Sara Jensen’s journey has taken her from aggressive swimming and diving as a pupil to the boardrooms of nonprofit organizations and management circles like YPO as a CEO. However whereas she brings the identical self-discipline, focus and reliance she realized from swimming into her management roles in the present day, it’s her private story—navigating greater than a decade of unexplained infertility—that finally led her to discovered her mission-driven wellness firm Hugh & Grace in 2019.
Inspiration can come from anyplace. And nobody is aware of this higher than Jensen, who found a kindred spirit early on in somebody she’d by no means met. Jensen was impressed by the story of Brownie Smart, the saleswoman who turned Tupperware right into a family identify. She pored over Smart’s Harvard Enterprise College case examine and even visited her museum in Orlando. Now, the CEO encourages leaders to search for steering in sudden locations.
Jensen, whose wellness firm was awarded Most Transformative Firm by Actual Leaders in 2025, reminds her friends that useful classes may be found far past conventional mentorship—and even past head to head interactions. “You possibly can return, examine individuals’s experiences, and study unbelievable classes with out ever being in the identical room with them,” she explains on a latest episode of the Company Competitor Podcast.
Mentorship, she stated, can come from understanding an individual’s journey and studying about how they approached success, even when they by no means shared these secrets and techniques with you straight. Strolling of their footsteps or selecting up methods they made their mark can result in your individual vital moments. “Discover somebody who’s residing the dream life for you,” the Hugh & Grace CEO says. “After which contact them and even mannequin and examine them—generally you don’t even have to satisfy a mentor.”
The wellness firm co-founder shared this and extra on the podcast, together with:
• Be genuine. Jensen burdened the concept individuals wish to work for leaders they will relate to, people who find themselves open. So, as troublesome as her story of unexplained infertility was to inform, she’s allowed herself to be susceptible and share it. “Individuals love that Hugh & Grace exists not simply as one other model making an attempt to generate profits, however that there’s an actual function,” she provides.
• You possibly can do laborious. Together with being a aggressive swimmer, Jensen has run marathons. This gritty effort was strengthened by one thing her dad informed her: You are able to do laborious. “Once I was working,” Jensen says, “I might at all times bear in mind ‘I can do laborious.’ It’s not essentially fairly, doesn’t must be good, however I can do laborious.” This helped the CEO intestine out robust instances as she pushed towards an answer.
• Hold going. Talking of marathons, Jensen is aware of that reaching something exceptional takes nice endurance and energy. So, it’s vital to construct up your skills—and people of your crew—for the lengthy highway forward. “Once I know that my physique energy [and] my psychological energy is there, and I’ve a collective group of people that consider in the identical issues, that’s after we’re capable of obtain wonderful issues.”
