Catch Her Spark

What happens when a woman who knows how to protect millions of dollars at work realizes she did not protect herself at home?
In this episode of the Catch Her Spark Podcast, host Jen Maldonado sits down with Neka Hickmon, a technology leader, mother of three, and woman finding her way through a new chapter of life.
Neka has spent more than 20 years working with major organizations, including JPMorgan Chase and the U.S. Air Force. She has led large technology projects, helped solve big problems, and built strong teams.
But behind her success was a mother who was tired, busy, and often putting herself last.
Neka shares what it was like to raise three children while building her career. She talks about the joy of being a mom, the hard days, and the moment she realized she had lost touch with her own needs.
She also opens up about going through a divorce after 20 years of marriage. Even though she earned more than her husband, she had not taken the steps she now wishes she had taken to protect her financial future.
Together, Jen and Neka talk about why women need to know their worth, make time for themselves, and have open talks about money before life takes an unexpected turn.
This conversation is about more than money or career success. It is about learning to choose yourself, even when life is hard.
You'll hear Neka's thoughts on being a working mom, finding joy in small things, building trust at work, teaching children to believe in themselves, and planning for a safe financial future.
One of the most moving moments comes when Neka shares the story of her grandmother, who saved just $5 from the money her husband gave her. It was her small way of making sure she could care for herself and her children.

What if the place you start in life does not have to decide where you finish?
In this episode of The Catch her Spark Podcast with Jen Maldonado, Jen sits down with Geeta Priya Vattam to talk about a journey built on education, hard work, family, and the courage to keep going.
Geeta grew up in a low-income family in India. Her mother worked as a tailor, her father repaired televisions, and money was often tight. But her mother gave her something that would shape the rest of her life: the belief that education was one thing no one could ever take away from her.
Geeta held on to that lesson.
She worked hard, pursued scholarships and opportunities, built a career in technology, and became the first person in her family to achieve financial stability. Her success also allowed her to help support her siblings' education as they built careers of their own.
But Geeta's journey did not stop there.
After moving to the United States, she had to build a new life far away from the friends, relatives, and community she knew in India. She shares openly about feeling alone, adjusting to a different culture, and realizing that if she wanted community, she would have to take the first step and create it.
Jen and Geeta also talk about motherhood, building a career as an immigrant woman, staying connected to your roots, and learning to make yourself a priority.
Today, Geeta is a mother of two, a technology professional, and a content creator who shares her life, family, fitness journey, relationships, and values through social media.
Her message to other women is simple: trust yourself, trust your path, keep going when things are hard, and do not underestimate your strength.
This conversation is a reminder that limited resources do not have to mean limited dreams—and sometimes one lesson passed from a mother to her daughter can help change the future of an entire family.
 
Be a Guest Are you a successful business owner, entrepreneur, or professional with insights to share? Apply to be a guest at https://catchherspark.com/guest and share your expertise with a wide audience eager to learn about you...

Real estate deals can look very different depending on where you sit in the capital stack.
In this episode, Jen Maldonado breaks down what the capital stack means, who gets paid first, and how risk changes at each level. She uses a simple $10 million example to explain senior debt, second liens, preferred equity, and common equity.
Jen also shares what she is seeing in Austin, Phoenix, and California as she reviews the market heading into the last quarter of 2026. In Austin, she is watching single family homes, condos, and smaller apartment properties while working on development projects close to the University of Texas and the Allendale area.
The conversation also goes inside one of Jen’s current Austin projects. Her team took down a property with a single family home and developed three condo units. The project is almost complete, with each unit expected to be listed between $850,000 and $900,000.
Jen explains how the project was financed, why she prefers to keep the capital stack simple on smaller developments, and why she always underwrites a backup plan. If selling does not make sense, she wants to know whether rents can cover the mortgage and whether a mix of long term and short term rentals can keep the property moving.
In this episode, you’ll hear about:
What Jen is seeing in Austin, Phoenix, and California
Why she is selling the last hotel in her Phoenix portfolio
How the capital stack works in a real estate deal
The difference between senior debt, second liens, preferred equity, and common equity
How Jen financed a roughly $1.7 million Austin development project
Why she considers multiple exit plans before starting a deal
How property taxes and interest rates affect her underwriting in Texas
What a lazy river taught Jen about market currents

