In a vibrant corner of Atlanta, two dynamic women are revolutionizing the intersection of wellness, sports, and sisterhood. Brooke Goldman and Kereen Henry, co-founders of the Ladies Athletic Club of Atlanta (LACA), have created a haven where professional women can connect through athletic pursuits, particularly golf—a sport not traditionally known for its diversity.
Goldman, a dedicated medical device representative for Olympus Healthcare specializing in Gastroenterology and Georgia Southern University graduate, brings her passion for health and authentic connection to the club’s foundation.
Henry, a powerhouse in Atlanta’s luxury real estate market with over a decade of experience as a top-producing Associate Broker with Keller Williams Luxury, contributes her expertise in high-stakes negotiation and strategic growth.
Together, they’ve combined their professional prowess with their shared vision of wellness to create a community where women can thrive both on and off the golf course. Their mission? To empower women through sport, sisterhood, wellness, and community in spaces where they’ve historically been underrepresented. As May celebrates both National Physical Fitness and Sports Month and National Golf Day, their timing couldn’t be more perfect.
How is the Ladies Athletic Club changing the game for women’s wellness?
We are changing the game by making it more inclusive. We’re making it more fun and desirable for the ladies to come out and just make being healthy fun again. I think so many times we just go to the gym and it becomes a chore, and we’re tired of making it feel like it’s a chore. We want to make it fun. We want that social aspect. We want that sisterhood.
When Brooke and I met, we became best friends through working out initially. And when you have that community and that person that holds you accountable and keeps you wanting to go back because you’ll see that person there. It helps you keep going back and getting healthy, and we all want to be healthy and live longer. So that’s really what we’re doing with the Ladies Athletic Club of Atlanta.
How is the Ladies Athletic Club flipping the narrative and creating a space for women who’ve never really seen themselves in this sport?
We make golf accessible. We make it fun, we make it chic, we make it beginner friendly. It can be intimidating when we see a lot of the men out there doing what they do, and because they’ve been doing it so much longer, so well versed than we are in golf, it’s easy to not feel comfortable. So for me, I feel like we’re making it more comfortable for more women to feel included in the sport. It makes it more exciting because we can have fun there, too.
What many women may not know is that we are the fastest growing sector of new players in golf. There are a lot of women that are learning to play golf. We want to make it more beginner friendly, inclusive environment. We want women to see other women that look like them playing the sport. And we want the golf community to recognize us as a powerful force in the sporting world.
How does the game double as therapy and networking with your members?
That’s a great question. Golf has definitely long been known as the secret for networking, and we’ve just expanded it to a safe space and a sisterhood for women to decompress, connect, and simply just be. It’s all about sisterhood and friendship. It’s a therapy that we are offering to our community, whether you’re bonding over your first swing or having a cocktail with someone that you met in our class. We want to create an environment that’s welcoming, inclusive and empowering, as well.
I also feel that the more women get out there, and they just see how peaceful it is and how therapeutic it could be, just being out there hitting the balls and being at one with the world and just nature. We meditate, and we talk about meditation and everything. Being out there, it’s just so therapeutic. And until you really get out there and practice and learn the game you really won’t understand. So I say, just do it. And it’s great for networking along with women as well.
The networking becomes organic. After you break a sweat, it’s also easier to break the ice as we say. So, having doing a shared activity with other professional women. It just sort of lends itself to just organic, authentic connections and/or networking experiences.
What’s it like to share your friendship with others, and how has that impacted your members?
Our personalities are so similar, but also so different. And so everybody gravitates to us, and we’re just such friendly people and open. So I think our community and our sisterhood really portrays our personal personalities. I love how they come in. And they’re just nice and friendly. There’s no mean girl Vibe here. I just think that portrays, because that’s who we are.
The reason why we’ve been so successful and grown so quickly in this market is because we pride ourselves on being the girls that you can sit with. Atlanta already has a lot of strong personalities, and we pride ourselves on being in a welcoming authentic community. It’s also reflective of me and Kereen’s friendship. We are best friends, and we work really well together. We’re different personalities.
But we have the same goal in mind. We love this business and our community so much, and it always comes first. It’s reflective that, when we greet new members or new attendees, we greet them with a hug because we’re all friends here. Even though we’re all bosses and powerful minute in our professional lives here in this community we’re all friends, and we’re all sisters.
For women thinking “golf, not me,” what would you say to invite them to the Ladies Athletic Club movement?
For someone who looks at golf and says, ‘not for me’, I would say, Why not you? It’s so fun, and it’s a great workout. It’s a great reason to get a cute new outfit and take a few new pictures. It might improve your social connections. It might improve your health, it might improve your confidence. It might improve your business. There’s so many reasons why it should be for you.
And also I would like to say, as far as why, just try it. Get out there and try it. When I first played golf, I literally went out to sponsor an event, and they were like, Oh, well, we have you on this foursome, and I was like, what do you mean? Me? Not me. I can’t join this foursome. I’ve never played golf before, and it was that day I fell in love with golf.
My team was amazing. They really helped me. They were out there making sure that I got my swing together, and since then it has been a love for me, but it was kind of just me going out there and being thrown into it.
At the end of the day it’s just a game. It’s just for fun.
For those interested in joining this movement of inclusive wellness and sport, the Ladies Athletic Club of Atlanta can be found on Instagram at Ladies Athletic Club of ATL, and their website is www.ladiesathleticclubatl.com. They can also be contacted directly at [email protected].
