Season Two of Lion in the Mirror kicks off with a fighter.Pam Hurley—President & CEO of Hurley Write, technical-writing renegade, and self-proclaimed rebel—sat down with us to talk through the wreckage, the redemption, and the raw truth of becoming herself.

Pam didn’t take the clean path.She missed out on UNC Chapel Hill, thrived at UNCG, then—like so many born in this state—jumped at the chance to wear Carolina blue when it finally came calling. The decision, as she tells it, was glorious, ill-advised, and powered by pure Tar Heel mythology.

One Winnebago joyride, one judgmental landlord, and one catastrophic brush with college math later… she flunked out. Hard.Drifting. Directionless. Bruised.

And then she stood up.

UNCW became the ground she rebuilt from. There, Pam found her innate necessary: the power of giving people the validation they’ve been starved of. She leaned into it, grew into it, and eventually carried it all the way into her Ph.D.—where she rejected the old sacred cow of Composition Studies and reframed technical writing as problem-solving rather than literary analysis.

Today, she’s the CEO she never met growing up.A survivor who refuses to let victimhood name her.A rebel who insists on seeing people clearly—and teaching them to see themselves.

From Pam, you’ll walk away with a handful of hard-earned truths:

Seeing someone is not small. It can reroute a life.

If something isn’t your fit, stop trying to shrink yourself into it. Change the thing.

Proving your worth to people who don't think you're worthy is a fool’s economy.

Your rebellion is a tool—aim it.

Conventional wisdom is often just someone else’s fear dressed up as advice.

Talk to yourself with the same decency you give the people you love.

Your upbringing, even the violent parts of it, does not get to write your destiny.

And maybe the line that sums Pam up best:

“Do not be afraid.”

Season Two starts here—with honesty, grit, and the kind of voice that makes you want to become the truer version of yourself.

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