Core to our mission is helping our audience and community reach their full potential and the most important part of reaching your full potential is starting to find your purpose. Below, we’ve shared stories and insights from the community around how various folks found their purpose and we hope it helps you in your journey.
Stanislav Ostrovskyi
My path to music may not resemble the stories you typically read in composer biographies. But for me, it was truly a journey—a real one, sometimes even strange and contradictory, but gradual, not a single, sudden epiphany. With the exception of the last year and a half spent here in Arizona, my entire creative path has taken place in Ukraine, in the city of Sumy. Read More>>
Kyle Curry
When I was younger, I was listless. I was a kid that didn’t feel like I fit in anywhere and I would have remained in that purgatory if I had not found martial arts. It was an outlet for all the confusion, pain, and loneliness that I had felt in my life. I had found a family. Read More>>
BYANCA ALMEIDA
I found my purpose through my work as a boutique interior designer in New York. What truly motivated me wasn’t just creating beautiful spaces — it was helping people feel happier and more comfortable in their environments. I noticed how much clients loved when I incorporated living plants into their designs, but many struggled to keep those plants alive long-term. Read More>>
Dr. Taisha Caldwell-Harvey
I have never been one of those people who grew up knowing exactly what they wanted to be. I used to envy kids who confidently declared at age six that they were going to be a doctor, a teacher, or even a paleontologist, and then actually followed through. Read More>>
Tracy Croxen
In 2019, our world stopped. My daughter Jocelyn was just seven years old when she was diagnosed with leukemia. In those early days, uncertainty filled every moment, so the first thing we did was take family photos—because we didn’t know what tomorrow would bring, and we wanted to hold on to now. Read More>>
Zae Camara
I don’t think I “found” my purpose in the traditional sense. I didn’t sit down one day and figure it out. For me, it was more like it found me. Every time I prayed for clarity, every time I surrendered, and every time I trusted God even when nothing made sense, things started aligning on their own. Read More>>
Zach Vogel
Honestly, my purpose came out of the last place I expected…pain. Growing up, my entire world revolved around baseball. That was the dream: play in the big leagues. Everything I did, everything I talked about, every school assignment I turned in somehow came back to baseball. Read More>>
Lyla Bashan
In the sixth grade, I did a report about the Amazon Rainforest. It was the early ’90s and the environmental movement was still somewhat nascent – having really gone into full gear in the ’70s with the publishing of Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring. Read More>>
Yolanda Meade
I found my purpose through real-life experience, not a textbook. I started in this industry because I saw how many people especially business owners and nonprofit leaders were being misled, overcharged, or left completely confused when it came to their finances and taxes. I became the person I wish my community had when I was first trying to figure things out. Read More>>
Yana Shmuliver
I found my purpose on the streets of Skid Row in Los Angeles over 35 years ago when I was homeless! I knew when I landed in the circumstances of darkness the I would be the LIGHT for people in need. Read More>>
Quiana G
From the time I was little, curiosity shaped everything I did. I filled old cassette tapes with little talk shows and songs I made up. I eventually discovered my dad’s digital Nikon camera and began to record myself. With childlike freedom, I believed that any future I dreamed of was within my reach and my parents nurtured that ambition. Read More>>
Jake Faun
By accident! I’d almost say I didn’t find it, it found me but that would be too cliché. Either way, I started playing guitar when I was about 11 years old and immediately fell in love with it. Read More>>
Durga Ekambaram
The word itself carries many meanings. Commonly “purpose” is defined by success or recognition. But for me, purpose is having something to look forward to. At present, that is my fifth book, whose manuscript is about twenty percent complete. Finishing it within the next few months and publishing it soon would certainly be an ideal goal. Read More>>
Sarah McCann
I was very blessed to have found my purpose at a very young age, in my 20’s when I was living in the Bay Area. It was all a manifestation of course, but I was lucky enough to walk through the right doors and walk down the right paths when they opened for me. Read More>>
Valerie Jean 
From Surviving to Serving: I was raised in distortion. The kind of distortion that teaches you love must be earned. That your worth must be proven. That being seen comes only after being silent. I’ve walked through fire in many forms. Unseen harm. Emotional control. Deep disconnection. I shaped myself – literally and energetically – to be what others would finally deem worthy. Read More>>
Antonio Reid, Jr.
