioning what came next. She knew she wanted to build a company and help people, but she was still searching for a clear sense of direction.
Then came the idea that would give her vision its name: everything she had experienced in life had been a power move, and she needed to keep going.
For McPherson, the name represents the possibility of turning difficult experiences into opportunities for growth.
That outlook is closely connected to her Christian faith, which she describes as central to her personal transformation and the mission of her company. She credits her spiritual journey with helping her rediscover her sense of purpose and understand how she wanted to serve others.
Faith, personal experience and financial knowledge now converge in her approach to entrepreneurship.
As founder of Power Moves Global, McPherson wants to make conversations about financial identity more accessible to individuals, businesses, educational institutions and communities. Her long-term vision includes workshops, speaking engagements and outreach to women and underserved populations.
She also wants to reach people who earn a good income but struggle to retain what they make, as well as young professionals, college students and individuals rebuilding their financial lives.
The common thread is a desire to help people understand not only what they are earning, but what they are building—and whether their daily decisions support that future.
Turning reflection into daily action
One of McPherson’s central projects is a 365-day guide designed to bring her philosophy into everyday life.
The book, titled “Power Moves Bible,” is not intended to be a religious Bible. Instead, it is a yearlong guide to reflection, healing, wealth and identity transformation.
Each day features a power quote, a reflection, a wealth lesson, an affirmation and a practical action called “today’s power move.”
The structure is deliberate. McPherson wants readers to do more than absorb information. She wants them to make an intentional decision each day that moves them closer to the life they want to create.
She will host a book launch event on Sunday, Oct. 25. The event will be held at the Bowling Green Rotary Nature Center at 615 S. Wintergarden Road. Doors open at 5 p.m. for the 5:30 p.m. event that will bring together community members, entrepreneurs, professionals and readers for a conversation around financial wellness and the behaviors that influence how people manage their lives and money.
The book grew out of years of journaling, self-reflection and observing patterns in her own life and the lives of others, a habit she seriously started about the time she came to Bowling Green.
Her approach also informs her client work. She describes helping individuals identify the habits and beliefs influencing their decisions, with self-awareness serving as the first step in her financial identity reconstruction framework.
She is also exploring the development of a financial identity score to help clients better recognize their patterns and understand where they may need to make changes.
The goal is to connect insight with action, giving people a clearer way to examine their behavior and work toward more intentional financial choices.
Wealth with a greater purpose
McPherson’s vision of wealth extends beyond accumulating money.
She wants people to build financial stability while developing healthier habits, greater self-awareness and a clearer understanding of their purpose. In her view, people are better positioned to protect and grow their resources when they understand what those resources are meant to support.
That message is particularly relevant to people who feel trapped in a cycle of earning more without making meaningful financial progress.
A higher salary does not automatically create security if spending habits, competing expectations or the desire to maintain appearances consume the additional income. Similarly, knowing the importance of saving does not necessarily resolve the emotional barriers that make saving difficult.
McPherson encourages people to ask themselves two fundamental questions: Who am I with money, and what do I believe I am building?
The questions are simple, but answering them honestly can require confronting longstanding assumptions about success, worth and belonging.
She acknowledges that this process is not always comfortable. Changing deeply rooted habits can mean reconsidering relationships, routines and the environments in which people spend their time.
For her, however, intentional living is not about believing oneself superior to others. It is about making choices that align with personal goals and values.
That philosophy also shapes her ambitions for Power Moves Global. She wants to grow the organization into a broader platform for community impact, bringing its message into different countries and creating opportunities for people who may not otherwise have access to these conversations.
Through social media, the Power Moves podcast and other media initiatives, she is working to introduce more people to the relationship between identity, behavior and financial well-being.
The power of becoming
McPherson’s story is one of reinvention, but it is also a story about finding a practical purpose in difficult experiences.
The teenager who began working at 14, the young woman who lived independently at 17, the finance graduate who pursued further education in the United States and the entrepreneur building a business around financial identity are all part of the same journey.
Her experiences have informed a philosophy that asks people to look inward before they look outward—to examine the habits shaping their lives before deciding what they want their future to become.
Power Moves Global is her effort to turn that philosophy into a resource for others.
Ultimately, McPherson wants people to understand that financial progress is not simply about how much they earn or how much they know. It is also about the decisions they make repeatedly, the beliefs they carry and the future they choose to prioritize.
Her message is not that every challenge can be overcome through positive thinking alone. Rather, it is that meaningful change begins with the willingness to recognize existing patterns and intentionally work toward something different.
