- September 10, 2026
-
-
Loading
Loading
Sheree Stomberg spent nearly 30 years climbing the corporate mountain at banking giant Citi. She oversaw some 100,000 employees, ran more than a dozen business sites with billions in revenue and, while based in New York City, spent a lot of time leading one of the firm’s financial hubs in Tampa for a decade. (Stomberg also got passed over for at least one big promotion — but regrouped and reframed to go even further at the financial services firm.)
Stomberg left Citi at the end of 2023.
She spent the next year training, mentally and physically, to climb a literal mountain: Mt. Lobuche, a 20,000-foot summit in the Khumbu region of the Himalayas in Nepal, following a 40-mile trek to Everest Base Camp.
Stomberg was 68 years old when she made it to the top in 2024. Men in their 20s who were supposed to be part of her six-person group didn’t make it past the training period to even start the climb. The group leader — the person who, impressed by Stomberg’s guts, picked her for the journey — was airlifted off the mountain when he got a blood clot. Stomberg and one other climber kept on going, along with sherpas, to ascend and descend. And they — she — did it.
Now 70, Stomberg has since turned that life accomplishment into a mission to help others live what she calls "extraordinary fourth quarters” of their lives. To facilitate that, Stomberg founded a company, Inspiration Unlimited, with a mission, she says, to use her high-altitude climb as a “springboard to dismantle pervasive limiting beliefs about aging.”
Part of that mission is through a 5.5-hour seminar she has been conducting about twice a month since last October. She is bringing the event, “How to Live an Extraordinary Life in Your Fourth Quarter,” to Tampa on Sept. 18. While the seminar is geared to both men and women over 50, Stomberg says the age range of participants spreads from people in their 30s through their 80s. One participant was 87; another one signed up for a future seminar is 92.
In a recent virtual interview, Stomberg talked about what motivated her to pursue her ambitious post-Citi mission, going back to vision boards she had drawn years ago that included a “childlike drawing” of Mt. Everest. And she knew she wanted to do something that inspired others to take action. “I didn't have a clear idea of what the business would actually be,” she says, “but I had a very clear idea of the impact, and that was to create more purpose, connection and joy for people in their fourth quarter.”
Prior to Inspiration Unlimited, Stomberg overcame a compelling third quarter of life and work, when she was passed over for a promotion. In an unusually vulnerable essay published in March 2014 by Citi — the company that didn’t promote her — Stomberg wrote about how that setback became a pivot point that taught her how to “reframe her limiting beliefs.” That would later, too, become a key messaging theme of Inspiration Unlimited.
Stomberg writes that back in 2005 she found herself "staring into my bathroom mirror while repeating the words ‘I am grateful for this career setback because…’
“Trouble was,” she continued, “I couldn't figure out how to finish that sentence. There was not one good thing that could possibly come from being passed up for a significant promotion and being layered.”
In time, Stomberg says she did find the good part of the setback.
It came first when she “discovered a limiting belief that I didn't realize I had,” in thinking more responsibilities would mean less time with family. That was, she writes, a “limiting belief holding me back at some unconscious level.”
Next, she admits, she “assumed my accomplishments spoke for themselves since I was a one-rated employee (the top rating for Citi employees). Clearly, that was not the case.”
Stomberg’s response to the event led to the outcome she wanted: a promotion. She networked with C-level executives at Citi and “declared” her accomplishments within the company, even though, she says, she “wasn't really comfortable doing either.”
The lesson?
“Careers aren't made by how we handle the good times but by how we handle the difficult ones,” Stomberg writes. “If things aren't going the way you want, you have to dream bigger, be introspective and take a deep look at what's holding you back. Ultimately, you're 100% responsible for your own success.”
Her Extraordinary Fourth Quarter seminars, Stomberg says in our interview, “start with the premise, are you made for more? And I believe pretty much all people are made for more.”
‘We humans,” she adds, “are machines at making up limiting beliefs. ‘I'm too old.’ ‘I'm too young.’ ‘I'm too this.’ It usually starts with an ‘I'm too,’ or ‘I don't have enough time,’ or ‘I can't do this.’”
It’s why step one of her three-step program starts with identifying and then defying your limiting beliefs, especially around aging and finding a sense of purpose. Some of that stems from life experiences. Some of that stems from external forces — peers, pop culture, your community. Combined, Stomberg says, it can lead someone to play a doom-and-gloom internal monologue on repeat, where you “absorb all the negative images and advertising and the air we breathe about aging, and a lot of it's not even true.”
Stomberg aims to rid her seminar participants, a cohort she calls “my heroes and my heroines,” of those limiting beliefs.
The second step, Stomberg says, is “to create a compelling future.”
And the third step is to take immediate action.
Stomberg took immediate action, too.
It’s her why behind Inspiration Unlimited.
Which goes back to her goal at Mt. Lobuche: to get to the top, the 20,000-foot mark. (And they couldn’t go further: a major snowstorm hit the mountain, anyway.)
“As it turns out, (the climb) was a portal to my business,” Stomberg says. “There was a big draw to get back into financial services after Citi. I had other offers, and that would have been the safe route, and I thought, ‘Am I really going to become a scrappy entrepreneur at my age and do this dream?'"
It was an obvious, clear-eyed, practice-what-you-preach moment for Stomberg.
“You get to Everest base camp and look up,” she says. “You look up for two miles at the peak, and it’s just amazing that there could be anything like this on planet Earth. And so I came back clear in my direction, and I never looked back.”