The way I found my purpose is its own story. I actually started out on the creative side—singing, rapping, writing songs, producing. That was my world. Then, at 24, I got my first job in the music business at my father’s publishing company, Hitco. I spent countless hours in the studio with young, hungry writers who were insanely talented. Read More>>
Stefania and Rafael Morel
Rafael and I both reached our purpose the same way- by first reaching burnout. We were working long hours, eating whatever was quick, sleeping poorly, and assuming exhaustion was just ‘adulthood.’ Even though I worked in healthcare, I knew I wasn’t living in a way that reflected true wellness, which pushed me toward studying herbalism and holistic healing. Rafael was on a similar path. Read More>>
Michelle Custer
Sometimes purpose doesn’t arrive with fireworks, it comes quietly through the moments that break us open. For a long time, I thought my purpose was what society often tells women it should be: get married, have children, follow the traditional path. But when my best friend transitioned in March of 2015, my entire world shifted. Read More>>
Brandon Smith
If I’m being honest, I genuinely think I’m still trying to find it fully. Every day I’m closer and improving steadily, but I think that’s how it is with anyone. I’m a firm believer in that if you can find something you love to do, while able to help others at the same time, then that’s your purpose. I love music. Read More>>
Alyce Worfel
I have always loved taking pictures, growing up it was something I always did and always was the one to say let’s take a picture. As I got older and had a child of my own I couldn’t get enough pictures of her and I. Read More>>
Sean O’Connor
Great question. When I was an early teenager, I wandered suburban NJ with a feeling of emptiness and meaningless everywhere I went. Yeah, there were some good times. But none that crystallized any deep and enduring Truths. And at that point, coming from a very dysfunctional family like so many other kids across the planet, I needed Truth and Meaning bigtime. Read More>>
Melissa van Putten
I’ve always loved that quote from Mary Oliver that goes ‘Someone I once loved gave me a box of darkness. Read More>>
Jason & Skylar Ferris
For us, “finding our purpose” hasn’t been a one-time revelation — it’s been more like following a compass that was built into us from day one. Both of us were drawn to music long before we had the skill or language for it. Read More>>
Kelly Sooter
As a professional artist, purpose and mark-making are tightly aligned. However, even from the beginning, I never realized this alignment until a gallerist described a collector’s reaction to one of my larger works. At that point I realized that my purpose had found me. Read More>>
Esther Andries
Before moving to the US, I had already built 2 businesses and sold one of them in Belgium. The latter — a wellness cafe — became a local success story, and I even published a cookbook. I was a ‘well-known figure’ in the Antwerp wellness scene, and things were moving. From the outside, it looked like I had everything figured out. Read More>>
Brant Canup
I was 10 years old, standing on my youth groups stage with a bass guitar in my hands for the first time. I plucked the string and the whole stage shook… I knew I’d found something I was going to totally love! Read More>>
Emani Greene
I found my purpose in the middle of my pain. When I hit my lowest mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, I realized God wasn’t just allowing me to go through things. He was shaping me, rebuilding me, and preparing me for who I was called to be. It was in the moments where I had nothing left but God, where I felt lost and completely defeated that purpose started to form. Read More>>
Ron Monte
Throughout my life, I have had internal forces that call to me to take a certain action. I don’t know how, why or where they come from, but I have learned to be guided by these forces and go where it leads me. I grew up in NYC and my grandfather who worked in the fashion industry, often took me and my brother to work with him. Read More>>
Nico Raineau
I haven’t found purpose; I’m still searching for it. For most of my life, I thought I knew my purpose. I’ve always wanted to work in cinema and, for the past twenty years, I have been building a career as a screenwriter and filmmaker. Read More>>
Nicole Marie Martin
How I Found My Purpose
Purpose isn’t something I found — it’s something I remembered.
It was always there, waiting beneath the noise, the expectations, and the parts of my life built for survival instead of truth. My journey didn’t begin with a grand vision. It began with listening to what hurt, what felt heavy, and what kept calling me back home. Read More>>
Adam del Monte
I often feel that my purpose discovered me long before I understood it. Born into an artistic family, my father being my first teacher, I grew up immersed in a bohemian, musical world. In Málaga, in the south of Spain, flamenco was the air I breathed. Later, living among the gypsies in Granada—in the caves of the Sacromonte—I became fully absorbed in the flamenco way of life. Read More>>
