Defining moments aren’t just exciting – they are thought-provoking and fertile ground for learning. These inflection points often are the result of an illuminating moment where some truth of the universe presents itself in an easier to recognize form. Below, you’ll find talented and successful entrepreneurs and artists sharing the stories of defining moments in their lives.

Vadim Dekhtyar

I’ll never forget that Zoom call in early 2024.
Sarah’s face filled my screen – her hands trembling slightly as she spoke. A dedicated teacher and mother of two, she’d been battling devastating anxiety since the pandemic years.
“Dr. Dekhtyar, I don’t know what to do anymore. Back in 2020 and 2021, the school administration sent conflicting information almost weekly. The fear and uncertainty… it broke something in me. And now, years later, I still haven’t recovered. I worry constantly about my students, my own children, my health… I’m falling apart, and there’s nobody to talk to at 2 AM when the panic attacks hit hardest.” Read more>>

Jon McCaine

As part of my pre-doctoral internship training, I did on-call rotations in the emergency room of a medical center. A woman who had just been physically assaulted by her boyfriend entered holding a young child by the hand who looked scared and confused. She was frightened and needed a place to stay. After searching and searching, I was able to find an emergency shelter and arranged for be transported and given a space. for her and her daughter. She hugged me and thanked me on leaving. I felt satisfied that things worked out. Read more>>

Jill Tallents

There was a defining moment—but it didn’t come with a title change or a perfect plan. It came when the personal and professional parts of my life collided in a way I couldn’t ignore.

Before becoming a therapist, I spent years working as a social worker across hospital systems, child protection, and schools—advocating for teens in foster care, supporting families through crisis, and navigating some of the most complex systems with very little room for error. I was the steady one, the advocate, the fixer. But underneath all of that, something was stirring. Read more>>

Laura Minero

When I first transferred to cal state Fullerton during my undergrad, I failed most of my first exams. I was already nervous and questioning if I belonged because of the stigma I internalized coming from community college. I had a sociology professor who I asked help from say to me that I was never going to be a scientist and I needed to go back to my farming town where I belonged because all I was going to be my whole life was a farmer. I broke down and pondered if she was right even though there was so much that was wrong about her statement that I didnt know at the time. But the person I called was my mom, and she told me that I belonged, and that I was going to get back up and show her that. Read more>>

Melissa Letellier

When I gave birth to my first child I suffered a traumatic birth injury known as pubic symphysis diastasis. It was so severe doctors told me i would never walk without a cane or walker. 6 years later i’m pushing 300lb club on back squat, learning how to golf, and living life 95% pain free. Read more>>

Josephine Dolan-Dufourd

The turning point didn’t come with success or celebration. It arrived quietly—through disappointment, and then, unexpectedly, through a deep shift.

After 17 years in public health in the UK, I moved to France with my young family and set up in independent practice. I poured years of energy into building an online project called The Wellbeing Atelier—creating thoughtful resources, courses, and workshops. But despite doing all the “right” things, it never truly took off. It always felt like swimming upstream. Read more>>

Sarina Karwande

When I began my career as a physical therapist, I was trained—like many others—not to bring personal stories into the treatment room. In clinical rotations, you quickly learn that patients are there to be heard. They’re often in pain, frustrated, vulnerable. They don’t want to hear that you have back pain too; that can feel dismissive, even if it’s meant to be relatable. So, I kept quiet. I focused on listening. On validating. On helping. Read more>>

Latrice Dailey

One of the most defining moments of my life wasn’t a single event—it was the realization that healing is both personal and collective. As a therapist, I’ve spent years helping others navigate grief, trauma, and self-doubt. But when I faced my own deep loss and personal transitions, I had to sit in the same vulnerability I encourage my clients to embrace. That season taught me that strength isn’t about pushing through—it’s about slowing down enough to let God meet you where you are. Read more>>

Rubye Braye

Learning about the facets of servant leadership and the outcomes. When one develops as a servant leader, the focus is on self, others, tasks, and resources. All are vitally important and require attention. As an executive coach, clients bring issues and soon learn that whatever concern they hope to resolve will often require exploration of these facets in their lives. Read more>>

Rose Marincil

I have several defining moments that lead me on this path. The first being when I was 23, I found a small lump in my left breast. I told my chiropractor about the lump, and he referred me to a herbalist friend he had who was from Hong Kong. Although there was a language barrier, I fully committed to working with this herbalist, and met with him once a week for a year to shrink the lump. Every week, this herbalist made a custom herbal decoction that I used internally, and also a topical liniment to successfully shrink the lump without surgery. Read more>>

Jeremy Milbourn

I’ve been a personal trainer for about 10 years now. The moment I realized I needed to evolve or leave, was when I met someone who did my job, in minutes. She had developed an excel sheet that could take people information and calculate their new diet.
Something that I would do manually that could take hours. After that, I started playing around with excel and also watching about 15hrs of YouTube videos, on how to use excel. From that I developed my own sheet that would calculate your macros, based on: weight, height, age, sex, activity level and personal goals. I just kept going after that. Read more>>