What if the room you feel least ready to enter is exactly the room you need to be in?
In this episode of the Catch her Spark Podcast with Jen Maldonado, Jen sits down with first-generation attorney Sherelle Sanders to talk about what it takes to step into bigger rooms, take on bigger opportunities, and build a career when no one in your family has gone before you.
Sherelle shares how a high school teacher first saw something in her and encouraged her to consider becoming a lawyer. That encouragement helped start a journey that would eventually lead Sherelle from humble beginnings to a legal career spanning more than 25 years, representing major corporations and handling complex, high-stakes cases.
But Sherelle’s message is not simply about confidence. It is about what you do with it.
She shares why she believes you should “aim a little higher than your pay grade” and intentionally put yourself in rooms where you are not the most experienced person. Those rooms may feel uncomfortable, but they are often where the greatest learning and growth happen.
Sherelle also opens up about being a first-generation professional and the lessons she wishes she had understood sooner. Her advice is practical: network, find mentors, and show up. She explains why your mentors do not need to look like you or share your background—and how some of the people who helped open important doors in her career came from very different backgrounds than her own.
Jen and Sherelle also talk about the importance of knowing your craft. Getting into the room is only part of the journey. You also have to prepare, learn, take responsibility, and be ready when an opportunity comes.
The conversation goes beyond career success as Sherelle shares what success and legacy mean to her today. She talks about raising children who understand that being blessed also creates an opportunity to bless others, including her daughter’s work helping children in foster care and her son’s commitment to giving back through his business.
This conversation is for the woman who knows she wants more but wonders if she is experienced enough, connected enough, or ready enough to take the next step.
You may not feel ready when the bigger room opens.
Walk in anyway.
About Sherelle Sanders
Sherelle Sanders is a first-generation attorney with nearly 26 years of experience practicing law. Throughout her career, she has handled complex cases, advised major corporations, and built a reputation around preparation, strategy, and knowing her craft. She is also passionate about mentorship, service, family, and helping the next generation recognize opportunities that may once have seemed out of reach.
 
Be a Guest Are you a successful business owner, entrepreneur, or professional with insights to share? Apply to be a guest at https://catchherspark.com/guest and share your expertise with a wide audience eager to learn about you...

The Price Ambitious Women Pay That Nobody Teaches You — And How to Win Anyway
What does ambition really cost when you are a woman building a career in a world that was never designed for you?
In this powerful episode of the Catch her Spark Podcast with Jen Maldonado, Jen sits down with Bunmi Bashiru, an engineer, project manager, sustainability expert, entrepreneur, and energy consultant whose career has taken her through more than 13 years in the demanding, male-dominated energy industry.
Growing up in Nigeria, Bunmi saw communities surrounded by natural resources yet struggling to access reliable energy. Instead of simply accepting the problem, she decided she wanted to help solve it. That decision led her to study chemical engineering and eventually build a career spanning downstream energy, gas distribution, oil production, automation, sustainability, and renewable energy.
But Bunmi's story is about much more than career success.
She shares what it took to walk into rooms where women were often underrepresented and make sure her voice was heard. She talks about learning office politics, finding sponsors who would advocate for her when she wasn't in the room, preparing relentlessly, building relationships, and learning how to "fail forward."
Bunmi also opens up about a side of ambition that rarely makes it onto a résumé.
While pushing herself to deliver projects and advance her career, she experienced pregnancy losses. After returning quickly to work following her first loss, a second loss forced her to confront something she had spent years ignoring: her body needed rest.
That experience changed the way she thought about success.
Bunmi began giving herself permission to grieve, rest, travel, read, rediscover the things she loved, and find herself outside of her career. Her message to ambitious women is simple but important: there are seasons when you have to choose rest, and taking care of yourself does not erase your ambition.
Today, Bunmi is bringing everything she has learned into her own business, Energy Connoisseur. Her work focuses on helping solve operational and sustainable energy challenges while thinking about a future where traditional and renewable energy sources can work together more responsibly.
This conversation is for the woman who has ever felt invisible in the room, afraid to speak up, pressured to prove herself, or worried that slowing down will somehow put her dreams out of reach.
Bunmi reminds us that resilience isn't about never falling. It is about learning, recovering, speaking again, and knowing when your body and your life are asking you for something different.
 
Be a Guest Are you a successful business owner, entrepreneur, or professional with insights to share? Apply to be a guest at https://catchherspark.com/guest and share your expertise with a wide audience eager to learn about you...

