Stories are incredibly powerful – their ability to teach, inspire, and create understanding is why we are so in love with storytelling. Most stories have a defining moment and so we’ve asked some of the most talented, insightful folks across a broad range of industries and markets to tell us about a defining moment in their story.

Diana Tarakanova

I had just opened my own tattoo shop — a small studio that I ran with my husband in Germany after we moved from Ukraine because of the war. I felt stuck — both mentally and professionally. I had clients, things were going well… but something was missing. I realized I was building someone else’s dream, not mine. Read more>>

Kartika Shetty

One of the most defining moments in my life was making the decision to leave everything familiar behind and coming to the United States to pursue my medical residency. It was a bold leap of faith, traveling over 10,000 miles from India to a country where I had no family and only one close friend. Read more>>

Laura Stendel

There have been several defining moments that changed the trajectory of my career. The one thing they all have in common is:

I defied the odds by standing up for myself against the societal norms pressed upon women in business.

At times, I had to play by the rules but often had to posture myself toward executives I was working for and with. Other times, I openly bucked the rules and it worked in my favor. I think the main factor in being able to know when to follow versus break the rules is listening to my feminine intuition that drives me to always be moving and helping others. Read more>>

Breanna Yang

While foodblogging has been a longtime hobby, my true career goals lie with the field of medicine. When my younger brother, Bryson, was diagnosed with leukemia in my freshman year of highschool, I was thrown into a world of chemotherapy and hospital waiting rooms. As I watched physicians round and discuss my brother’s treatment plans, my interest in medicine sparked. Read more>>

Alison

Absolutely—the defining moment in my professional career, was when I made the decision to change my Instagram handle from @therapywithali to @theanxietyhealer. It might sound like a small shift, but for me, it changed *everything.* That simple rebrand in 2017 marked the beginning of something so much bigger than I could’ve imagined at the time. What started as a page to support my private practice quickly turned into a mission—a calling, really—to help heal the world from anxiety in a holistic, compassionate way. Read more>>

Joshua Rivera

Being raised in a pastoral household provided me with an in-depth view of the various aspects of church ministry, “the good, the bad, and the ugly.” Initially, I never anticipated following in my father’s footsteps and becoming a pastor of a congregation. Read more>>

Tammy Lewis

Absolutely, there was a defining moment that completely shifted the trajectory of my career and my life. It was the day my late husband was diagnosed with stage 4 Glioblastoma. We had been together since I was 16, and when he got sick, everything stopped. I had to pause my business, become his full-time caregiver, and navigate the most painful journey I’d ever faced. Read more>>

Elizabeth Clayborne

2020 was a difficult year for most people, but for me it certainly was a life defining year. In February of 2020 I was 6 months pregnant, working full time as an Emergency Physician at PG County Hospital and juggling all the demands of being mom to a 16 month old toddler, struggling in my marriage and trying to survive at work while building a new business. Little did I know that a few short weeks later my life would be turned upside down. I worked through the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the hardest hit hospital in the state of Maryland, heavily pregnant and all the while going on to national television networks such as CNN, ABC News, Yahoo Finance and MSNBC to share the story of the frontline pregnant provider who understood why were all asked to stay home at the time. It was a scary period when we didn’t really know the risks to ourselves and especially to my unborn child. Read more>>

Claudia Solitaire

One defining moment came during a session early in my teaching journey. I was guiding a student through a somatic practice, and something in the space just shifted — there was a stillness, a deep release, and I could feel that they were meeting a part of themselves they hadn’t accessed in a long time. Afterward, they told me it was the first time they felt truly safe in their body. Read more>>

Christina Santos

There was a defining moment in my life where I became completely weary of living beneath who I was created to be. For so long, I didn’t see my own worth. I struggled with insecurity, people-pleasing, and believing I wasn’t enough. But deep down, I knew I was made for more. That quiet, persistent knowing sparked a personal journey of healing, growth, and rediscovery. As I began to evolve, I found myself developing an undeniable passion for helping other women do the same to see themselves clearly, reclaim their worth, and step into the fullness of who they are. That moment shifted everything for me, and it’s been the foundation of my work and purpose ever since. Read more>>

Charyn Harris

After a lengthy stint as a tour manager, I took a break and started working with a lovely nonprofit arts organization in Los Angeles. We had an all-female staff and every woman was complaining about hot flashes except me. Even more odd, I was older than all of them and was not experiencing any of the harsher symptoms. I joked about starting a support group for menopausal women. At 62, my hormones are in the normal range and I still have a cycle, which happens in only 1% of women. Read more>>

Sherry Steine

There was a defining moment in my professional journey—one that quietly began with frustration and ended with freedom. About ten years ago, I found myself deeply disillusioned as a distributor for a multi-level marketing (MLM) essential oils company. I was constantly promoting oils I didn’t truly understand, mimicking what others were saying, hoping that if I just followed the script and posted the right things, it would all take off. But it didn’t. Read more>>

