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.

Mildred Namusisi

Finding my purpose has been less about searching and more about reconnecting with the place I call home-Africa.Growing up in Uganda, I was surrounded by the beauty of nature and raised by a family who believed deeply in the healing power of the natural world. My parents taught me to respect the environment, to value herbs and healing remedies, and to embrace a holistic way of living. I was that friend people came to when they needed a natural solution, and it always felt like second nature to share what I knew. Read more>>

Allison Maslan

I believe my purpose found me rather than me finding it. It was an evolution of life experiences that created deep wisdom and ultimately aligned with my values. I felt experienced and transformed enough through these experiences to want to give back. Read more>>

Rabiyah Abdus-salaam

I believe we are all born with our purpose and live it out as we fulfill our destiny. However, society often doesn’t support the diverse roles we are inherently meant to play, steering many of us toward conventional careers. As a child, I recognized this disconnect and stayed true to what I felt called to do. Growing up, I witnessed Black families in my community, including my own, struggle to access the basic resources needed for a healthy life, especially culturally relevant programs. Although I couldn’t articulate it that way as a kid, I knew there was something fundamentally missing. Read more>>

 Jay Ternavan

I found a job in Prague, with a relocations agency, in the early 2000s, a time when Central Europe was awash with expats being posted abroad, and it was during that time the inspiration for my company came to me. I’d been arranging trips for friends and family to come and visit, enjoying the hours of internet research that was only just becoming viable into new places to visit, as well as taking them to places I’d already been and knew they’d love. Someone called it ‘traveling the Jay way’ and that’s how it started. Read more>>

Brandy Underwood

When I first launched Shop Botetourt in 2020, the world was in a state of uncertainty. Local businesses were hit hard by pandemic restrictions, and I saw firsthand how difficult it was for many owners to get the word out and connect with customers, let alone recover. As a small business owner myself, I could relate, but I also saw an opportunity. I knew that if these businesses had a way to showcase what made them unique—what made them worth supporting—they could find the encouragement they needed to make it through. Read more>>

Alex Dee

Through my faith and failures. I know that Christ has a purpose for me to love like He loves. And I strive to do this everyday as a husband and father in my vocation. And in this vocation, in my faith – I fail to fully live out my purpose. Failure is my biggest fear and my best teacher. And being open to failure is a painful necessity to success. Finding success almost always comes on the back of failures. And once successful, you have to find ways of taking smart risks that bring you closer to the edge of failure in order to keep growing. Finding purpose in this life is a primary component to success, but the road to it is not perfect. I have a knack for failing with my chin held up and that has been an immense gift in discovering and unpacking a better understanding of my potential and purpose. Read more>>

Cristina Bustamante

I come from a very big family. My dad is one of 9 siblings, and we were all kept close by my abuela, Yaya. Yaya had this unique ability to make everyone feel like her favorite. Every Sunday, without fail, she would cook something delicious and host a lunch for the entire family at her house. Anyone who could make it that week would show up, and we would eat and laugh and just catch up. She made it look so easy. It was not until she passed that we all realized just how hard it was to cook and gather so many people every week. It was amazing the love she had for all of us, and how she expressed it with food and the best hugs. When I had kids, I knew that I wanted them to know her, and I felt the best way to do that was to start cooking and learning her recipes. I knew it would not be the same as having her there, but it does feel like a piece of her is present when we are cooking and sharing a meal at home. Read more>>

Jermaine Mcghee, Mfa

I believe my purpose found me and hit me in the head, LOL. I had a dream to dance professionally. Coming from a small town like Charlotte North Carolina, I didn’t know any black men that did what I wanted to do successfully besides one of my ballet teachers, Mel Tomlinson. With that, I began to take dance classes seriously at my high school, Northwest School of the Visual and Performing Arts, and ballet school @ North Carolina Dance Theater– now Charlotte Ballet. At 17, after being accepted to the Alvin AIley School in New York City, purpose came knocking. My dream of dancing professionally has led me to dance on 3 different continents, TV shows, movies, music videos and live productions. The Oxford Language Dictionary states, purpose is the reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists, and by that definition I believe my purpose is continually being unveiled as I continue to live and breathe. Being a professional dance artist is but one part of why I am here on earth, part two of my purpose is to be a builder/encourager of people and the arts with a deep meaningful emphasis of spiritual connection. In this way purpose found me. Read more>>

Tiffany Johnson

I always say that tax accounting found me; I did not find tax accounting. My journey began in college when my parents went through a tough time financially and told me I needed to find a job. My boyfriend at the time (now husband of 18 years) suggested I try a temp agency. Within a week or two I was placed with an overwhelmed CPA who needed some front desk help during a busy tax season. I started working for that CPA firm, and the rest is history! The day I accepted that receptionist job, little did I know that I would find my mentor, my career, and eventually, my calling. Read more>>

Keith Darrow

My life’s purpose is to make a profound difference. From a young age, I aspired to be an educator—not just in the traditional sense, but someone who could touch the lives of countless individuals and contribute to a brighter, more promising future. Read more>>