Bradenton HR leader, 'cycle breaker' to launch 24/7 coaching app

At 17, Samantha Stuntz decided to join the Army as an HR specialist, a move that helped her become what she calls a “cycle breaker,” coming from a family with a history of addiction.

“I grew up in poverty, and I was the first cycle breaker of my family — the first person to go to college,” says Stuntz, who graduated from American Military University with a bachelor’s degree in management in 2014. 

Photo by Mark Wemple

While working as an Army civilian, she says, she met Roosevelt Thurman, who became her mentor.

“He taught me to really challenge myself,” Stuntz says. “‘How do you know that’s right? Have you researched it?’” he would ask her, encouraging her to invite criticism and other possibilities. “He taught me that leadership isn't about having all the answers — it’s about clarity and helping people see what’s possible within themselves.”

While in the Army, Stuntz continued challenging herself, earning her MBA before transitioning into the private sector. After assuming HR leadership roles at Fruit of the Loom and Sun Hydraulics, she is now the senior vice president of people operations and HR for Career Certified, an online education platform providing certifications for jobs like real estate agents, mortgage loan originators and others. She also founded her own coaching business and developed its flagship product, a coaching app launching this fall for individuals and organizations. And, in 2025, she earned her doctorate in strategic leadership.

Throughout her life, Stuntz says, people have told her she should write a book because she has gone through “challenge after challenge.” To share what has helped her get through hard times, she founded Proven Under Pressure in 2025. The business provides human coaching and workforce strategy and consulting.

“We really just try to help people understand how they respond under pressure and build strategies to create real sustainable change in their lives,” Stuntz says. 

In November, she is also unveiling Uncloud360, an AI-powered app she says will be Proven Under Pressure's flagship product, with personalized guidance anytime and scalable access for organizations.

“It combines AI coaching [with] personalized pathways, and then access to certified coaches to provide support in the moments for people that need it the most,” she says.

Here's how it works: People can interact with an AI agent named Kota (named for Stuntz's late golden retriever Dakota, about whom she says: "He was my clarity") when they need support. Kota is available 24/7 and afterward provides a debrief for certified coaches to offer "360-degree continuity," Stuntz says. 

“Whether it's a stay-at-home mom or the CEO of a million-dollar company, it's designed to try to understand what that individual's pressure pattern is and classify them appropriately, get them the tools they need to move from uncertainty to clarity and take purposeful action in their lives," Stuntz says.

One purposeful action Stuntz says she has taken is creating a large family. She has five children, ages 2 to nearly 18 years old.

“The most important thing is just to prioritize,” she says, on how she balances her responsibilities. Her top priorities are her faith and her family, she says. Having boundaries is key and so is being flexible — knowing, for example, she may have to stop something and pick it up again later.

“When you’re managing a business, raising five kids and working as an executive at a company,” Stuntz says, “you just learn you have to be flexible all the way around.”