Presented to a Dress for Success client who turned opportunity into momentum and now inspires others to pursue their own potential, the Spark Award honors a woman who is a living reminder of what becomes possible when access is provided and potential is met with support.

Every honoree at Women Who Inspire has opened doors for others. Sonia Arteaga walked through one. The Spark Award honors a Dress for Success client whose journey reminds us why all of it matters.

She found that door because people like you chose to show up for women like her.

Meet Sonia

Sonia didn't take the expected path. After high school, she went straight into the workforce to help her mom pay the bills. College waited. Life didn't.

At 30, she stopped waiting and enrolled at San Jose State, balancing motherhood and a full course load as a transfer student. In the middle of that stretch — exhausted, determined, not sure what came next — a friend mentioned Dress for Success.

That conversation changed everything.

Through Dress for Success San Jose, Sonia completed a Google Career Certificate, worked with a career coach who helped her see her own potential more clearly, and was selected for Project Premium — a year of free LinkedIn Premium that opened doors in her industry she hadn't been able to reach before.

In May, she graduated from SJSU. Two weeks later, she launched her own marketing business. One month after that, she signed her first client.

"This is not a coincidence," Sonia shared. "These are the resources that were available to me, and I was able to leverage them to build confidence for my own path."

Those resources exist because supporters like you made them possible. Sonia's story is the first Spark Award story — and it won't be the last.

Hear Sonia tell her story live at Women Who Inspire, October 22 at the San Jose Woman's Club.