Restoring Identity
Naming the lies and replacing them with the truth of Scripture, so you can see yourself the way your Father does.
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Meet Isatel
I was the young woman who looked fine and felt empty. Born legally blind, raised by a single mother of four, and wounded early, I became an expert at hiding. I grew up in church and knew the right words, but not the Father's love.
For seven years, I ran.
In 2009, I reached the end of myself and surrendered to Jesus. Months later, He gave me a vision: a Holy Spirit-filled sisterhood for college women, where each young woman would encounter the love of Jesus so powerfully that His love overflows through her life, to her campus and community, and truly impacts the world.
God took years to prepare me to carry it. I pursued my own healing, was discipled and trained, led mission work across Southeast Asia, and served people experiencing homelessness and trafficking in San Francisco. On January 2, 2025, I moved to Berkeley to begin building what He showed me.
Today I am the founder of The Pearls Movement, a multigenerational sisterhood where women are healeAd, set free, and sent out. I am also the author of You Are Loved: A 30 Day Devotional on Identity, Healing and Becoming Who God Says You Are and host of the Beauty in the Breakthrough podcast.
I am building for the girl who is still searching, and for the women ready to go first.
I was born legally blind and raised in Southern California by a single mother of four. I grew up familiar with the pressures of poverty, the absence of a father, and the wounds that come when a young girl experiences sexual abuse. By high school, I had become very good at hiding my loneliness.
I grew up in church. I knew how to believe the right things and say the right words, but I did not know the intimate love of my Heavenly Father.
After my freshman year of college, the pain I had buried began to surface. I did not know how to heal, so I tried to escape. Drinking, partying, and relationships with both men and women became ways of coping with a deep emptiness I could not name.
For seven years, I ran.
Then, in 2009, I reached the end of myself.
I stopped running and surrendered my life to Jesus. I encountered the love of God in a way religion had never shown me, and everything began to change.
A Vision for a Generation
Only months after being born again, God gave me a vision that has shaped the rest of my life.
I saw a global movement for college women.
Not another program built around religious performance. Not simply another Bible study.
I saw a Holy Spirit-filled sisterhood where young women could encounter Jesus, discover their God-given identity, develop genuine intimacy with God, and understand the inheritance they carry as daughters of the King.
I saw a community that could offer what so many young women are searching for in other places: belonging, purpose, sisterhood, mentorship, and a place to become who they were created to be.
That vision became the assignment I could not put down.
The Years of Preparation
God gave me the vision quickly. He took years to prepare me to carry it.
I pursued my own inner healing while being discipled, mentored, and trained for ministry. I served with women’s ministries in Los Angeles and attended and later staffed Epicentre Discipleship Training School. I staffed an online Well School of Ministry discipleship school and pioneered and co-led a college-age Bible study with Epicentre Church for 18 months.
I served on mission trips throughout Southeast Asia, including leadership ministry in the Philippines with Lighthouse School of Leadership and anti-human-trafficking outreaches in Bangkok and Pattaya with Justice Speaks.
In 2023, I helped oversee the Hope California Crusade with Ekballo Pasadena.
Each assignment expanded my understanding of what it means to reach people, disciple them, build healthy community, and create spaces where transformation can happen.
From the Tenderloin to Berkeley
In 2023, I joined Youth With A Mission at its Tenderloin base and began serving people experiencing homelessness through radical hospitality.
San Francisco became more than a place of ministry. It became a place where God continued to clarify my assignment.
I began evangelizing at UC Berkeley and saw firsthand the spiritual hunger, loneliness, confusion, and search for identity among young adults.
On January 2, 2025, I moved to Berkeley to begin pioneering the movement God had put on my heart years before.
I did not arrive with everything figured out. I arrived with a yes.
The Mission
Today, I am building at the intersection of evangelism, discipleship, sisterhood, mentorship, and compassionate outreach to vulnerable young women.
My work has three primary expressions.
I speak.
I share the Gospel and tell my story on stages, campuses, online, and wherever women are willing to have honest conversations about faith, identity, healing, and purpose.
I speak to the woman who has learned how to look fine while quietly falling apart. I want her to know that Jesus is not asking her to perform for Him. He is inviting her into relationship.
I serve.
I serve young women in vulnerable communities, including women living at the edge of exploitation and those at increased risk of trafficking.
I believe prevention begins long before exploitation. It begins when a young woman knows she is seen, knows she belongs, has healthy people around her, and believes her future is worth protecting.
So I show up. I listen. I build trust. I honor her dignity. I make room for her dreams.
I mentor.
I walk alongside young women as they discover who God says they are and learn to live from that identity.
We talk about hearing God’s voice, developing intimacy with Christ, building healthy relationships, discovering purpose, and understanding the inheritance God has given them.
I do not want to simply introduce women to Jesus and leave them to figure out the rest. I want to help build a generation that knows Him.
The Movement I Am Building
The vision God gave me in 2009 is still alive.
I believe young women need more than an invitation to attend church. They need communities where they can belong before they know what they believe, ask honest questions, encounter the Holy Spirit, experience healthy sisterhood, and be discipled into wholehearted lives with Jesus.
They need women who will go first. They need mentors who will stay. They need spiritual mothers and sisters who can see what God placed inside them before they know how to see it themselves.
And they need a generation willing to carry the Gospel beyond church walls and into the places where young people actually live, study, work, struggle, and dream.
That is the movement I am pioneering.
I know this mission personally because I was once the young woman searching for something to fill the ache inside me.
I know what it feels like to be surrounded by people and still feel alone. I know what it feels like to carry shame in silence.
And I know what happens when a woman finally discovers that the God she thought was distant is actually a loving Father who sees her, knows her, and has never abandoned her.
I am building for the girl who is still searching.
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit. Isaiah 61:1-3 · Isatel’s life verse
