We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sandra Hunter a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Sandra, appreciate you joining us today. Looking back, do you think you started your business at the right time? Do you wish you had started sooner or later

I started my business, empowerHER, at age 65 after 19+ years in academia as a professor of English and Creative Writing. For nearly two decades, I watched my female students graduate, enter the workforce, and face the same systemic gender and race bias that women have struggled with for generations. It struck me that there was no place of transition, no safety net between the educational institution and the start of a young person’s career. I decided I needed to do something about it.

At the same time, I was leaving a 24-year marriage and moving to Portland to start over. Launching a business while grappling with major life changes was impactful, but I knew this new chapter had to be fully mine. If I’d started sooner, I would have faced pressure from my then-partner to maintain a certain level of income, something that’s just not realistic as an early entrepreneur. Because I waited, I had the freedom to take risks, make mistakes (big mistakes!), and build something true to my vision.

Looking back, I wouldn’t start sooner or later; I started at exactly the right time. Every challenge and lesson has shaped the leader I am today. empowerHER now reaches women, both young and established, who need clarity about their identities so they can access and propel career success. I’m grateful that I could build this business on my terms, at a time in life when I was ready to claim it entirely as mine.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

At empowerHER, we offer workshops and programs designed to create a narrative arc from releasing epigenetic grief to learning tools that promote confidence, growth, clarity, and success in the workplace. One example is our current workshop series, Art as Release: Grief, Connection and Creation. This 4-part series explores the ways we try to control or hide our grief, and how creative practice can help us release that need for control. Participants choose from a variety of art and craft activities as we move from self-protection toward openness and connection. Each session provides time for emotional processing and includes optional reflection prompts and journaling. No art experience is needed. Just turn up and feel, create, and be witnessed. We follow an arc from awareness → expression → surrender → connection, balancing emotional exploration with creative expression.
We also address the unique challenges professional women face, from workplace bias and lack of mentorship and sponsorships, to burnout and identity loss. empowerHER programs provide practical tools for self-advocacy, leadership development, and boundary-setting. We are also focused on developing a supportive community of peers. This helps women move from feeling stuck or unseen to becoming confident, connected, and clear about their goals and strengths.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

In 2023, we were doing well. Our 3- and 6-month programs were thriving, our client list was growing, and we were watching women successfully launch with new tools for setting boundaries, handling conflict, and advocating for themselves at work. But then we noticed something troubling: at the 3-month mark, success rates began to drop. Women who’d been thriving started struggling again.
We had a choice: ignore the data and keep running programs, or pause everything and dig deeper. We chose the harder path. We stopped our programs for an entire year, knowing it would mean almost no income, a silent social media presence, and the appearance that we’d disappeared. It was a frightening decision, but necessary.
For over a year, I researched and listened to former participants, women at conferences, even strangers in grocery store lines. I immersed myself in the work of authors like Isabel Wilkerson, Resmaa Menakem, and Mary-Frances O’Connor. The breakthrough came when I uncovered a deeper root cause: epigenetic grief. The fears, confidence gaps, and struggles women faced weren’t isolated. They were tied to generational grief passed down through families.
We rebuilt our programs from the ground up, creating a new arc that first helps women recognize, name, and release grief, then equips them with tools to navigate workplace bias as something external, not a reflection of their worth.
Today, our workshops are flourishing, and we’re seeing sustained success. That pause was terrifying, but it turned out to be the most resilient move we could have made.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

A lesson I had to unlearn was judging myself so harshly. For years, I was quick to focus on failures and even dissect my successes until they felt like failures, too. That workshop wasn’t strong enough. Not enough people signed up. Not enough people came back. It became a relentless inner chatter that was draining and made me question my work.
This pattern didn’t start with entrepreneurship. Growing up, I received a lot of criticism, and I internalized it. Throughout my teaching career and by the time I was running a business, self-judgment had become second nature. It’s one of the most destructive forces anyone, including any entrepreneur, can face. It doesn’t just undermine your confidence. It destroys your creativity and inhibits your ability to take risks.
The turning point came when I took Shirzad Chamine’s Positive Intelligence program. It gave me tools to recognize when self-judgment appeared and to separate it from reality. Now, when that familiar voice whispers, you’re not doing enough, I can name it—“Okay, self-judgment, I see you”—and choose a different response.
Self-judgment hasn’t disappeared, but I no longer let it take over my life. And that shift has given me the freedom to lead from a place of clarity instead of fear.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.empowerhertorise.com/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandrahunter/

Image Credits

All pics are mine.