When Emma Victoria Johnson sat across from her surgeon in March 2025, the script had already been written for her: stage 4 breast cancer, no surgery, no chemo, no radiation — just two tablets and roughly 18 months. She tore that script up. In this deeply moving episode of Become Empowered, host Sabine Kvenberg sits down with Emma, joining "from the future" near Sydney, Australia, to talk about the moment a diagnosis became a decision. Emma shares why she refused to accept a palliative-only progn

What if the problem isn't that you need more stages — but that your message isn't clear enough to earn them? In this episode of Become Empowered, Sabine sits down with speaker, author, and coach Marta Spirk — a fellow performer who traded the entertainment stage for a mission of guiding women to find their voice and own the spotlight. Marta shares her remarkable journey: growing up singing in her mother's church in Brazil, building a career in translation and interpreting, singing the national

Imagine walking into a state government internship, handing them an evaluation that says you read and write at a first-grade level — and walking out having earned fifteen credits of A-minus. Now imagine a university committee looking at that same work and flunking you to fifteen credits of F. That's the moment Russell Van Brooklyn stopped waiting for permission and decided to solve dyslexia himself. On this episode, Sabine sits down with Russell Van Brooklyn — known worldwide as the Dyslexia Pr

Some people find their turning point in a boardroom. Fenix Shepard found hers in a jail cell — where a total stranger looked at her with compassion and asked one question that cracked her life wide open: "Don't you think it's time to heal?" In this episode, Sabine sits down with Fenix Shepard — spiritual mentor, Navy veteran, trauma survivor, and author of Loved Unconditionally — for a conversation that goes straight to the heart. Fenix walks us back to her last rock bottom at 30, the correction

Thirty-five years ago, Sabine met an 18-year-old dancer in West Africa — talented, a little naïve, and not yet sure she belonged anywhere but the stage. In this episode, that young woman returns as Sabine's guest: Dorina Malcheva, now Artistic Director of MJ – The Michael Jackson Musical in Hamburg, Germany, leading a team of 34. It's a conversation that moves like a memory: the smell of the airport air, the fires along a dark road, the first show they ever built together in an African club. Bu

Jeremy Knauff spent nearly two decades building a successful marketing agency — until a severe health crisis nearly killed him and took the business down with it. In this raw, unfiltered conversation, the U.S. Marine Corps veteran and founder of Spartan Media shares what it was like to lose everything, the autoimmune condition that brought him to the edge, and the moment a fellow Marine's suicide became the turning point that changed how he showed up in the world. Jeremy walks us through exactl