Naihomy Jerez

I feel like my professional career has always chosen me. I started off in digital advertising straight out of college, thanks to my high school teacher who was then working for one of the biggest internet companies at the time. I worked in various companies covering everything from SEO, to TV commercials, to digital ads. I always worked within the sales department under the account management team, and there I learned so much about business. Not only how to communicate internally with various departments, but also how to build external client relationships. Ten years in, I had my second son. Read more>>

Diane Stanley

I’ve always been curious and I definitely have always been stubborn. Through stubbornness and grit, I felt like I could muscle through just about anything. I worked full-time, attended UT Austin full-time with honors, and was the first in my family to attend a university. I was positive I would go on to medical school, but life had other plans. Read more>>

Laura Rose

I didn’t plan to fall in love with mantra. I was just trying to find my footing in a new city, a new career, and a life that made sense.

I had just moved to San Diego, fresh out of college, for a competitive internship in music therapy. I didn’t know a single soul. But I was proud to be a music therapist. I was young, passionate, and ready to serve. My days were filled with profound work, from singing to premature babies in the NICU to offering comfort to patients in hospice care. Read more>>

Devyn Beeton

I always knew that I wanted a profession in helping people and that involved teaching. I decided on nursing and received my Bachelor of Science degree in Nursing from Thompson Rivers University in 2016. After graduating, I worked in Surgical Daycare where I prepared patients for surgery and then provided discharge instructions to patients who were going home on the same day. In 2017, I continued my education and trained as an Operating Room nurse. Read more>>

Amanda Boike

Before I landed in my profession as a Fitness Trainer, I was considering a career as a dancer. Fresh out of high school, I was quite shy and overall unsure of myself, and while I knew I loved dancing, auditioning was something that I wanted to nothing to do with. I couldn’t stand the thought of rejection. Read more>>

Sara Harward

When I think about defining moments on the path to launching Bloom with my business partner Ashley Gangloff, I don’t think there was a single lightning-bolt moment — it was more like a slow unfolding. For years, I had been doing everything “right.” I had a successful career in research, was raising three kids with my husband, involved in the community, volunteering, serving on boards — my life looked full, and by many measures, it was. But something inside me kept whispering that there was more. Not more to do, but more to feel. More to connect to. More that I hadn’t quite found yet. Read more>>

Tanya Salcido

My defining moment wasn’t loud or dramatic. It was quiet, like a whisper I finally had the space to hear.

A few years ago, I found myself completely depleted. On paper, everything looked fine—I was juggling multiple roles, staying productive, and “pushing through” like so many of us are taught to do. But inside, I was emotionally exhausted, anxious, and spiritually disconnected. Even as someone who had always been intuitive, I realized I had stopped listening to myself.  Read more>>

Kavya Gangasani

As someone who is passionate about medicine, I found myself searching for opportunities related to medicine, hoping to get experience and exposure to opportunities related to healthcare. Throughout this process, I quickly realized how expensive they were—costing hundreds or even thousands of dollars. One day, I had been sitting in the library about to pay around $2000 for an internship, and that was when I had been hit with a certain epiphany. That epiphany in the library was my defining moment. Read more>>

JoAnne Clifford

There was a moment in my professional journey that changed everything. It wasn’t marked by a promotion or a title—it was a quiet, internal reckoning.

After years of working my way up from therapy aide to therapy tech, and eventually graduating in 2017 as an Occupational Therapy Assistant from PIMA Medical Institute, I found myself in the thick of corporate healthcare. I was providing care, yes—but the culture around me was shifting. Patients were being treated like numbers. Therapists were pressured to prioritize productivity over people. The heart of healing was being replaced by profit margins. Read more>>

Krista Fee

I was a volunteer in the emergency room back then, a pre-med student ready to take on the world and pursuing a career in forensic pathology. No badge, no title, just a heart that kept showing up in the chaos. It was late. One of those nights when time goes blurry, fluorescent lights hum louder than they should, and the air tastes like adrenaline and antiseptic. Read more>>

Haley Turpin

One evening, I find myself pulling up to the local Walgreens drive-thru window to grab my 90-day depression medication when the man behind the counter shares kindly that there is no prescription to be picked up.
Instant heaviness in my chest and ringing in my ears as fear and confusion strike me. It’s as if the world goes on pause and I need someone to shake me or tell me to move. Read more>>

Alisa Adams

Growing up in Madison, Wisconsin, I always enjoyed artmaking. I had an elementary school art teacher who I thought was so cool because she let her young students paint colorful designs on her car, and she kept it painted with children’s art and paraded it around town (and drove it to school every day). I attended summer camps at area parks with lakes and always enjoyed the camp art activities. I took elective art classes in high school and elective studio art classes in college. I loved learning about art and making art. In kindergarten, I said I wanted to be an art teacher when I grew up, and I sadly learned that schools don’t always budget for art. It will be no surprise to hear that I was told in high school when I was considering my career path, that art was a fun hobby, and making a living by making art was seldom achievable. Read more>>