Don't Tell Me I Can't...Start A Career In My Forties

After spending 20 years as a stay-at-home mom, Theresa Michael, 47, used the valuable skills she’d learnt to launch a thriving business

I always feel a giant swell of pride when one of my students passes their exams. But I not only feel proud of them, I’m also so proud that my business is helping to grow young minds.

I’ve always had a passion for teaching but, if you’d told me 20 years ago that I’d one day be running my own tutoring company – with 200 employees and 500 students – I wouldn’t have believed you.

I got married at 19 and had my first child a year later. By the time I was 27, I had four young children. I made the decision to be a stay-at-home mom, dedicating all of my time to raising my kids rather than pursuing a career. I always placed a lot of emphasis on my children’s education – I even enrolled at UNISA to study maths and English so I could help them with their homework!

As my kids got older and needed my help less, I started tutoring other school pupils and found myself quite in demand – especially when my daughter, Pascale, who was a tutor at Wits at the time, passed a few of her pupils onto me so she could concentrate on her studies.