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.

Dr. Nydia Dixon

My childhood dream always was to become a doctor. At 18, I decided to join the U.S. Navy. I enlisted as an Information Systems Technician (IT) however, I was unsatisfied with this career path. I decided to not re-enlist to pursue my passion in becoming a doctor. I applied to NYU post-baccalaureate program, was accepted, and moved back to NYC. Due to personal strains, I did not complete the program and re-joined the workforce as an IT. One day I was leaving work and the director of another department was leaving at the same time. Coincidentally, we lived about one block from one another, so we shared a train ride together. Read more>>

Lauren MacKellar

There have been many moments throughout my professional career and personal life that have shaped what I do now. I feel lucky that much of my experiences in life can be informative to my work and vice versa. One moment that launched a pivotal change in my career, was the experience of having my first child. I had always wanted to be a mother and felt such a purpose in this role. I also loved working as a therapist, yet realized, I was in a space that didn’t fit where I was in my life or where I wanted to go. Becoming a mother led me to realize that I wanted more freedom and creativity in my work. Read more>>

Shakeelah Sutton

I have always been passionate about improving health outcomes in Black communities. Having witnessed my relatives suffer from diabetes and heart disease with limited access to resources that would truly heal, I made it my life’s mission to be a catalyst for wellbeing. Read more>>

Casandra Pena

My name is Casandra and I’ve had many jobs I have worked since I was 13. The office was never for me except for when I worked for John Casablanca’s and I felt like I worked for myself and it was a very creative environment. I learned most of my skills and the food and beverage industry whether that’s in restaurants or high profile events or high volume events. Read more>>

Brenda Mierzejewski

Brenda Mierzejewski is the Founder of Mizzi Cosmetics. Over the last several years, Mizzi has developed its imprint as a proudly and positively, women owned and operated manufacturing company, dedicated to the creation of small batch, artisanal, safe, smart, science –driven, and sublime lip care in ever so cool and calm, Connecticut. Read more>>

Erin S. Doolittle

I personally suffered with Panic Disorder, PTSD, and Agoraphobia for nearly 20 years. Due to my personal background and exposure to addiction I was extremely anti-cannabis. At the age of 30 a loved one convinced me to try it. I was desperate. I was skeletally thin, I couldn’t go out with friends or family without severe, prolonged panic attacks. My cocktail of choice was Imodium and Xanax to get through inescapable situations. To discover that cannabis was incredibly effective and comfortable, was life changing. I committed to researching, de-stigmatizing, and educating real people about the real benefits medical cannabis could have. Read more>>

Joi Morgan, MD, MHA, MS

The most defining moment in my life that changed the trajectory was being fired from my job a week after my father’s funeral. I was working for a company and was the only black female doctor in which I was a good employee according to my boss on the job site. I would go in early and stay late. Before my father passed I informed my boss that my father was going to hospice on that Tuesday and we were told he would pass by the weekend. I asked to be off because he lived about an hour away to go see him. Read more>>

Emmitt Henderson III.

A defining moment for me was accepting the fact that because of a LUPUS related symptom, my career in the automotive industry had to end. I decided to advocate for Lupus and Mens mental health. This was how I got through it all in the past 27yrs and now I’m here to tell my story to inspire others. I want to encourage others to be strong through their illness and that they can get through it. Read more>>

Lisa Jones

A few years back, before Atlanta was home, I experienced a deep and painful riff in my relationship with a family member. Both my parents had passed away within 11 months of one another and the intensity of caring for them during their decline and the loss itself had revealed the strain and disharmony with one of my siblings. One explosive phone conversation was a punch of trauma so hurtful it had me breathing rapid and small with an overwhelming feeling of suffocation. Read more>>

Dr. Danielle Benson

My parents both transitioned when I was a young girl. Throughout my life, I always desired to fill that void. I suffered through abandonment and rejection. Many relationships were affected because of unhealed childhood trauma. As I matured, I learned how to heal myself. I wanted to share my journey while helping others heal. This is how The HealHer Collective was birthed. Read more>>

Lejla Streets

After completing Dental School at Tufts University School of Dental Medicine as part of the Army’s HPSP Scholarship, I was directly commissioned as an Officer in the AMEDD Army Dental Corps. Unlike a civilian dental practice, I was repeatedly exposed to soldiers who had unexplained tooth or jaw pain. Of course, as a new graduate out of dental school, we had barely any training outside of “fixing” teeth. As I am driven by understanding the Why to a given problem, I took advantage of phenomenal mentorship and Continuing Education courses during the years I was Active Duty. Read more>>

Samantha Marut & Kelly Tracy-Holly, CE, CAE, CMLT

Circa 2016, I, like most women, was extremely busy with life. My husband and I had/have a successful dental consulting business, and it was thriving in 2016 in particular. Personally, taking care of my skin has always been a passion of mine but up until 2016, I had never really thought about the ingredients in most of the products I was using on my face, hair and body. When I started struggling with fertility treatment in 2016, my own ignorance of ingredients in products came to light when my doctor handed me a list of all the ingredients I needed to stay away from. Read more>>

Erin Ditmarson

I started my career working in social services. I used to work in spaces lead by non-profits and community organizations, and always wanted to work within my community. Over time I found that although these spaces strived to be trauma-informed and include harm-reduction and restorative practices, there were often gaps in care and communication with clients and employees due to lack of funding, conflicting leadership, and disconnection from the populations being served. I wanted to find a different approach to serving my community, so I turned to movement. Read more>> 

Amanda Butler

While I’d had an interest in psychology for as long as I can remember, I didn’t think I could make a career out of it until I was 35 and had fallen crazy in love with a man who is a psychotherapist in private practice. His success and the fact that he had made a career change to that field in his 30s made it start to seem possible. Things with him didn’t work out the way I’d hoped, and by the week of my 36th birthday I was in a very dark place: along with the heartbreak of that unrequited love situation, I was also miserable in the career field I was in at the time–writing and content management for a publisher in the healthcare industry. Read more>>

Jacquelyn Potesta

I always thought anesthesia would be my lifelong career, but I’ll never forget when it all changed in 2019. I had just dropped off a patient in recovery and was heading to my next case when I checked my phone. A video popped up from our nanny of my 4 month old son rolling over for the first time. I stopped in the middle the hallway with tears in my eyes to watch it. I felt such a range of emotions – pride, but also a deep sadness and guilt that I wasn’t able to be there to see it. Read more>>

Kristi Hayes-Devlin

In 2010, I was an entrepreneur with an internationally recognized baby carrier brand and a babywearing educator. I had been in business for 6 years when the law governing children’s products was overhauled with the passage of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, and it was immediately clear that it was going to incredibly expensive and complicated for tiny businesses like mine to comply with the new regulations. Read more>>

Cheryl Englebretson

I was working in a demanding corporate job, when my son was diagnosed with both Type 1 diabetes and Celiac disease. At the time, social media didn’t exist and the doctors sent me off with a pamphlet of materials to figure out how to navigate this new lifestyle for our family. I felt alone and overwhelmed trying to juggle my full time job, learning about living with these conditions and putting a meal cooked from scratch on the table each night. Read more>>