Susan Reynolds

There have been many defining moments in my career which have led me closer to realizing a purpose that fuels not only my career but my life. As a social studies teacher, I loved creating the curriculum from scratch, mixing and matching primary and secondary sources. When the Berlin wall fell, I was teaching the ideology of communism, so I was able to pivot the lessons to help my students learn in the moment, as we watched communism collapse one country at a time. Spontaneous creativity helped fuel my passion for teaching current events. I was able to continue to create from the present circumstances as I moved forward into the future. Read more>>

Justin Decker

I have had many moments that have completely changed my life, but the most recent moment that changed the trajectory of my career was when I signed the paper to start franchising Athlecare.

Athlecare is 4 years old and I have had to get through many massive obstacles to even get to where I am now.

This all started with a desire to change the status quo of health. To do this I had three goals.

1. Create a clinic focused on preventative health. Read more>>

Rachel Weinstock

Prior to breaking into the fitness and health industry, I was a marketing professional working mostly freelance jobs in between raising my two small children. I was exhausted, burnt out and likely suffering from some post partum depression. After thousands of dollars spent on doctors, specialists and tests, I had a gut feeling that I was lacking in movement and food. Every doctor assured me what I was experiencing was much more severe than just “diet and exercise.” I decided to trust my intuition and try an at-home workout program and start with a small step by drinking a protein shake as a meal replacement. The first at-home workout I did, I was only able to complete 7 minutes of it before I felt light headed and ill. Read more>>

Rebekah Hibbert

About 6 years ago the hospital I was working for at the time dissolved the Women’s Sports Health Program I had created with my colleagued Robin Curry, MD—claiming it caused “brand confusion” with the larger Sports Health Program—and I faced a defining moment. I could wait for an employer to recognize and drive the change I wanted to see in the industry or take matters into my own hands. That moment made me realize real change starts with individuals, not institutions. Read more>>

Eboni January

There was a defining moment during my OB/GYN residency that changed my purpose forever. I had a young patient, barely 20 years old, who came in with severe complications during labor. Despite her cries for help and visible signs of distress, the medical team initially brushed it off as exaggeration. I fought to get her the care she deserved, and thankfully, we saved both her and her baby, but just barely. That moment burned into my soul: we are failing women, especially Black women, during the most vulnerable times of their lives. I knew then I wasn’t just here to practice medicine. I was here to change the system. That was the birth of what would become the Empowered Motherhood movement. Read more>>

Priscilla Cortez

Since I was a Junior in high school I knew I wanted to become a Dentist. As soon as I graduated high school, I decided to become a Dental assistant to male sure I was in the right field. I learned dental terminology and became a lead dental assistant. I decided to began my Dental career and journey so I got my bachelor’s in biology and graduated 4 years later. I Moved to San Antonio to start a Dental boot camp and took the Dental admissions exam. I Went to 10 different Dental schools for interviews but didn’t get accepted to any. After trying for almost 4 consecutive years I decided to apply to Nutrition school and became a Nutritionist. On December 2020 during the pandemic, I graduated with my Master’s degree in Nutrition. Read more>>

Rashad Bell

My defining moment was circa 2021, inspired by the COVID pandemic. Around this time, I became intentional about my life and what I wanted from it. Having just accepted a new role, I jokingly declared, “This will be my last job,” meaning I would no longer pursue roles solely for monetary gain. This decision, though challenging, was the worst-best thing that ever happened to me. It taught me to be intentional about my desires and the cost of my choices, both physically, mentally, and emotionally. Read more>>

Monisha Mallik

I always wanted to have my own practice, but I knew I needed experience before I took the plunge. Years of working for someone else always meant having to practice in their style or be told what I could and could not do. I spent a lot of time training outside of jobs to keep my skills sharp and always observed what I would want to do (or not want to do) when I finally opened my own office. And if I’m being honest, I mostly just learned all the things I wouldn’t do when finally on my own. Read more>>

Natalia Arboleda

Yes, there was a defining moment that completely changed the course of my professional path. A few years ago, during a very intense personal crisis, I found myself overwhelmed mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. I was constantly pushing, trying to ‘keep up’ with life, work, and expectations… until my body and heart said, “Enough.” Read more>>

Mikki Warszawski

My second year of graduate school I was in a a class, Contemporary Theories of Play Therapy. Each week a different guest speaker joined us to share about the theory that they practiced or taught. As an aspiring child and adolescent grief counselor, I enjoyed the class. Towards the end of the semester, a therapist and professor at my university came to talk about EMDR with kids. My knowledge of EMDR—Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing—was limited. I knew it was developed to process PTSD and was primarily used with veterans. It was a theory I had no interest in, given the populations I hoped to work with. Read more>>