Growth Is Paid For — The Part Nobody Tells You About Becoming More
Guest: Grace McCubbinHost: Jen MaldonadoPodcast: Catch her Spark Podcast with Jen Maldonado
Everyone says they want to grow. But what happens when growth costs you the version of yourself you thought you had to be?
In this powerful conversation, Jen Maldonado sits down with Grace McCubbin, a founder, author, TEDx speaker, congressional witness, mother, and self-described reformed perfectionist.
Grace shares how becoming a mother as a teenager shaped her drive to achieve and how growing up with high expectations connected her identity to accomplishment. She also opens up about learning one of the biggest lessons of her life: two things can be true at the same time.
Someone can love you and still hurt you. You can be strong and vulnerable. Something can be painful and still lead to something meaningful.
Grace shares the life-changing story of the day her 16-year-old son, Maddox, suffered sudden cardiac arrest at school. After six minutes without a heartbeat, four rounds of CPR, and two shocks from a defibrillator, he survived.
But Grace was changed forever.
That experience led her into advocacy and eventually to the halls of Congress, where she worked to bring attention to sudden cardiac arrest and the importance of CPR training and access to AEDs in schools.
Through it all, Grace discovered something we rarely talk about when we celebrate personal growth: growth is paid for.
Growth can hurt. It can ask us to leave behind old identities, beliefs, relationships, and expectations. It can make us uncomfortable before we ever see what is waiting on the other side.
Grace is now bringing these lessons into her upcoming book, Two Things Can Be True, which explores the complicated truths and dualities we experience throughout life.
This conversation is for the woman who is in the middle of a hard chapter and wondering whether any of it will make sense someday.
As Grace reminds us, the moment you are living through today does not define your entire life. There can still be magic inside the misery.
In this episode, Jen and Grace talk about:
Becoming a mother as a teenager and learning to carry enormous responsibility early in life
How perfectionism and fear of failure can become tied to identity
Why separating your own goals from other people's expectations can be painful and freeing
What Grace means when she says "two things can be true"
Why people find it easier to see heroes and villains than to accept life's gray areas
The sudden cardiac arrest that nearly took her son's life
How trauma changed Grace's understanding of strength and vulnerability
Turning a deeply personal experience into advocacy and meaningful action
Why growth is often born from painful experiences
Learning to see both the "magic" and the "misery" in life
Why becoming more may mean you no longer fit inside the old version of yourself
 
Be a Guest Are you a successful business owner, entrepreneur, or professional with insights to share? Apply to be a guest at https://catchherspark.com/guest and share your expertise with a wide audience eager to learn about you...

What happens when you give your best to a company, quadruple the business, and still get fired by text?
For Laura Campbell, that painful moment became a turning point.
In this episode of The Catch her Spark Podcast with Jen Maldonado, Laura shares how getting fired pushed her to stop depending on someone else to recognize her value and start building something of her own.
Laura has spent more than 26 years working in animal health and nutrition. She has built trusted relationships with farmers, producers, feed mills, and nutritionists, and she is a professional animal auditor helping ensure animals are treated with care and respect.
But Laura's story goes far beyond her career.
She opens up about becoming a single mother at just 24 years old, rebuilding her life, navigating career setbacks, starting her own business, and learning to trust the intuition that told her when something wasn't right.
Laura and Jen also explore what it means for women to take up space instead of constantly trying to earn it.
One idea runs through Laura's entire story: excellence is her brand.
Whether she is auditing a facility, working with a customer, raising her daughters, or rebuilding after a setback, Laura believes in showing up with integrity, doing what she says she will do, and helping people become better.
You'll hear how Laura turned auditing from a process of finding what's wrong into an opportunity for continuous improvement. She shares why she wants the people she audits to see her as a partner—and why one client telling her, "You're tough, but you make us better," meant so much to her.
You'll also discover the invisible world behind the food on your table and why Laura wants consumers to better understand the farmers, producers, nutritionists, and auditors working every day to keep animals healthy and America's food supply resilient.
This conversation is about resilience, intuition, integrity, financial independence, and what can happen when a woman decides to build a life on her own terms.
About Laura Campbell
Laura Campbell has more than 26 years of experience in animal health and nutrition. Her work includes animal nutrition, sales and commercial leadership, animal welfare, auditing, and working directly with professionals throughout the agriculture and food supply chain.
After career setbacks—including being fired after helping quadruple a company's business—Laura pursued professional animal auditing and eventually built her own business. Today, she continues working in the industry while maintaining the skills, certifications, and business that give her the ability to support herself on her own terms.
 
Be a Guest Are you a successful business owner, entrepreneur, or professional with insights to share? Apply to be a guest at https://catchherspark.com/guest and share your expertise with a wide audience eager to learn about you...

In this powerful episode of the Catch her Spark Podcast with Jen Maldonado, Jen sits down with Yildiz Burger for an open conversation about toxic workplaces, survival mode, rebuilding self-trust, and finding the courage to create a new chapter.
Yildiz shares her deeply personal journey through childhood challenges, loss, toxic work environments, and moments that left her questioning herself and her own worth. After years of pushing forward and trying to survive, her body and mind began telling her something had to change.
But leaving a toxic environment was only the beginning.
Yildiz had to learn how to trust herself again. She had to remember the ambitious woman she had been before fear and self-doubt took over. Little by little, she began asking herself important questions: What do I want? What do I need? Who do I want to become?
That clarity eventually became something bigger. Yildiz began using what she had learned to help other women recognize their skills, rebuild their confidence, and create a path toward greater independence.
 
Be a Guest Are you a successful business owner, entrepreneur, or professional with insights to share? Apply to be a guest at https://catchherspark.com/guest and share your expertise with a wide audience eager to learn about you...

What if the twists, mistakes, and unexpected turns in your life aren’t taking you off course—but preparing you for what comes next?
In this episode of the Catch her Spark Podcast with Jen Maldonado, Jen sits down with Anisa Aven, a fourth-generation entrepreneur, leadership coach, and AI transformation leader whose career has been anything but a straight line.
Anisa started working in her family’s business as a teenager, sold her first business by 21, tried stand-up comedy at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles, and eventually built a career helping people and organizations unlock their potential. Today, her work brings leadership, coaching, human transformation, and AI together.
Anisa shares how growing up in an entrepreneurial family taught her to make decisions, take risks, recover from mistakes, and find her voice—even when she was the only young woman in the room.
She and Jen also talk about the importance of fun. Anisa explains why success is not worth much if the work leaves no room for family, joy, or the things that make you feel alive.
The conversation explores resilience, self-confidence, values, failure, and the courage to walk away when something no longer fits. Anisa shares why she believes you can't fail if you never quit—and why mistakes can become some of our greatest teachers when we're willing to learn from them.
 
Be a Guest Are you a successful business owner, entrepreneur, or professional with insights to share? Apply to be a guest at https://catchherspark.com/guest and share your expertise with a wide audience eager to learn about you...

What happens when the life you worked so hard to build no longer feels like the life you’re meant to live?
In this episode of the Catch her Spark Podcast with Jen Maldonado, Jen sits down with Dr. Amanda Lewis, dentist, longtime entrepreneur, and founder of LUI, to talk about what it really looks like to start over.
By the time Amanda approached 40, she had built what looked like a successful life. She owned two dental practices, had grown a team of about 20 people, was raising two children, and had spent nearly two decades building her career.
But behind that success, Amanda knew something needed to change.
She went through a divorce, navigated the uncertainty of the pandemic, sold the dental practices she had spent years building, moved from a small town in Illinois to Dallas, and eventually made another huge decision: stepping away from dentistry full-time to bet on an entirely different business.
That business became LUI, a smile-care brand inspired by Amanda’s 20 years of experience looking beyond teeth and seeing how deeply a person’s smile connects to confidence, beauty, and overall wellness.
The road was anything but simple. Amanda shares the setbacks behind building LUI, including an early product that could not scale, manufacturing challenges, stolen product molds, the sudden death of her mother, and the difficult decision to leave the career that had given her stability and success.
She also shares how her parents helped shape the entrepreneur she became. Her father inspired her drive to own and build businesses, while the loss of her mother gave Amanda a new sense of urgency and confidence to pursue what came next.
Jen and Amanda also explore why resilience has played such a big role in her life. Amanda compares it to distance running: when you fall miles from home, you still have to get back up and keep going.
The conversation then goes beyond entrepreneurship and into Amanda’s vision for changing the way people think about their smiles. She explains why she believes smile care belongs alongside beauty and wellness, and shares how her own dental and health journey changed the way she thinks about breathing, sleep, confidence, and oral care.
This episode is for the woman who has built a life she thought she wanted but is beginning to wonder whether there is something more waiting for her.
Sometimes starting over doesn’t mean everything you built was wasted. It means you get to take everything you learned with you into what comes next.
About Dr. Amanda Lewis
Dr. Amanda Lewis is a dentist, entrepreneur, and founder of LUI. After nearly two decades in dentistry and building successful dental practices, Amanda shifted her focus toward creating smile-care products designed to fit into everyday beauty and wellness routines.
Her goal is to help people think differently about their smiles—not simply as something to care for at the dentist, but as an important part of confidence and overall wellness.
 
Be a Guest Are you a successful business owner, entrepreneur, or professional with insights to share? Apply to be a guest at https://catchherspark.com/guest and share your expertise with a wide audience eager to learn about you...